Frozen Again: 'But The Greatest of These is Love'
by SetsunaKou
Summary: If love can thaw a frozen heart, will it heal a lost soul? Set 2 years later Elsa, Anna, Kristoff & friends along with cousin Rapunzel & Flynn go on an incredible journey of discovery. Kristanna's wedding turns to dangerous adventure as the sisters uncover the magic of selfless love & God's forgiveness. Can a repentant Prince Hans give Queen Elsa her own True Love destined romance?
1. Frozen Again Prologue-Summer's End

We do not own "Frozen" nor any of its characters.

**"Frozen Again: 'But The Greatest of These is Love'"**

**Prologue:**

"**Summer's End"**

_Cold. Inside, I'm so cold…_

It was conversely a warm day for this uneventful summer in the year of our Lord 1851 upon the idyllic rolling waves of the Scandinavian seas.

Visions of a spired castle rises on the shining horizon hovering over the intricately sculpted hedge mazes, hundreds of years preserved on this prominent estate. A stylized green topiary dances scenic _fleur de lis_ before the groomed gravel path leading to the long drawbridge of this inviting Renaissance water castle.

Crossing its majestic stone and monk's brick threshold, hungry eyes take in the beautiful tapestries that line the hallowed vaulted ceilings and magnificently decorated walls full of proud ancient weaponry, numerous mounted trophies, historical Naval art and royal portraits as the wide double doors wordlessly swing open for him. A rich collection of elegant crystal chandeliers, plush Oriental rugs and gold-gilt Louis XVI French neo-classical furniture, as well as a Danish kingly throne greet him upon trumpeted '_welcome home'_ return arrival.

Stepping a dashing self-possessed boot back out upon the gravel drive outside his mirror reflective moat surrounded castle, the distinguished young lad with deep ambitions holds his noble chin high. His clear windswept gaze was satisfied as he strides across the sandstone pavilion's statue adorned marble bridge. From that view he pauses to see the diverse fuschia spray of flora dotting the well cared for gardens on the vista, as they sweetly fragrance the air with their fresh untainted scent. All of these led, at last, to his favorite complex of royal stables, filled with steeds who shared in the liberating wind that blew through every part of his masterful youthful soul, destined for greatness…

Endless days and countless dreams that never came to pass for a comely well-bred boy spent alone exploring the castle interior's secreted staircases, always in the shadows beyond the library he frequented in solitude. Whether cloaked in fantasized mystery within his palace's double thick walls or in leisure on horseback roaming freely over a thousand hectares of lush fertile countryside filled with farming areas, bountiful flower gardens, stunning lakes and tall oak trees set upon the glorious hills of the Kingdom of Denmark, the resplendent landscape itself gave the clever young man vast scope for lavish musings.

* * *

Shaking off the illusionary blue sky and green grass mirage seen via his mind's eye alone, this same young man never imagined peeling potatoes in the dank smelly galley of a sullied rat-infested ship would be in his vaulted line of vocation.

_My brothers always did have a demented sense of humor concerning me._

Prince Hans of the Danish Southern Isles still had the good humor enough to chuckle to himself in the foul stenched darkness, a far cry from home, as he replays the 'sentencing phase' of his twelve older brothers passing judgment for his crimes – odious as they may be, in the benefit of hindsight reflection - against their neighboring Norwegian country's kingdom just beyond the true blue North Seascape called 'Arendelle", in all its shimmering magical glory, now far beyond his reach…

_Ah, Arendelle…such a radiant light still holds fascination for me beneath all that wondrous ice…_


	2. Chapter1 ActI:A Fresh New Morning Awaits

We do not own "Frozen" nor any of its characters.

"**Frozen Hearts in Ice"**

**Act I**

**Chapter 1**

"**A Fresh New Morning Awaits"**

By way of a seagull, we fly over the Scandinavian oceans and winding isles to the south, its sea-dipped pure white wings iridescent as they catch every shiny ray of a dazzling sun over of freshly new awakening world.

It was nearing the end of the cherished short summer in the land of the midnight sun, whose icy dress, for few ephemeral moments, melt into the valleys beneath the yet snowcapped mountains, as the curious seagull peeks its head through the inviting palace window…

_Knock Knock Knock._

Pause

_Knock Knock Knock._

Silence comes the only reply for an extremely patient, very kindly, hope springs eternal plump woman who always held the air of childlike freshness that the royal family of the Norwegian kingdom of Arendelle has been fortunate to employ in their service for the past 30 odd years as both palace housekeeper and unofficial royal nanny, not to mention quiet powerhouse who has kept this Arendelle sovereignty's royal house going through the good times and the bad.

_Oh, dear Lord Jesus, bless their poor souls with your peace._

After a moment spent in devout silent sorrowful prayer for that which would certainly class as the bad times in Arendelle, Gerda, who had tasted now and then more than a few days of the bad in the past herself, as the dutiful and loving servant, still dusted every morning their rooms, along with the black curtained portraits that she and Kai had drawn over their beloved rulers that terrible day when beloved Queen Idun and her loving husband, Arendelle's King Agdar, were lost to their nation nearly five years ago.

Compassionate Gerda would still pause in respectful memory for the kingdom's departed leaders on that fateful final journey beyond the fjord's safety through the Skagerragat Straight, Kattegat Bay, or the Baltic Sea - one of the vast volumes of water to the South in between Arendelle's coast on their trip to Prussia where another royal daughter, the Queen's niece, was celebrating a joyous day amidst Arendelle's grief –

A royal wedding the King and Queen's storm-tossed shipwrecked vessel never arrived at.

_And you're not here to see your own daughter's happy day._ Sigh.

_But it's still a royal wedding to make them proud! Gird up, Gerda! Spit-spot, busy day! Lots to be done!_

The stout-hearted lady claps her hands together, and brushes both a stray hair and stray matching tear back in place.

"Princess Anna! You get up right this minute!" In her sweet, yet commanding tones, Gerda calls through the closed bedroom door of the younger of the two royal siblings who were both the pride and joy of Arendelle's people. For the two now come of age young girls who had shown their mettle in selfless sacrifice and the triumph of sisterly love not two years ago, were all the pride and joy the kingdom had left with both their parents deceased.

_Sigh_

_And now my little Anna is growing up…_ Gerda had long felt an affinity with this very bright, sprightly girl who traversed a long and dangerous journey out of friendship and love for another in peril, as the older woman herself had for her sweet Kai all those years ago.

_It seems just like yesterday..._ Busy hands that needed to constantly move neaten the fresh spray of flowers from her garden displayed in a vase on the nearby windowsill.

And as if right on cue, he appears, and Gerda shares a shining eyed smile full of matronly pride with the Butler/footman/court official/tutor and everything that had to be done in between older gentleman, the love of her life named Kai as he peeks his strawberry blonde, turned more carroty over the years since their own youthful adventures, nearly balding head around the long hall's corner. He gives his wife a rather toothy grin and inquisitive look on his jovial foppish face, to which Gerda simply affords her fellow servant, whom the king and queen allowed to stay on even when the rest of the Castle was shut off from the world, a smile and nod in response before going back to her job of waking up the sound sleeping beauty whose loud snoring could be heard audibly beyond the door.

"Princess Anna! Have you ever heard of the bride being late for her own wedding!?"

Placing frustrated hands on her ample hips, Gerda authoritatively shames the dizzy young girl as she did when Anna was small, letting some familial teasing mix with her duty on this happiest a felicitous mornings.

Gerda twirls the well-tended white bloom between her fingers, remembering being a new bride herself given the gift of Kai and his white rose back by the Good Lord above, Who watches over all little lost children who believe in Him.

_Big yawn!_

"Huh? Bride…? Who's getting married?..." _snore..._

_Yawn, Mouth smack, smack, sleepy head jerk!_

"You are, little Anna." She could hear the playful condescension in Gerda's tone through the closed door.

"Whoa! That's me! What time is it?! Wow! I'm gonna be a **bride** today!" There was pure joy evident in the princess's sweet sunshiny voice with that final sung out sentiment that the older woman could sense glowing, even through the closed door.

"Whoo-wee! But not looking like this! Elsa! That is one bad hair day! Elsa! Help me!"

Sounds of noisy chaos and clumsy tripping over bed sheets and general crashing to the floor is accompanied by panicked yet deliriously joyous giggling, all signaling the girl was awake and ready to attend her own wedding at long last.

Both caring Gerda and faithful Kai shake their amused heads at what a lively day awaited them all, if Princess Anna, the girl who put the sparkle back in every soul in Arendelle's eye, had any say to it.

* * *

The dragonstil architecture of the high vaulted ceiling in the medieval wooden slatted interior rosemail design paneled Chapel Cathedral stave church was the highest spire in all of Arendelle Castle. It was even higher and more auspicious than either the tower on the East side, whose cylindrical roof made of ornate carved stone housed the royal family's quarters, library and balcony, or the West wing's thick protruding stone tower that held the Council Chamber, Great Hall and Portrait Room.

_And that's how it should be._

For the ruler of this kingdom called 'Arendelle' was also the head of the Church of Norway, same as it was for some 800 years since the honorable King Olaf II, the country's canonized 'Saint Olaf', achieved.

The former Viking king had converted to Christianity in his youth, and he ruled his kingdom in wisdom, justice, simplicity and piety in order to unify all of Norway under Christ and subsequently, lead to the Christianization of the entire Scandinavian region, thus giving Norway's first Christian ruler the name of 'Holy Protector and Eternal King of Norway.'

"_Faith like light should be simple and unbending; while love, like warmth, should beam forth on every side and bend to every necessity of our brethren."_

Queen Elsa of Arendelle understood well the truth behind the words of that holy man of God, Martin Luther, when he spoke of God's gifts of light and warmth, the meaning of which still seared into the ice of her regretful soul.

After her rebellion against the forces thriving within her had caused a maelstrom of trouble for this kingdom, her utterly good and sweet little sister had to shine brightly with her effervescent light and endless belief in her older sibling to bring them both out of the cold loneliness and into the warmth of love's light.

"Anna, it was your unfailing spirit that brought me back again."

Since then, every waking second, every dream-filled night, Elsa, as she learned to control her growing powers for good, would still beg forgiveness for her willful transgressions from not only that faithful and ever-loving little sister, but also from the one true God, who she, in her fear and pain, had turned her face from—though He never turned His from hers.

"_Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be made as white as snow…" Isaiah 1:8_

Recalling this particular passage being read a long time ago by her own beloved father from the pulpit one Sunday mass morning in this very chapel, his loving eyes meeting hers meaningfully across the room, a grateful tear for the Lord above's infinite forgiveness of past sin falls to Elsa's cheek. Cascades of the stunningly beautiful girl's platinum blond hair ripple over her bowed head in deep study of the Bible held in her trembling hands while the enchanting strains of 'Fairest Lord Jesus' begin to play above her.

Unbeknownst to the young woman who secretly crept into the chapel sanctuary early every morning to devote her once confused mind and heart to the stability of the Lord's Word that brought her such peace and tranquility as it had to Sainted King Olaf, all those centuries ago, just then, from the upper central nave several floors above the raised roof trusses, the choir begins their practice run for the special holy ceremony to take place in the chapel today.

Queen Elsa wipes the tears from her enchanting icy blue eyes as the choir members, not seeing their royal sovereign in the furthest corner of the church pews where one's candlelight was her only company beyond the Lord, start to sing their parish's signature, most favorite hymn, Deilig er Jorden…. 'Fairest Lord Jesus.':

["Deilig er Jorden!  
Prægtig er Guds Himmel!  
Skjøn er Sjælens Pilgrimsgang!  
Gjennem de favre  
Riger paa Jorden  
Gaae vi til Paradis med Sang!]

_["Lovely it is on the Earth!_

_Glorious in God's Heaven!_

_Wondrousis the soul's pilgrimage!_

_Through the great kingdoms on earth_

_We go to __Paradise__ with song!]_

"Please, dearest Lord, give Your blessing on my beloved little sister today, and all her days to come, be filled with Your eternal song." Elsa bows her head in prayer, before subtly leaving the chapel, making the sign of the Cross as she goes.

* * *

"_For the first time in forever, there'll be a wedding filled with light!_"

A pure sweet voice rings in perfect musical key through the pristine blue sky, as a young girl thrusts a window in the west side of Arendelle Castle open, to greet the summer morning, to the soaring birds floating above the sparkling waters of fjord.

"_For the first in forever—this corset's totally way too tight…_!" All the romance in the clear, crisp day's entrance is lost in a second, as Princess Anna makes a sour note to match her sour face. Her already too tight corset doesn't want to cooperate with her heaving and huffing body, in the attempt to fasten up the stays.

"Silly! I told you not to gorge yourself on all those chocolates and frosted fyrstekake cookies last night." Big sister Elsa comments with a small chuckle at her younger sibling's late night antics of stuffing her face full of sweet treats, till her cheeks were akin to a chipmunk's.

"But I was so hungry….and Gerda bakes a mean marzipan!" Anna whines, recalling the sugary confection her loving servant had a knack for baking.

"You can say that again! They were way too good to pass up! I must've had a half dozen myself!" A young woman with brown cropped hair pops her pretty perky head up from behind the bed where she had dropped a hairpin. "You've got to get Gerda to give me that recipe!"

"Yum…!" Anna and their Prussian cousin who hailed from the southwestern kingdom of Corona, come to visit for the big event, both had a secret weakness for sweets and sugary cookies and chocolate on top, to boot. "How could we resist?!"

"I adore marzipan! Yummy…!" Both girls were delirious with sweet treats dancing in their heads as they simultaneously sway back and forth all a-smile.

"Look at you two!" Elsa too smiles through gritted teeth, as she quite physically has a workout herself, giving another valiant attempt at lacing up Anna's corset laces. She even uses her own well-turned knee as helpful chameleon, Pascal, finishes looping the straps to keep the ties taught and in place before achieving closure.

"Well, I think those cookies were a bit too much for this corset! There!" Elsa gives a pent up sigh of relief as she bows the final criss-cross link on the corset shut.

"Wow, I wish I had a big sis to dress me up for my wedding. Price of being an only child, I guess. You're so lucky, Anna!" The brown haired cousin had been kept busy artistically arranging Anna's orangey hair with a wreath of gold-pressed flowers and a fresh spray of white and red roses, picked fresh from the garden.

"Whoa! You look like you're gonna pop, cousin!" Leaning over to see why the chatty young bride went uncharacteristically silent suddenly, Rapunzel notes after Anna's green eyes reflecting in hers, looking quite frantic.

"Can I breathe yet?" Anna barely whispers, her tone thin and wispy as she's been holding her breath all this time.

"Of course you have to breathe, Anna!" Elsa leaves her work on Anna's corset and takes her little sister's shoulders, gasping for air, with alarm on her own pale features when she sees her sister's normally ruddy and fresh face, all tinted purple from lack of oxygen. "Just take small breaths."

_Whooosh!_

Anna does as told and sucks in a tiny little morsel of breath, but after a few seconds of light-headed panic, she can't help herself from indulging in a larger exhale. The result of the larger amount of air her lungs had been yearning for, was not a pretty picture as Pascal's big, big eyes bulge out and he covers them with his hands, turning his body into a scared yellow color.

_Pop! Pop! Pop!...Pop!_

One by one, the corset straps indeed let go. Buttons and clasps flying everywhere, like bullets, as Anna nearly doubles over with the expelled relief, as the deflated corset sinks to her knees, much to Elsa's dismay.

"Who needs that stupid thing anyway?! I never liked them! I bet my dress will fit just fine without it!" In true Anna fashion, she impulsively kicks off the despised article of clothing, and it flings out the open window, carried by the wind and as if by cosmic design, it lands on the head of a certain, tall young man, messing his 'unmanly' blonde mane as he gives a high-pitched yelp, scaring a poor Sven when he realizes what the lacy, cream colored bit of cloth and bone represented.

"Don't ask me. I wear mine on the outside." Rapunzel sings as she tries to stay out of the sisters' lively bantering. She truly wished she had a sister herself, all those years in the empty past, spent in that tower.

"Oh, never mind…Anna, every bride requires her trousseau to be complete. It's part of the entire marriage tradition. Besides, you'll be on display before all of Arendelle today. Don't you want to look your best?" Elsa, though far from wicked vanity, always had an elegant style and deep sense of fashion, like her dear mother before her. Queen Idun, had been known throughout the kingdoms of Europe for her grand and sophisticated panache of classic clothing choices. And today was the day Anna would wear her mother's most cherished garment - her Mama's wedding dress.

"Well, Kristoff is the only one I need to look at me today. And I know he wouldn't care if I was wearing Sven's smelly old dropsack! He'd marry me anyway! He'd love me no matter what." A hopeless romantic, Anna blissfully wraps a sheet from her messy, unmade bed around her nearly naked form, save for the traditional light blue undergarments, since ancient Norwegian suspicion demanded that both bride and groom had to wear for their wedding night to ward off the Devil.

"Ooh, that's a weird thought! Not Kristoff in pale blue undies, but the Devil being scared of it! ….Ah, don't go there yet!" Anna says aloud to herself while drooling over her would-be husband.

"I felt the exact same way with Eugene! Isn't love grand?!" _Sigh_

Rapunzel hugs her cousin's neck as the two share a dreamy sigh of their respective male counterparts. Neither realized though, in their feminine fancies, that the third young woman in the room knew none of this type of love's great mysteries. Elsa smiled with a trace of sadness on her as yet-untouched-by-romance's-kiss lips.

_All those years we each lived in seclusion. All those years you were lost and still managed to find true love, shows that happy endings do happen to even sheltered girls like us._

She watches with proud sentimentality as her baby sister recklessly leans out the window with that 'I'm a girl in love' look on her every feature, causing Elsa to capitulate that dreaded corset as a discarded miscreant not invited to the wedding.

She knew that the free spirit who was Anna epitomized the very essence of zest and vivaciousness, along with a plentiful dose of liveliness and verve to go with her boundless energy—none of which could ever be squeezed in by a confining corset.

_Unlike dull me. I could wear my corset all day._

Elsa, though being the 'good girl she had to be', simply because she wanted to be good, every now and then, could feel days when corsets were too restricting herself.

_Maybe Anna is wise than I in that respect as well._

Anna catches sight of a certain blonde fiancé, who thankfully, busy talking to himself, doesn't see her, as his clumpy boots pace back and forth in the gardens below her window, Elsa had watches her youthful sister with affection at her very Anna-like outburst.

Anna gasps, jumps back, and hides her reddened face in flowery sheets, giggling uncontrollably, trying to curtail her girlish fantasies and hurriedly pulls on her mother's ornate champagne colored brocade wedding dress over her traditional light blue bloomers, treating the special gown as if it were no more than an outdoor summer frock, rather than the exquisite fur trimmed gold crocus designed wedding gown she always dreamed of donning one day, and she shakes herself back to cold reality.

Splat splat splat

Literally.

"Olaf!" Unsuitably jaw-dropped in her dazzling formal attire, Anna screeches the name of her adorable snowman friend, who, through Elsa's kindness and honed control of her frosty prowess, had his own personal 'snow flurry' to keep him all in one unmelted piece, above his head continually.

Loving surprises, every morning as a wake-up call, Olaf would be mischievous enough, picking up a naughty thing or two from Kristoff and Sven's antics, to toss a few tiny snowflakes in through the open window, to land on Anna's freckly nose, as he greeted his favorite ladies every morning, rain or shine, and generally at the most inopportune of times. He made his snowy entrance their chilly alarm clock that late sleeper Anna usually needed.

But it was totally not necessary today! Anna squiggles her upturned nose at the melty snowflakes dripping down her face. She, as per usual, goes at Olaf in a spirited 'snowball' fight involving tossed pillows and stuffed toys laying amply about her room since childhood.

"I'm REALLY gonna get you this time, Olaf!" Careless of her handmade garb, and Rapunzel's unfinished hairstyling, Anna dashes away, weaving about the room and crashing into every piece of furniture with her big frilly gown, even as a chuckling Olaf bobs and weaves from her fervent grasp.

"Ohhh! So this is Olaf?! I've heard so much about you, Olaf! This is Pascal." The too-sane chameleon waves slowly, his two eyes blinking at the raucous snowman.

"I'm so pleased to meet you! I'm Rapunzel, Elsa and Anna's cousin." She smiles, offering a hand to his twigs.

"I'm pleased to meet you too—ohhhhh!" Olaf slides across the wood floor to smash into the mirror until fortunately it was he and not the 7 year bad luck glass that splits apart.

"Here, Anna, catch!" Playful Rapunzel tosses Olaf's squirming body away from his head that tumbles across the floor with a pair of spazzed out eyes rolling. She was enjoying this fun 'game' of un-building a snowman.

"Cousin Rapunzel! Anna! Olaf! Stop this! ANNA! You're going to ruin your—dressssss~!" A frustrated Elsa attempts to be the 'big sister' of the soon-to-be-bride and older, already married cousin, who were both acting like eight-year-olds, _or less_, with snowman buddy cohort.

Their elder cousin having joined in the fray of throwing things, as well as Olaf, through the air, didn't help one bit, as Anna and her snowman run around in dizzy circles about the room.

A tossed pillow sham landed right in Elsa's face, resulting in her tripping on Anna's dashing about, flailing gold trimmed train, causing the elder sister, sleek in her filmy purple bridesmaid dress, to go dangerously face forward towards the lit fireplace that was blazing, despite the unusually warm summer weather. (Actually 68 degrees today! Which was way warm for Norway at any time of the year.)

Elsa protectively puts up her hands to shield her face, and in doing so, throws out a quick flurry of soft powdered snow that not only subdues the raging fire in the fireplace to ash, but also coats the disembered firelogs with many layers of snow to create a cushion to break her fall.

Oof!

Elsa breathes into the frozen particles on her reddened, yet further unharmed, cheek.

"Wow! That was amazing! I wish I could do that!" Rapunzel comments, now seeing her cousin's superpowers that she'd heard so much about, first-hand.

"Elsa?! You okay?!"

"Yes, Anna, I'm fine." Elsa, with Pascal's web-toed aid, quietly rumbles as she dusts her long lavender sleeves off, as a meek Anna and curious Rapunzel help her up, one arm each, guiltily sharing relieved, toothy and plucky smiles with Olaf, who raises his two stick arms quite innocently.

"But you three are in trouble now!" Elsa doesn't want to forget the fun of this final hour of being just two sisters unattached to anyone but each other, as she sends a cascade of ice crystals, so fine and well aimed, they'd not hurt a baby's soft backside, but they would be chilly enough to 'punish' her willful younger sister and over-friendly cousin, who acted just like another sister—another younger sister, at that.

A wily Rapunzel, who'd learned a thing or two from someone she was pretty close to about dodging and weaving, moves away from the flurrious attack, but Anna was not so nimble on her bare feet as her older 'cuz.

"Cold, cold, cold, cold, COLD…!" Anna squeals again as Elsa mischievously sprinkles the crystals down her sister's delicately designed rosemaling pattern bodice. Anna pulls the dress front half down as Elsa then turns to direct a blast of ice shards at a whistling out the window Olaf. The sneaky snowman was immediately shot with hundreds of ice bullets and he dramatically pretends to fall down dead in the windowsill, even though 'death by impaling' or mountain tossing couldn't kill this immortal man of snow; and in his overacting, actually does tumble from the high window of the castle's west wing.

"ANNA! Is something wrong up there?! I saw ice streaming from the window, and ice shards and snow flurries and then Olaf fell out the ledge! Are you all right in there?! Whoa…" Kristoff, from his pacing wanderings below, had industriously climbed and scaled the castle's spires to reach his affianced bride in unknown danger to courageously come to her rescue. But now, as he peers his big head through the window, he was in full view of seeing his innocent Anna needed nothing but to get the rest of her wedding dress back on.

"Yeah…you look all…all right…" Honest, simple Kristoff stumbles over both words and balance as he bashfully lowers his bewitched eyes from glimpsing his sweet Anna in such a state of undress that he clumsily falls back down from the roof he just heroically scrambled up. Luckily, he slides and bounces on his sturdy bottom until he reaches the safety of the ground, embroidered wedding bunda and black tie and all, atop a smushed snowman, fortuitously placed there to break his fall.

"…And my neck, if I had one." His prize carrot just sticking out, Olaf's deflated mouth chuckles in dismay from beneath the large man.

"KRISTOFF!" Anna rushes to the windowsill, her pale blue bloomers and undergarments on full display to the whole courtyard. Thankfully there was no one present but aforementioned bridegroom, who immediately gets to his feet and skedaddles along with the squashed snowman in tow.

"I'll see you later?! Bye, Sven, bye, Olaf!" Anna simply waves, wiggling her fingers at his quickly retreating form.

"Hey, he's cute! Nice legs! Extremely tight and muscular…" Peering out the window beside a dreamy Anna, Rapunzel compliments her younger cousin's choice in beefy groom as she quite sisterly then tickles Anna's open tummy, causing the girl to giggle gleefully, and the anxiety of the embarrassing moment passed quite into humor now.

Generous-hearted Rapunzel then reaches out to tickle Elsa, too, seeing both sisters could use an extra smile just then. Elsa smiles as she just manages to squeak out of being squeezed between a sisterly trio, with Anna thoroughly enjoying the open love and affection of her family.

"And he'll be brideless in one hour if we can't be more serious here! Anna, dress! Cousin, hair! Let's get this wedding on the road!" She lets herself giggle and chatter with the other two, like one of the girls, as all three lovely ladies busy themselves at the joyful task of transforming one sweetly charming, yet plucky and at times, awkward, littlest princess into a blushing, beaming, beautiful bride…

* * *

_Speaking of blushing…_

Kristoff still couldn't have turned any shade redder than the similar colored, vibrant, wild-gooseberries that grew big and juicy in the gardens by the back entrance to the chapel where he was dejectedly plopped on the ground.

"How was I supposed to know she was practically undressed?!" Large, manly hands shielded his mortified eyes that had seen too much, too soon, in shame. The burly blonde tries to justify to himself and Sven his recent embarrassing action to the summer skies empty blue ethers.

'"But it's never good manners to peek in a girl's bedroom window! I thought Cliff and Bulda taught you that!"' 'Sven' counters in his funny, warpy voice, as the droopy eyed reindeer continues to merely chew on the berry bush, one furry eyebrow raised in the guilty man's directjon.

"I know! I know! But I thought she was danger! Cut me a break, Sven!" Kristoff answers (his own conscience) blaming the innocent beast for his self recriminations.

"Now Anna will think you're some dirty, peeping Tom! How's that to start a marriage!" 'Sven' queries Kristoff's frustration at his own awkwardness with the opposite sex.

"Now that depends on what you thought of what you've just seen." A smooth voice enters the conversation. Kristoff looks up over Sven's hulking dark taupe grey and beige fur form, chewing berries and his cud, above his confused, ashamed head.

"Hey, there, big guy. Nice knees." The tall, dark man, wearing a dark purple and grey tunic complete with a regal brown sash and debonair demeanor, appears out of nowhere. He leans down to greet the prone, blonde man lying in the grass.

Kristoff was wearing some traditional Norwegian fancy trimmed colorful cream vest, ceremonial black and brown and teal edged short pants and knee high white stockings that all grooms donned for their weddings in Norway, probably to accommodate all the raucous dancing to come at the reception.

_Looking forward to that…_

"No! I didn't see anything! Whoa…Hi…Where'd you come from?" At first denying any wandering eye misdeed on his part, then greeting this new stranger hovering over him, Kristoff jumps up, clumsily knocking his head onto a protruding tree branch as he jumps to his none-too-agile clumpy feet in those silly black shoes with big silver buckles, as he uses Sven as an unwilling pulley.

"Just been admiring the medieval architecture of your castle and lush foliage of its pristine grounds."

_Smooth and suave._

Kristoff, for some reason, didn't quite take a shine to this newcomer, who was standing cocksure and confident, good-looking and dashing, with a gallant smirk on his too-handsome face.

_This guy really reminds me of someone…Someone I don't like…_The knobs and buttons in his brain begin clicking and whirring but this morning's trials and the whole wedding ordeal was already too much to tax his less-than-cunning brain a tick further, so he lets it go with a snort.

"Yeah…it's pretty nice out back here in summer. Just been exploring it myself for the first time." Kristoff makes pleasant conversation, gazing out over the rows of Gerda and Kai's red and white rosebeds to the green, green meadows foreshadowed by the steep mountain ranges they were yet capped with snow overlooking them beyond the clear blue sky.

"But, I don't know much about this castle's architecture stuff—cause it isn't mine." Kristoff glances back towards the magnificent multi-spired marble and stone laid palace, complete with lighthouse and church chapel in all its creamy glory.

"Yeah, I didn't take a hard-working entrepreneurial type of fella like you for a palace pet, castle courtesan, royal rabble kind of guy, are you? Now me, I could get used to this kind of place. I could get used to this easy, laid back, no worries, breakfast-in-bed kind of easy life. By the way, the name's 'Flynn'….er….'Eugene.' The little woman wants to call me 'Eugene.' If you're gonna be family, I might as well let you in on my little secret."

Flynn Rider, oops, '_Sorry_', Eugene Fitzherbert, sticks his gloved hand out for Kristoff to shake. The sly operator gives the slow-to-respond Norwegian younger man his most charming smile.

"Kristoff, right? You're wedding's gonna be a doozy, from all the servants bustling around the castle getting that wedding feast underway. Not to mention all those singers and musicmakers prepping in that all-inspiring in-palace church hitting some high notes. We need a choir like that in Corona—whew! A guy could be spoiled for beauty around here with that exuding elegance Snow Queen and that vivacious little sis of a princess you're getting hitched to. Major kudos on landing a cutie like her, Kris."

_Boy, this guy's got a mouth on him! Doesn't he ever stop for breath?!_

Kristoff, akin to his rocky northern family of trolls, pauses and blinks several times while silently listening in his honest simplicity to the stylish in his dark purple tunic Flynn, rattle off an entire wordy paragraph, without coming up for air in true smooth-talker flair.

Kristoff feels rather uncomfortable wearing his handmade woolen Bunda vest with the Lapland designs Anna insisted he wear for the wedding. He stuck out like a sore thumb in these royal settings wearing this colorfully trimmed with Sami designs cream vest that adopted 'Mom' Bulda, _his rock, _had painstakingly taught all the trolls how to help embroider for '_our Kristoff'_ as early wedding gift from his entire troll family.

"It's Kris**toff**. You must be Anna and Elsa's cousin…from Prussia?" A discomfited, though quite fetching in his bunda outfit, Kristoff comments at the 'commercial break', correcting Eugene's earlier diverting nickname.

"Uh…yeah…no, no, no, no. That's my wife, Rapunzel who's the blood relation. She's up there with your gal right now. You might've seen her—gorgeous brunette with the most adorable set of freckles traced above her little upturned nose. You couldn't have missed her. Well, I couldn't have…" Flynn trails off in his descriptive, mumbled ramblings. His eyebrows raise over his lowered eyelids rather amorously over the inward vision of his beautiful love.

"Rapunzel? Did somebody just say Rapunzel? Don't you LOVE that word? I've always loved the sound of that word! And the girl, too! I love Rapunzel! I've always wanted to grow some! The plant, not the girl! In summer! I love summer!" In his disassembled kooky way, Olaf awakens from his ten minute nap. He was a little distracted after staying up all the previous night keeping an over-excited Anna company, with his snow jewels of wisdom from where he was aslumber atop a very peacefully chomping Sven.

"What—is—that—thing?" Flynn Rider's brown eyes bug out upon glimpsing the animated talking and walking snowman as Olaf takes a bounding leap from Sven's grazing back and does a clumsy showing off cartwheel, resulting in a three-part disembodiment of head, lower body and torso, rolling along the green lawn directly at Flynn's freaked out feet.

"Whoa! I should've brought that frying pan out here instead of giving it to you as a wedding present!" Flynn cries out, finding no weapon on his dolled-up self.

_And boy, do I look good today!_

No weapon that is, beyond his shielding bare hands, ready to attack, karate-style.

So he does.

"Hi-yah!"

_Kick_

Poor Olaf is knocked apart again, just as he was getting it together, flying in all directions of the garden.

"Hey! Chill, Fitz! I know he's weird, but Olaf's a good little guy, and a good friend of Anna and Elsa since they were kids." Kristoff defends the three part snowman as he and Sven chase after rolling Olaf's runaway torso, then plopping the disattached magic snowman back together, sticking both branchy arms in place as if he was accustomed to reassembling this mystic, broken toy.

"Ooookay…..When in Norway, do as the Arendelle magic snowpeople do…Got it…." Sarcastic Flynn Rider considers his own dabbling with magic vis-à-vis his and Rapunzel's adventures as he incredulously adapts to any situation, even one where a kingdom of grown men play with lifelike snow.

_You must've seen that coming…_

"Sorry about that…_Olaf_…Old habit." Flynn covertly pockets an object from the ground as he speaks.

"Where's my nose?! Where's my nose?! My lovely big carrot nose! Did **you**see it, **Sven**?" Olaf, reconstituted, save for his most favored facial feature, glares suspiciously at the big, carrot devouring reindeer. The two had already come to an understanding over the 'root' of their problem, or so he thought.

But before any further bad vibes were spread between a squint-eyed Olaf and behooved innocent Sven, Flynn produces the orange colored veggie from behind his back.

"Slippery hands can't help themselves…." Flynn, with his signature winning grin, plastered across his comely face, shoves the stolen carrot into Olaf's oval rounded head above his open mouth and below his crossed eyes.

"Yay! Let's go!" Olaf happily bounces away, with a forgiven Sven and determined Kristoff right behind him, as they enter the church.

_Once a thief, always a thief…_

Flynn Rider ponders the vast question in more ways than one. He watches from a third person's point of view as Sven and Olaf prod and physically push an utterly dense Kristoff into the rear chapel's door towards his certain fate.

_Hmm…_


	3. Chapter 2 -Can I Say Something Crazy YES

We do not own "Frozen" nor any of its characters.

**"Frozen Again: 'But The Greatest of These is Love'"**

**Act I**

**Chapter 2**

"**Can I Say Something Crazy? YES!"**

Every corner of this Christian Church of Norway brims with celebratory joy and bright streaming sunlight through window after window of stained glass, whose refractions cast a multi-colored light show display on the altar, the aisles, even the ceiling, to the choir in the apse above—even as the gathering guests in the pews marvel at Arendelle's beautiful depiction of religious value, patriotic country spirit, and sisterly devotion. Queen Elsa spared no expense on this ceremonious affair—all rolled into the most glorious kind of festive occasion the beauteous summer season in Arendelle had to offer.

There were baskets of breathtaking flowers decorating every window, every pew. The chapel altar was bountiful of summer flora, for energetic Gerda and husband Kai, specialized in gardening skills since their youth together. Between the pair of well-wishers, this flowering church setting was flawlessly picturesque.

_**Achoo!**_

Unless you suffered from summer allergies.

"God bless you." There was something special about your sneeze being blessed by the highest Norwegian ecumenical authority, like the respected and aged Archbishop of Trondheim.

"Thank you, Your Majesty…eh, Your Highness….uhhh, I mean….Your Bishopness, Sir." A wide-eyed and awkward Kristoff was a jumbled mess of honorific titles for the elderly church official adorned with the traditional golden, bejeweled hat standing before him.

"Be at peace, my son. The blessing of the Lord be upon you." The older, short sighted clergyman lays on calming hand on the big young man's full of boundless energies crinkled forehead.

"But _**I **_was the one who sneezed! Shouldn't _**I**_ be the one to get the holy bishop's blessing?! I think _**I**_ need to be blessed by His bishopness!" A miffed, previously unnoticed behind strapping Kristoff's back was Olaf, yet under his private snow flurry, in frilly tie and dark suit jacket, making him look like a black and white penguin. Decked out and all, he was way too honest and a tad envious of the nervous groom getting all the attention as he whispers distinctly audibly from where he stood beside a sympathetic looking Sven who snorts to the rambling off at the mouth Olaf in reply.

Yes_**, Sven**_, after many entreaties and pleadings by the bride, and subsequently her queenly sister, finally gave permission, was allowed to not only enter this Holy Shrine for this auspicious occasion, but was also seen fit, as the groom's lifelong best friend and confidant, to stand in as Kristoff's 'best man.'

One couldn't expect Kristoff to tie the knot of this most import step in his life, without his loyal friend at his side. Besides, who would be the voice of Kristoff's conscience if Sven wasn't present?

So big, four-footed Sven the Reindeer, was to attend the wedding as special honorary guest of the Queen, under the express condition that he be thoroughly bathed and cleaned until his antlers sparkled and his fur coat glistened before entering the holy shrine.

Each of his four hooves required leather sleeved bootings so as not to scratch nor mar the age-old stave church's polished wooden flooring.

A reindeer cloven hooved animal was something this Medieval church's post and lintel construction had never envisioned would be sharing in a hallowed Christian sacrament such as marriage beneath its raised roof trusses, support upper walls and huge grunnstokker beams, criss crossing the ceiling the central orchestra choir nave.

Just then, the sudden flaring music emanating from the central knave sector of the chapel causes a skittish Sven to nearly skid his unsteady legs in stockings in unsightly opposing directions. Luckily for him, responsible young man Kristoff was yet attentive enough to his best buddy's strife to wrap a steadying, strong arm around the teetering reindeer's fuzzy taupe neck.

"I got you, Sven!" Olaf in his naïve fervor has selflessly attached himself to the forest creature's furthermost hind leg in an attempted 'rescue.'

"Olaf, that's not helping. Leave him be, okay?" Looking dashing and dapper in his gold trimmed shirt and ornate vest, Kristoff, at first, chuckles at the heroism of the, by any scale, puny excuse for a snow person, as Olaf's two shiny black eyes tightly focus shut as his pair of scrawny stick arms strenuously push back at an already stabilized Sven's muscular rear shank, unintentionally shoving poor out-of-control Sven's shaky limbs towards the front altar's holy and royal regalia of Arendelle on proud yet humble before God, display.

"Whoa, there, big fella! W-whoa!" Kristoff starts to panic when his firm grip on Sven's shoulder falters. The reindeer, too panics, and heaves forward erratically, teetering himself on the close-by steps of impending disaster…

But Sven is fortunately saved again. But this time, though Kristoff alone was not able to hold up the hunking sides of oversized, snow-environed beastie, who was slipping and sliding as if was an ice skating rink across the altar, straight past the patient, half-blind and nearly deaf Bishop, who only notices a brief whoosh of air, that knocks his tower of a hat over his nearly sightless eyes.

Good thing a sharp eyed, handsome rogue does, as quick agile feet transport Flynn—Eugene—in no time flat from his front row pew seat to the climactic scene as he springs into action, all the while the attending audience gasps at the dangerous speed of large reindeer plunging towards their church and country's utmost treasures of the kingdom, arranged carefully along the altar table, about to be crashed into.

Flynn Rider not only manages to dash around the altar steps leading up to steady a tripping Kristoff, grasps the tipping scepter from falling off the table, and also manfully grabs hold of Sven's antlers and maneuvers the reindeer back to his spot where the relieved dizzied animal plunks to the safety of his flank. He also catches the dangling orb of Saint Olaf's from Sven's now stagnant antler before the holy object clatters to the ground as he then helps the kneeling in prayer, slow, methodical, and bewildered bishop to his feet, handing over both noted royal items with his breathlessly signature smirk in place on his face.

"I think these are safer with you, Padre." Flynn says as he turns back, straightening his purple tunic, to take his seat again, though flashing the ogling crowd his most charming grin and gallant bow.

"Wow, Kristoff! Don't you wish you were as fast and nimble and heroic in front of every person in Arendelle as Flynn-er, Eugene?!" Basic Olaf had a simple way of naively stepping in it every time. "And he doesn't even have a fashionable Bunta on."

Kristoff gives the daft snowman a rolled-eye sigh, who got the new guy's name mixed up in a funny sort of way, as he was wont to do, as even the stately bishop is taken in by this shyster's shine.

The grateful audience even applauds for Flynn's heroism who saved their treasures and the cleric's blessing in the debonair purple tunic wearing man's direction.

"Let us each walk by faith and not by sight, on this most blessed of peaceful sacraments—a gift from Above." Though unable to see, the Bishop begins to speak a cherished verse on his lips, as he preaches his prepared sermon and falls to his knees reverently to retrieve his teetered headgear, giving the large golden crucifix affixed upon it, due homage before replacing the piece atop the crown of his aged noggin again, never noticing the chaos ensuing around him.

"Yeah, I'm really impressed by 'Flynn-er, Eugene', Olaf." Kristoff murmurs beneath his breath, the hair on the back of his neck standing up again when he watches that handsome devil wave to the nearly swooning young girls and old ladies in the pews.

_But Anna's cousin married him, so he can't be all bad. Just…he's so familiar somehow…_

However, before Kristoff could entertain another doubt, the music of the church suddenly flares to life and all thoughts disappear, but only of her.

The hymn playing trumpets, violins and harpsichord simultaneously cease—all but the singular voice of a customary lur—a long wooden horn instrument of ancient times—is played, to signal the arrival of the rest of the wedding party, the more eye-catching feminine side.

The rear door cracks open of the chapel, with joy evident on her face, as Gerda peeks her chubby cheeked head through the doors, waving a thumbs-up to the choirmaster that the bride and her maids were ready to make their grand entrance.

Anna had asked her beloved nanny, and close friend, since she and Elsa were but babes, true-hearted Gerda, to be her 'flower girl.' Though well past her girlhood, Gerda had that kind of innocence and joy in her soul that was as timeless as her love of all flora—especially made her the perfect and only choice for Anna to include in her wedding ceremony.

So now, pleasantly plump Gerda dances as if she was a young girl again, merrily down the aisle with a child-like purity as she scatters her own tended floral blooms, in all their fresh vivacity and colors, to the floor, inviting the bride to walk upon their flowery path of light.

But before the bride came the bridesmaids—Princess Rapunzel was touched and elated when her baby cousin wanted her to be a last-minute bridesmaid addition. At first, she didn't wish to intrude on the sister-sister only thing that Anna and Elsa had going on at this wedding but Anna reassured her fellow, impulsively headstrong and optimistic cousin that she would be a real 'stinker' if Rapunzel didn't join in this once in a lifetime festivity.

And after Elsa initiated the trio in a warm group hug, welcoming Rapunzel into their sisterhood truly, the whimsical brunette couldn't be a 'stinker' for long.

In fact, in all the church attendee's view, though having her own share of problems of the heart felt variety, Princess Rapunzel of Corona was glowing with that familial pride her own blighted youth was starved of—feeling really 'sympatico' with the two girls, as her Eugene would say. She was still a blushingly beautiful bride in his eyes, as the fetchingly lovely Rapunzel marches in the wedding procession forward, flushing a brilliant shade of fuschia pink when her hubby gives her low-cut for the era, off the shoulder rose-colored dress, borrowed from Anna, an appreciative low whistle. Her large green eyes both berate but couldn't help but be bemused by his flagrantly flirtatious attitude in such exalted surroundings, but she was glad to see that look in his eyes again—for there was something about her Flynn not quite the same as of late.

As the next, and only other, bridesmaid now makes her way up the aisle, divine in her filmy alluring lavender dress and royal purple cape adorning her noble entrance, resplendent in her long skirt and high heels, the wedding guests—her nation's loyal subjects—all stand in respect of their beloved Queen.

But Queen Elsa wanted all of today's glory to go to the one who deserved their honor more than she. The girl who single-handedly saved the kingdom and brought the peace back to her soul, as Arendelle's sovereign puts up a pair of long fingered hands and motions for both the citizens and visiting foreign dignitaries, to be at ease with a kind smile.

For this was her dearest friend, her most loyal companion, her darling little sister's moment—to have every last bit of the shine she had to offer on this world—of happiness and joy, and by royal decree of the Queen, sweet, selfless, brave, indomitable Anna would receive every felicitude all her Queenly prowess and magical powers could grant her Anna for a fortuitous lifetime.

_Kristoff is a good man. I believe You brought him to Anna when she needed him most. Thank you, Lord._

The elegantly poised Queen was a strikingly aesthetic beauty, as gracefully polished Elsa confidently strides up the center aisle in dignified procession, every citizen's proud attention was on her as she bestows an unquestioning trusted nod to Kristoff when she passes him in unspoken faith of his care that she would be leaving her beloved sister in. She knew this gruff, yet gentle, well-built yet sensitive man was every bit as lion-hearted and dauntless as Anna deserved in a partner.

_Oh, Anna, you're so lucky to have found such a love…true love…_

Elsa muses with no envy, just pride and unflinching hope for the two young lovers just beginning their journey towards a future together, as she watches with pleased eyes the pure delight and reaction on Kristoff's face as it changes into a gaze both ecstatically thrilled and contentedly satisfied to glimpse his new bride, as Princess Anna steps her first step into the flowery ornate chapel aisle…

In Kristoff's besmitten eyes, there could be no bride more beautiful than his Anna, as she slowly, after drinking in the breathtaking summer flora overflowing in the house of worship, begins her bridal walk towards him. Amidst the splendor her loving sister Elsa had worked for months in orchestrating for this wedding, Anna has a stray thought of how especially yummy her Kristoff looked in his traditional Norwegian chocolate brown trimmed festive outfit.

Complete in his embroidered vanilla cream groom's vest and its adorning double row gold chains with his Arendelle Royal Ice Harvester and the kingdom's crocus medallions dangling from his proud chest, the embellishments Queen Elsa bestowed that Gerda and Johanne primped at to doll the rugged mountain man up, gave his simple native garb all the glamour to befit a prince in his royal wedding. Unasked for, yet appreciated for all their kindness to a nobody orphan boy, plainspoken common man Kristoff Bjorgman was now gazing down the aisle upon his precious prize with such unrivaled longing and love in this once in a lifetime scene playing before both their bedazzled eyes.

Composer Felix Mendelssohn's recently written Wedding March in C Major showers down its lilting musical strains from the orchestra apse above, beneath the wooden grunnstokker beams, the glorious melody merges with the magnificent harmonies certainly inspired by the One who set such splendid music as this, to the rhythm and cadence as it was first born in Heaven, to play, and now to be softly sung below in harmony to a chorus the Lord himself would be pleased to call his own—just as a pure jewel such as Anna was His pride and joy as well.

Summer rose petals lined the path at her feet, and Anna's crocus inspired rosemaling pattern embroidered dress, that her dear mother once wore down this very same aisle, shimmers like champagne in the sunlight streaming through the stained-glass windowpanes.

Though resplendent in her full bridal regalia, 'bubbly' still did indeed best describe this energetic effervescent young lady who knew she was so lucky to be so loved as this. Anna of Arendelle was literally brimming over with loveliness and vitality, especially on this, her day of days.

Her golden lace trimmed sleeves had been shirred and tied with artistically placed bows, inlaid on the silk brocade of her shoulders, revealed more than a peek of her pristine fair skin of her 19th century wedding gown of yesteryear.

Upon her golden orangey head of hair, exquisitely bunned and styled with French braiding, done by hairstylist Rapunzel's artsy hand, rested a crown of roses—red and white and golden, too—weaving in and out of one another until they formed a lovely floral wreath nestled in her pretty hair.

The tiny little bells in her wreath veil tinkled in her ears, as Anna smiles sweetly a beaming smile of gratitude for everyone's attendance—to each pew, overfilled with well-wishing spectators that made each one's trip here worthwhile. Rich and poor alike, young and old, were all invited to this happy occasion. The chapel was filled to its capacity and then some with the seatless standing near the windows to catch a glimpse of their adorable 'little princess' on her first day of her new life as a bride.

Then, her gaze travels the quickly shortening bridal walk from friendly faces of servants who were just as equally welcome as the visiting dignitaries, especially dear Kai, who'd always pick her up when she fell down the stairs, and sweet Gerda, baking sugary sweets to fill happy tummies, who had been part of both herself and Elsa's lives since before either could remember.

Next to them was helpful Johanne, Kai's little sister and her mother's faithful lady's maid. Anna saw a vision in the swift mysterious way memories transport us back into that moment again, for just a moment—where a tiny five-year-old Anna was playing with and accidentally tore this very dress—her mother's wedding dress, and the tall and stately lady's maid took time and patience from her busy schedule to both console the weeping child and repair the ripped, treasured gown, with skillful seamstress hands, and an even more skilled smile.

Never would Anna forget those kind, generous people who brought her up to be who she was today—so glad they were here today to witness her dreams of love and family finally come true.

_Not all of you…Mama, Papa…I wish you were here, too…_

Anna swallows hard, eyes filling with tears for her lost, missing parents who, sadly, would not be here to attend her wedding.

_Maybe you are in spirit. After all, Elsa says you're both with God now, and since this is His dwelling place, His house, He's the number one Guest of Honor at my wedding, right? So I'd bet He'd bring you two along! Please, Lord, at least let them see how happy and safe and loved I'm gonna be with Kristoff._

As if in answer to her silent query, a spectacularly brilliant beam of light streams in through the highest window peak—from the highest spire, particularly poignant to Anna for it was always her favorite stained glass window, the one depicting the Nativity scene of Jesus' birth, with Joseph and sheep and shepherds and Wise men looking on, Holy mother Madonna and Blessed Child's golden halo is precisely where the bright sunlight's ray passes, nearly blinding to an emotional Anna as she basks in its glow.

Everyone watches how the wedding's star glimmers and shines, none marveling more than Kristoff. He thanks both God and his lucky stars that this radiant treasure would soon be his to claim as his own—he was absolutely sure he could not love her more, than in this moment of her ethereally smiling face up to the Heavens in silent worship.

Except perhaps for Elsa, the sister, the soulmate, who felt the warmth of Anna's unyielding selfless love, that once melted her frozen heart to be able to love again—for Anna always truly knew the meaning of love.

"Hey, Sven…Anna's crying! Why is she crying?! Isn't marrying Kristoff a happy thing? So why is she crying?" Olaf's simpleton whispered question, never quite understanding the layers of emotion that the human soul entertained is cut off when Pascal, unseen by all, save for the nearly blind Bishop, who offhandedly wonders which other of God's creatures would enter the chapel next, as Pascal scurries under the clergyman's robe on the steps to get in the naïve snowman's line of vision and give him 'the eye.'

An entranced Olaf immediately shuts up. His pea-like brain was confused under the influence of the intelligent chameleon's superior stare. Sven shares a sleepy-eyed nod at the currently purple shaded chameleon.

Kristoff was grateful, for as she approached he could see the emotion in his empathic girl's eyes filled with love, gratitude and joy—the same feelings he himself reflected this very moment when his, hidden beneath a gruff exterior, sensitive and sweet heart could open fully beside the vibrant blossom that was Anna—as the tears in her eyes were now in his.

Elsa, the beauteous maid of honor at her sister's side, smiles proudly at the palpably real, fearless love passing between the bride and groom as the Bishop, donning his white stole, begins the wedding mass, while the orchestra quietly plays a pianissimo melody in the background.

"Kristoff and Anna have come here to Arendelle's Church of Norway chapel in order to be married. We are gathered here to rejoice with you, and hear your voices to each other, and pray for God's blessing for you and your future home together before the Lord's table this day. Grace to you and peace from God, our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen."

The Bishop gives his greeting blessing before ambling to his seat behind the altar table. Church bells ring for several moments as Queen Elsa takes her place upon the altar's pulpit to read the liturgy, whilst those dearest to Anna—Kai and Gerda and Johanne—light the customary candles near the altar as bride and groom take their seats, side by side in the front aisle pew.

Anna loved the stabilizing feel of having Kristoff's warm shoulder beneath his embroidered vest to lean on, as the two sit back on the pew to listen to Elsa's words.

The Queen of this great land was becoming accustomed to speaking publicly but it still was a nerve-wracking task for the quiet, introspective young woman who grew up in fear of being near others and concealing herself.

But her great love for Anna, after their trying ordeal was done—what seemed a lifetime ago, but was just about two years today, had developed Elsa's reserved, frightened quiet into an unwavering, strong faith in the higher power of goodness, and warmth, and light—blessed from Above.

The Queen of Arendelle steps up to the church pulpit with all the poise and graciousness befitting the Sovereign Head of the Church of Norway.

"Give thanks to the Lord for He is good; His love endures forever. This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it. Psalm 118:1, 24." The velvety tinkle of her voice belies her emotional attachment to each heartfelt statement. Elsa in her penitent resolve had not only memorized many verses of the Good Book, but she had taken their truthful meanings deep into her heart.

Her eyes meet Anna's with utter pride and sisterly love. For even across the space of the chapel, a happy Anna feels fully embraced by her big sister's caring and loving attention after all those long years living alongside one another, yet still being alone.

"For God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. 1 John 4:16." Elsa lifts her beautiful cerulean blue eyes, the love she had discovered to melt a frozen heart evident for her sister, her friends, her country as she gazes upon each of their faces with the greater hope they could each share in His Love's warmth, even far into the cold months of their nation's bitter winter after this sweet summer has passed.

As the striking beauty who is their Queen fulfills her duty borne of love, her smile is as dignified as it is picturesque and lovely. She leads the congregation in song, her powerfully high strains take the old Sami lyrics of joyful meetings and awakening feelings, set to a lovely Christian hymn's music to a whole new level of wonder.

Kristoff's jaw drops to hear the Queen of Norway speak in a tongue not only foreign to her, but also classed by nearly all to be beneath 'normal' Norwegian citizens, let alone the highest of the country's aristocracy to bend 'low' to the Laplanders.

He turns to Anna, only to hear the lilting giggles as she sings along, a giddy expression on her face at this surprise for her new husband—_almost, not yet! Whee_!—that her dear sister conspired in making possible.

"Sing, Kristoff, sing! Listen! I learned it good!" Anna proudly adds her joyful, trilling tones to the verse, messing up a dropped vowel or two along the way, but the blonde, orphaned Lapp boy from the Sami north, was impressed and touched, feeling every urge to kiss her pink, rosy lips, as he reaches out a bold hand to stroke a rose petal from Anna's forehead.

"Mmhm-mhmm-mhmmgh…" There was Pascal, playing conscience's advocate again, sitting on Kristoff's shoulder, reminding him of his immediate time and place.

"Oh, right, right…hands off, still." Kristoff chuckles, going back to listening intently to the specially planned hymn, then adds his mellow voice to the refrain, causing Anna to giggle with glee, making it worth every off-key note, as the tinkling, small spoonlike bangles in her hair produce soothing music to ward off evil spirits with each head movement as she laughs.

_Golly, I love your laugh._

Kristoff thinks to himself, losing all embarrassment in being all knock-kneed in his tights—er, stockings—and fancypants tasseled and trimmed shorts, as open Anna, in her singing zeal whacks him across the face with some of her rose flowers from her head wreath. Poor Kristoff ends up with a mouthful of flora as the song finishes and the sleepy Bishop stands to the pulpit to pray and give his homily's moral lessons.

"God has created us to live in harmony with Him and with each other. He has ordained that man and woman shall be one, and He has confirmed this fellowship by His blessing. Marriage is God's generous live together as man and woman is to live in trust and love, to share joy and sorrow and to faithfully stand by each other until life ends."

"God's Word testifies that marriage is holy and inviolable."

"It is written in the Book of Genesis:  
So God created man in His own image,  
in the image of God He created him;  
male and female He created them.  
God blessed them and said to them,  
"Be fruitful and increase in number;  
fill the earth and subdue it." Genesis 1:27-28"

"And our Lord Jesus Christ says:  
"Haven't you read that at the beginning the Creator  
'made them male and female', and said,  
'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother  
and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh'?  
So they are no longer two, but one.  
Therefore what God has joined together,  
let man not separate." Matthew 19:4-6."

"This is the Word of the Lord." The archbishop finally raises his eyes from the Scripture readings to meet the wedding couple's, assessing them with a kindly smile and sign of the cross blessing.

During each of the bishop's words in his sermon, Kristoff, who was listening intently to the helpful holy man to give some wedded bliss tips, God's love expert so to speak, only began to feel embarrassment creeping up his thick neck again instead. His unmanly fair complexion starts crawling pinks and reds at the forbidden thoughts that phrases like 'being fruitful' and 'becoming one flesh' brought to the surface of the strapping young lad's mind as he sheepishly squeezes his bare knees together as the bishop expounds upon the responsibilities and duties that came along with marriage in his long sermon.

Kristoff, though wearing his official "Royal Ice Master and Deliverer" medallion about his neck, felt a tiny bit insignificant and small again amidst the vastness of Arendelle's kingdom and assembly of noble ambassadors and royalty. He still felt like that lost little boy in the icy wilderness all alone save for Sven in the world until he chased one tiny girl's trail that eventually led him to his new family of wonderful friendly trolls who took him in and made him feel – loved.

Just like Anna does every time her bright eyes light up at him, like she was doing as she sits beside him right now.

That part of the ceremony complete, glorious music from the well-tuned orchestra begins to play uplifting hymns of praise that waft down from the wooden rafters of the choir nave—way up there, and Anna's large eyes never fail him as the Eucharistic prayer is soon followed by Holy Communion.

Each visitor and parishioner of good Christian standing take part in the sacrament, but all goes by Anna in a daze as she watches Elsa, and Rapunzel and Eugene and Kai and Gerda and Johanne revolve around in a dazzling blur for her as she excitedly feels each moment ticking by in her senses.

She stands somewhat third person from the grandness of it all as sounds and sights and scents and touches start to overwhelm her as she awaits the moment that Kristoff and she would recite their marriage vows and make their pledge to each other forever thereafter in the sight of Almighty God.

But the slightly blind, somewhat lethargic elderly bishop takes his own sweet time returning to the center aisle's front step as far as enthusiastic Anna was concerned.

"Come to the altar of the Lord so that we may hear your vows to each other and pray for God's blessing on you and your home together."

As the members of the bridal party rustle from their seats to take their places for the ceremony, Anna is off and running. She yanks Kristoff's shocked hand and drags him along with her unceremoniously trotting lithe young body, as the couple clumsily dash to a screeching halt before the altar rail.

"Whoa—feistypants!" Kristoff bites his tongue after realizing his little naughty bantering term for the lively gal had slipped rather loudly and audibly out. The astounded dignitaries look to the leadership of Queen Elsa for their reaction.

But Elsa merely stifles an amused laugh as she elegantly flows in her regal royal cape and lavender draped dress to honorably stand as maid-of-honor at her sister's side. So all crudeness was forgiven instantly.

"Ha ha! 'Feistypants!' Good one. Heh heh…_ahem_…sorry. There's your reindeer. Here's your frog." Crass Flynn himself gets some stares as he helpfully delivers big, unsurefooted and abandoned Sven safely to his elected spot as 'best friend' versus 'best man' beside Kristoff. The sly dark brown haired, stubbly chinned man deposits the 'frog' onto his own wife's shoulder as she stands behind Elsa for the recessional as Anna's bridesmaids. Rapunzel rolls her eyes at men in general at the rude display unbefitting a church wedding.

"Are we all assembled _now_?" The bishop glances around at the unique, if not strange, wedding party gathered at the holy altar rail.

"Is that a reptile on that bridesmaid's shoulder?" Had he missed the big lumbering reindeer on the opposite side or did his logical mind refuse to see Sven at all?

"Yes! We're all here now." Anna sings out, a bit disturbingly for the elderly man of the cloth, who was calmed by his cultured Queen's more polished assent.

"Yes, please proceed, your Excellency." Elsa replies respectfully enough to smooth the poor man's tussled mind to sanity again.

The bishop clears his throat.

"In the presence of God, our Creator and before these witnesses, I ask you, Kristoff Bjorgman, take Anna of Arendelle, who stands before you, as your wife?"

Kristoff takes a deep breath before thoughtfully answering with a decided assuredness, as he looks into Anna's big blue-green eyes full of sparkling hope. "I will."

"Likewise, I ask you, Anna of Arendelle, will you take Kristoff Bjorgman, who stands beside you, as your husband—"

"I will!" Anna squeals out in full blown ecstasy of the moment, her hand thrown up high in the air, as if she was raising it to answer a teacher a question. "I mean, I will." She ashamedly recants her shocking enthusiasm with a more decorous response in a reserved, serious tone.

"Good." The bishop almost crossly retorts at the childishness unbecoming to a beautiful young bride. He softens upon getting caught up in the enticed entrancement of her bright eyes. "Then please join your hands as a sign of this."

The bride and groom bashfully face one another as they take each other's right hand. Kristoff marvels at how small Anna's petite princess hand and small digits disappear beneath his rather large fingered burly mountain man's appendage.

Anna, similarly, wonders how big and strong and powerful her manly man's hand looked and felt like entwined atop of hers. She sure knew how great it felt to be enclosed in his palm but she never stopped to think what it looked like before.

_Wow…_

The two lovebirds catch one another's curious gazes upon their interlaced digits and simultaneously chuckle at the silliness of it all—the crazy, undeniably, wacky silliness of two unlikely partners finding true love in the other.

_This is true love…_Anna mouths to Kristoff, both knowing the other was also recalling that first wild ride they took together before his old new sled's destructive demise, when the question of true love was brought up and her one meeting engagement to a tall, dark, handsome, did I mention, wicked? man she had defended then, and begged for her idiocy now, cropping back up in their minds in quick flashes of everything that had brought them up to here, in between.

_You and me…_ Mouthing back in response, Kristoff points with his big left forefinger to Anna, then back to himself with a certain smile.

His bride-to-be rewards him with a little thumbs up back, along with a pair of adoring blue-green eyes.

"Ahem…" The rattled bishop was at his wit's end, never having to preside over such an unorthodox ceremony before.

_Lizards, reindeer…Lord help us all._

"Kristoff, pay attention!" Ditzy Anna, as per usual, blames her intended, though she started it. Sven snorts a chuckle at his buddy's beratement before all the world.

"Did I miss something?" Out of the side of his mouth, a clueless Olaf asks Flynn—er Eugene in the front row pew, directly behind him.

"Not a thing, snow buddy." Flynn whispers back, trying to catch his looking gorgeous in rosy pink wife's eye, but something was amiss in their relationship and she doesn't even notice him.

_You always had special peripheral vision for me before, Blondie. But it's my fault we're like this…I know…It's always my fault..._

* * *

Appeased that the uproarious couple was settling down, the Bishop lays his hands atop the joined hands of bride and groom.

"In the presence of God and before these witnesses you have promised each other that you will live together in matrimony, and have joined your hands as a sign of this. Give each other the rings, which you shall wear as a signs of your vows to each other."

The bishop pauses here as they each withdraw their hands. Anna turns to Elsa, squeezing in delirious joy both of her big sister's elegant palms as Elsa slips her the specially made, extra large, male-sized gold ring, engraved with Kristoff and Anna's names entwined into her younger sibling's palm, with an emotionally joyful smile on her trembling purplish lips for her Anna's shining moment.

Kristoff similarly turns to his 'best man', neither Sven nor Kristoff trusting airheaded Olaf enough to entrust him with Anna's matching gold wedding band, so Sven, handless though he was, placed the invaluable piece of engraved jewelry into the safest spot he could find on him—or rather, in him. Anna's wedding ring, for most of the ceremony, resided in the cheek of Sven's cud-chewing muzzle, to be exact.

Thin-skinned members of the wedding audience may have been appalled as the loyal, faithful reindeer, who had been Kristoff's childhood friend for as far back as he could remember, opens his big reindeer mouth and produces on his wet tongue, the ring—all warm and gooey, yet unharmed and safe.

Kristoff, raised as a rugged ice harvester, living off the harsh tundra covered lands, with nothing but his trusty reindeer to rely on, saw absolutely nothing wrong with Sven's approach.

And neither did Anna. She loved and appreciated the big, hairy, cuddly and huggable reindeer partner of her guy like a dear friend. And if Sven and Kristoff could share a slobbered on carrot, why not let thereabouts be a nifty hideout for her wedding ring?

She really couldn't think of anything more fitting or sweet, even as Kristoff swiftly polishes and rubs the gooey saliva filled golden metal band on his silk shirt to dry it a bit before triumphantly producing it to the bishop.

"Ready!" Both Anna and Kristoff sing simultaneously. "Jinx!" They link their pinkie fingers as they then both produce their rings practically under the bishop's nose.

"Yes, indeed." The bishop was so past annoyance at this point, he was starting to think this whole situation was God's little joke on him—a test to see if he had a sliver of a funny bone left in his entire ecclesiastic devoted body. And now that he thought about it, humor was the Lord's gift to overcome the sorrows of this world.

"Yes, my children, yes, I believe we are ready. Repeat after me, please." He looks to Kristoff. "'Anna, I give you this ring.'"

"Anna, I give you this ring." Kristoff, no longer nervous, tense or even ashamed. (The whole short pants, thigh high stocking thing working for him now, because it was so hot in the stuffy chapel, during this long ceremony in the spotlight.) He grasps Anna's left hand as tenderly as his big fingered hands could allow.

"'As a symbol of my vows of love and faithfulness.'" The Bishop gently prods.

"As a symbol of my vows of love and faithfulness." Kristoff meets Anna's loving eyes as he softly slides the golden band, a circle of their eternal love for one another, onto her elated ring finger. Anna wriggles it with girlish joy as she recites her memorized vows.

"Kristoff, I give you this ring." Anna quickly jumps right in, without any prodding. The now affectionately bemused bishop lets her have a go at it herself, for Anna enjoyed blazing her own path forward.

"As a symbol of my vows of love and…umm.." The pretty princess stumbles in the memorization end of her lines, perhaps because she was having such a difficult time putting the ring on Kristoff's well-flexed fingers, so tense they had expanded, until she gives the golden band, symbolizing their love a tremendous shove in place. "...and faithfulness! Yeah, got it!"

"Owww…" Kristoff manfully holds back a howl as the pert girl nearly draws blood from his hand's webbing with her force.

_I think I'll have to take care on our honeymoon…_

That word still brought a deep reddening to Kristoff's cheeks as he gazes upon his new wife, Anna peeking back up at him.

"Let us pray." The un-amused Bishop takes his cue from the considerate Queen, prepared to let Anna and Kristoff begin their new lives together in a timely fashion. She knew they had traveling plans that would need the sunlit hours of the afternoon to travel by. The bishop directs Anna and Kristoff to kneel at the wedding altar.

"Merciful God, we give You thanks for Kristoff and Anna and for their love for each other. Bless their life as husband and wife.

Help them keep the vows they have made to each other, so that their marriage may be filled with trust, care and joy."

Anna gazes up to her beloved sister with a big, happy sigh, believing she looked so much more 'beautifuller' with each passing day.

_Oh, Elsa, I am so happy!_ Her eyes say wordlessly, and Elsa nods her agreement with their wisdom.

"Grant them the ability and will to build their home in peace, so that it will be a place where children may grow up in safety and family and friends may find fellowship."

Now it was Anna's turn to have her eyes bug out at the thought of having kids of her own already. She still felt like a kid in love herself—to even entertain such a weighty subject herself.

"You are the Way, the Truth and the Life; let them walk in Your Truth. You forgive and heal; help Kristoff and Anna forgive each other. You are the source of love; help them and all husbands and wives grow and mature in love. The Lord bless and keep you. May He make His face to shine upon you and give you peace. Amen."

The wedding audience begins the tradition of lighting candles, whilst the choir sings the final rousing version of the Norwegian classic "Come to the Wedding" orchestrally overlaid with 'Fairest Lord Jesus' as the bishop, now kindly smiling, leads the entire chapel in the Lord's Prayer and the freshly married couple stand from their humble kneeling before the Lord's altar and begin the recessional down the center aisle to leave through the chapel door.

With pride and joy intertwined, with a touch of lonely sadness with the reality that her Anna was moving beyond the close sisterhood the two had been enjoying these past two unburdened years, Elsa watches her baby sister gleefully trip down the aisle (actually, literally tripping) on her long trained golden cape, hanging from their mother's champagne colored wedding gown, as she giddily spins back and forth, twirling as they enter the palace floors.

Luckily for the clumsy girl, Kristoff was there to catch her. Anna smiles as she rests her spinning head against the nook of her big, strong husband's arm, where she dizzily catapulted against in her rush to race them both into the Great Hall.

"That was like, a crazy trust exercise!" Anna nostalgically repeats a memory up at him.

"Did I pass this time?" Kristoff, a real softie beneath that tough exterior, was feeling his oats as he peers down into her dreamy eyes up at him.

"With flying colors…" Anna whispers wistfully as she snuggles her face into his armpit further, too overwhelmed by everything today meant to pass out at his overtly 'pungent' smell, as his troll loudly family claimed.

But after all, you couldn't blame the guy because that just meant that Kristoff's potent hormones were working overtime.

_Something to look forward to tonight, Anna…_She blushes to herself.

"Sooo…are we gonna skip the reception and get you two a room? Cause I was really looking forward to that kransekake cake your Heaven's angel of a cook has whipped up for you two lovebirds."

"Eugene!" Rapunzel breaks her silent treatment to yell at her crudely insinuating husband.

Eugene gives his brunette wife an amused grin as he suavely continues to charm his way out of trouble, wrapping a flirtatious arm around Gerda, who, in her proud plumpness, had been taken in by the devilish man as she's been talking and bubbling over bragging rights to the finest kransekake cake she's made in ages, about to be served for her 'little Anna.'

"Well," Gerda giggles at the polished young gentleman's attentions, "my frystekake did win the best pastry in show category at the Autumnal Festival last year." Sweet Gerda was still innocent enough to take a consummate con at his wheedling word, though Kai was a bit less naïve as he protectively shoves a hurriedly prepared tray under the charismatic rogue's very nose.

"Nah, I don't—" Flynn was about to decline the plate of Scandinavian tasty comestibles, but decides on another tack. "That is—how can I decline? When such lovely skillful hands turn themselves to delight my palate?" He smoothly cajoles the Arendelle castle housekeeper, who was dangling and cooing on his every word as he kisses and caresses the pudgy woman's offered appendage, flagrantly and slowly chewing on one delectable morsel that she had created with her hands alone.

"Maybe, because it was these here 'lovely hands' that skillfully spooned that canned liver pate on some crackers, sir." Kai's younger sister, Johanne, puts her two licks in. She, in her tease, thwarts Flynn's subtle endearment of the soft-hearted head of the Arendelle royal household.

Johanne extends her thin, bony hand out to the rebuffed man. Flynn was forced to comply as the more authoritative Johanne uses her tall, intimidating appearance to subdue the roguish charmer away from her brother's mate.

"Oh, Johanne! You're not supposed to reveal to all the guests _**all **_of Arendelle's little secrets!" Pleasantly, Queen Elsa steps in here with a cultivated humorous statement to her longtime ladies' maid who was just helping out in the kitchen for today, as Anna and Kristoff had spirited away towards the now open and lively ballroom on the castle's second story.

The newlywed couple lead the dancing party, and Elsa's own feet begin to tap in her stylish high heels, to the rousing tune, echoing from overhead, as she watches with a smile, then laughter, at her vivacious sister, filling the ballroom with her light.

"Ah, what would a wedding be without a proper dance-off?" Flynn, too, conversationally remarks as the guests, including his un-ecsorted wife, all migrate upstairs towards the cheery sounds of happy laughter, fused with music and blithe accompaniment.

As Flynn's heavy lidded eyes scan the Great Hall, as if looking for something, Elsa silently considers the tall and dashing man at her side, who, after Gerda and Johanne are reluctantly called to duty to attend the ballroom by a wary Kai, seems to be her only singular companion left in the throne room.

_There is something about your eyes…_ She thinks to herself in study of him.

"Do you dance in celebration of weddings in Corona, too, Eugene?" Elsa, though still reserved and shy when speaking to others—to strangers—her immense sense of family gave her reason to try. After all, he was her closest cousin's chosen life partner so she must make an attempt to be sociable with him. Although, she still found, that even though she adored her late father, who cared so deeply for her welfare as he trained her up to be the nation's next leader, and faithful Kai was practically a member of the family, men, as a whole, were more difficult to converse with for the young woman, just coming out of her traumatized shell.

Perhaps her recent reticence concerning men stemmed from her most terrifying memories of standing, cold and tossed and battered, and being told that her beloved Anna was dead—by her own hand.

By of the duplicitous _man_ who deceitfully blamed her for it.

She still had haunting nightmares of that incident. Elsa still acutely felt the guilt, the pain—the frozen ice grip her heart with the shadow of that power hungry, sneering man seared into her mind. Her accuser, looming over her, pushes her down, striking at her helplessness—but strangely, there would be other nights, when that same villain, whose antagonistic evil sneer was transformed more into the benevolent gaze of a protagonist—a shining hero with an encouraging smile, who was reaching for her to help him now, across the icy cold waters as he was floating adrift on the waves of a cracked, frozen iceberg, alone and vulnerable.

And desperately needing her to rescue him from sinking underneath the crashing waves of the icy depths, to be lost forever.

His handsome face was never clearer, nor more distinct than right now. At last, she recognized whose eyes were pleading to her across the ice drifts, not just for help, but something far more mysterious…

* * *

"—personally, dancing has never really been my thing, but Blondie—eh, I still call her 'Blondie'—don't ask any questions, suffice it to say it's a long, long story—she must've been born tapping her cute feet. I tell ya, that girl can dance. Hey…you okay, Queenie?" Flynn wasn't aware until this very moment that Elsa had only heard less than a third of his rambling speech. Not until he tore his eyes from discreetly peering into the ballroom they were moving towards at a certain brunette twirling and swirling her magical rhythm from stem to stern of the party room, to gaze seriously at the spaced out, preoccupied woman beside him.

"Prince Hans…" Elsa breathes the revelation to herself quietly, as if saying the name aloud would dissolve both nightmare and dream, as her mind whirs torridly, trying to discover why she was both taunted and haunted by this despicable man of all monsters.

But even now, she knew she couldn't break away from being entranced by the pools of his green eyes reflecting back at her.

"The name's 'Eugene' and I'm no Prince. But you can call me anything you like, Beautiful." Disrespectful Flynn with a charming roguish smirked wink, goodnaturedly mocks and dismisses her odd behavior for a female's natural tendency to be fanciful.

_That's why we men love them—either that or the shape of their legs…_

_Now if the gang saw you at the Snuggly Duckling…whoo hoo! A platinum blonde with some rather un-Victorian fashion ideas…You would drive the men there wild—_

"Shall we dance, Eugene?" Interrupting his impudent thoughts, Elsa abruptly asks and the timid, even voice tones that she normally spoke in were dashed in a second of spontaneous, rebellious defiance.

"No, no, no, no…no. I don't dance." Though narcissistic enough to believe himself irresistible to the entire female race, he is flabbergasted as he is violently yanked by a folded resisting arm to a waltzing position with Elsa herself as his partner.

"You do now, by order of the Queen."

Flynn swallows hard as her glowing, icy fingertips threaten as they alight upon his chest. She seemed to enjoy being a bit naughty—and not always strictly adhering to the 'upstanding, good girl she had to be' with harsh rules and austere regulations restricting her entire existence. She was ready to toss that aside, for there was something about this man that enticed her to be a normal young woman, not merely the elegant untouchable figurehead, frozen in regal ice.

_Like Anna can be herself…I want to be free to be me._

"Let's go melt the ice."

Was it the fact that this 'Eugene/Flynn Rider' boasted many of the features of the man in her dreams? Tall, dark, and devastatingly handsome, with charm oozing from his every pore—yet still retaining a tender air of vulnerability and inner well-disguised sadness?

Elsa didn't understand it all—this conundrum unraveling in her haunted mind quite yet. But for today, she'd let it go. None mattered, save for taking part in fully celebrating alongside her best friend, her true conscience, her darling sister on this happiest day of Anna's life—the day of her marriage to the man she had found real, true, genuine love with.

"I can let the dream go, today. Until the night, when the dream comes again…"

As soon as she steps into the ballroom, everyone takes pleasant notice of their Queen, and Elsa surprises her loyal subjects and visiting dignitaries—not to mention a delighted Anna, and Kristoff, with exhausted from dancing puppies, by her unexpectedly skilled dancing skills, as she exquisitely waltzes a compliant Flynn around the dance floor, with the full intention of reuniting him with the forgiving wife he loved so terribly his heart was breaking.

Their eyes speaking words that voices never could utter, Flynn finds himself once more in Rapunzel's welcoming arms, wishing he'd never had to let go in the first place. She leads, being more of a dancer, as they spin around in a ballroom that now had more than enough love to go around, as he buries his head in her no longer magical hair, yet the act of nuzzling a slow dance was still healing in her loving warmth.

Elsa, growing in her own emotions, had empathically sensed that, too. She never claimed to know the inner workings of the human heart fully herself, but when she could, she did try to help love's course run smoothly, as she allows sweet Olaf to replace Flynn as her 'able snow bodied' dance partner. The pair of ice queen and snowman were practically skating alongside an energized Anna who nearly dances a contented Kristoff off his pear-shaped square feet in their happy wedding dance jollies, where the forever optimistic bright-eyed girl finds that true love she'd been waiting for, at long last.


	4. Chapter 3 - Jeg Elsker Deg- 'I Love You'

We do not own "Frozen" nor any of its characters.

**"Frozen Again: 'But The Greatest of These is Love'"**

**Act I**

**Chapter 3**

"**Jeg Elsker Deg! means 'I Love You!'"**

The rest of the afternoon for Elsa was spent in frivolity and fun—dancing, singing, sharing in Anna's boundless laughter and joy of living. Elsa and Anna had lived all those long, empty years in the span of time that most sisters spent in twenty or thirty years, but they squeezed together all the love and friendship and closeness in the past two.

As the uproarious dancing, partying and feasting on a 'roast and ice cream', not to forget Gerda and Johanne's rivalrous presented award-winning treats and culinary delights, the party was near to its happy end.

But there was one more Scandinavian wedding tradition as yet left undone.

"Miss Anna!" Gerda comes trotting up to her precious, littlest girl, now all grown up. "Oh, pardon me! _**Mrs.**_ Anna!" The rosy cheeked palace housekeeper corrects herself of the new honorific she'd have to learn to attach to the young girl from now on.

"Yup, that's me! Mrs. Anna Bjor…Bjorg…" Though a married woman now, Anna was still dizzy enough to flub her own new last name. Her face was quite vexed as she stutters on her new husband's surname.

"—Bjorgman." Kristoff lifts his eyes to the Heavens as he supplies his new wife (_Wow…)_ with the rascally, tough on the tongue word.

"Bjorgman! Yes, that's it! Of course, I knew it!" Anna coyly gives her audience an all-knowing smirk, while Kristoff can only chuckle at her cuteness.

"I am now Mrs. Anna Bjorgman. Doesn't the sound of that fit together perfectly, like—like—"

Again she struggles for a proper term. "-Chocolate and brown eyes." Anna finishes with a literal drool up at her new yummy hubby.

"This is the kransekake wreath cake that Gerda and I have been perfecting for hours." Johanna just arrives, carefully pushing a serving cart tray, stacked to reach about the imposing height of Elsa's ladies' maid, Johanne, with ring after ring of Angel's Food cake 'glued' together with white icing, to keep the almond embedded sugary confections attached to one another.

"A wreath cake? How artistic you two are!" Impressed artist Rapunzel throws an arm around each of the conversely short and fat, skinny and tall, servants who had obviously both worked hard on the wedding cake, for all its prettily decorated ornamentation of Arendelle's symbolic purple and blue crocus flowers emblem.

"I **LOOOVE **kransekake wreath cakes!" Olaf comes puttering across the ballroom floor to get a closer look at the towering baked good.

"Have you ever had it before?" Flynn asks the snowperson drolly, with a raised, suspicious eyebrow, already knowing the answer.

"No. But I'm sure I'll love it! Look how yummy and tasty those pretty little sugar flowers are…OUCH—!" The sweet toothed Olaf, well, his one and only tooth was certainly a 'sweet one', yells out as his wooden 'knuckles' are firmly rapped away from purloining a saccharin blue crocus treat by the usually kind Gerda's golden plated serving spatula.

"Ooooh, I'm sorry, Olaf!" She immediately apologizes, kindly rubbing the snowman's branches that served as his hands.

"Wait, not too much friction, please!"

"But this special cake can only be first touched after it's been presented at the wedding reception to the bride and groom!"

On her knees, Gerda explains to not only the snow muffin at ground level but to all the remaining guests within earshot.

"Okay." Olaf nods in understanding. "Why?"

Or not.

"Well, tradition has it that when the bride and bridegroom lift the top layer of the kransekake cake together, the number of rings that continue to stick to the top layer is said to be the number of children they will have."

"—W-ha—what?!" Kristoff nearly spits out his drink of Akvavit wine, the explanatory Kai had just poured for him from the bottle placed decoratively in the center of the twelve layered rings.

"Now that's just freaky." Flynn speaks too quickly sometimes for his own good. Rapunzel and many other court ladies give him some rather terse looks for ridiculing their ancient Norwegian marriage tradition.

"…If you don't like kids, which, I, for one, do. I _**love**_ kids…" He squirms his way out of the awkward moment.

Elsa marvels with a headshaking giggle beneath her hands at how masterfully this man could spin any situation.

"That's good to hear."

Elsa was also standing close enough to Rapunzel to catch her mumbled beneath her breath response that no one else did. The Queen's intelligent mind swiftly put together all the angst and uncomfortable unease between the visiting couple, who obviously loved one another, together in a flash.

_I see now._

But she didn't. Not really. Elsa, in her calm, resigned way, recognized that a normal life of home and family, arguments and reconciliations and finding common ground with one another through the constant of love, was not destined to be hers.

Being the sovereign Queen of this nation, with all of its welfare, strife and daily concerns must be kept at the forefront of her duty at all times. There would be no consideration of any other sort of life for her.

_All for Arendelle. I'll live in eternal gratitude to serve my God and my country and that's all I'll ever want or need. For my people, I will stay vigilant and pure of heart. _

Elsa's once cold, frozen heart now beat the steady drumroll of piety, justice, wisdom and simplicity—taught to her by her loving father, the King, about the noble and right, very first crowned King of Norway. She would walk in St. Olaf's steps and never allow that precious privilege to serve her people be corrupted by a usurping other presence on the Arendelle throne.

"It's sticking! It's sticking! Count, count, count them! Hurry before they fall, Kai! You're brilliant at numbers! You count!" Anna's shrill voice screams excited orders and brings Elsa out of yet another daydream.

The young Queen gazes out over the scene with so many mixed emotions, for though Gerda and Johanne's multi-ringed cake, was full of nuts, dates and decoration—it couldn't compare to the variety she takes in of all the joyful sights and sounds around her.

There was, as was the tradition of kransekake demanded, only the newly wedded couple's hand on the tall cake's uppermost layer as they lift it straight upwards together, to gauge their fertility prospects.

Of course, it would help if Anna were a few inches more endowed, to reach a hand able to touch—never mind, lift—the dozen storied ring cake.

"I told you, Gerda! Twelve was too much!" Johanne reprimands her fellow chef.

But even that was no longer a problem, as, after assessing the size of it all in a few short seconds, strong, burly, experienced mountain climber Kristoff, picks up his sturdy as a little–Norwegian-fjord-horse-gal under her armpits with one arm, until she was nearly lifted right off the ground from her tippytoes. Anna stretches up, UP! to simultaneously lift that highest top ring of the prophesizing kransekake that Kristoff also holds up with his other free hand.

"One, two, three, four…oh my! Five! And—" Kai's voice cracks about the unbelievable large unbroken count, just as the ridiculously awesome sixth ring also cracks in half and begins to wobble from the lifted mass of other rings.

"Awww…!" The interested onlookers sigh at the prediction.

"All right! Five and half! Does that mean your last kid's gonna be a midget?" Flynn comments snidely as Rapunzel harshly elbows him in the deserving gut, from where she was taking a dancing break atop a kneeling down Sven.

"So I guess we're rounding it up to six?" Flynn squeaks out, massaging his aching gut. "Six is a good number."

"Six…?" Kristoff gulps at the impending prediction, rather frightening high number for a new husband to marry, not even yet on his honeymoon night. He gently puts a thrilled Anna back down to the floor safely.

"Six? SIX! That's all my fingers can count up to! Oh, no, wait, I have eight. Forgot my thumbs…You'd better start making those babies soon if you're gonna have that many." Olaf naively holds up all of his finger branches, not quite understanding the whole 'making babies' process.

As Anna blissfully sighs, six stars of new hope popped up in her wistful, dreamy eyes, they twinkle to meet Elsa's before returning to share a sheepish grin with Kristoff. The entire audience of wedding guests and well-wishers burst out in frolicking laughter, smiles and applause.

* * *

"Now be sure to wear your rubber soled galosh boots and those extra pair of thick stockings I packed in your trunk, Miss Anna, for when you arrive in that Valley of Living Rock place." Johanna repeats for the hundredth time, since she, along with Cousin Rapunzel and Elsa's assistance finally finish packing Anna's luggage for her honeymoon vacation in the North.

"I will! I will! I promise!" Accepting the farewell kiss to her cheek, Anna holds back the urge to tell her authoritative older friend the truth about the so-named 'rocks' there were not really describing the landscape's terrain, as in treacherously rocky and rough, but rather something more mystical in nature.

"I don't know why you couldn't have stayed for your honeymoon here at the palace. Or at least in one of the cabin holdings on the palace grounds…" Johanne murmurs, obviously never married herself.

"Kristoff's family lives up there and they wanted Anna and Kristoff to take part in another marriage ceremony of their own culture." Elsa fills in considerately for Anna. Her little sis had already explained to her how the kindly trolls she'd met in her youth had a troll-style wedding already in the works planned for their beloved adopted son.

"Wait. Two weddings? Isn't _**one**_ enough trouble for a self-respecting guy to go through." Flynn regains his humor, _not_ kindly averting his eyes, as he aids his helpful wife in her attempts to get a sticking lock suitcase opened again to add a forgotten set of feminine underthings that Anna had mislaid and Elsa had fortunately reminded her of at the last minute.

Rapunzel slaps her naughty hubby's wrist, as she quickly shoves in the blue and green lacy lingerie and nightgown pieces into the case far away from his wandering male sight.

"—Ahem…I prefer a woman in rose, myself."

"Yeah, well, you haven't met my family." Kristoff fondly smirks at the vision in memory of his noisy, crude, loud, often inappropriate, yet really family-oriented and loving, clan who had raised the orphan boy and Sven since they were mere pups.

"It's a shame they couldn't make it for the wedding here. They would've been more than welcome in my kingdom." Queen Elsa offers graciously, lamenting not being able to become reacquainted with the helpful and wise troll king—who had saved her precious Anna from her foolish accident when they were children.

Elsa was eager to show him now that she understood and grasped his kind warnings about her own fear being her worst enemy, now that she was the master of it.

"I gave them your invitation, Elsa, but Pabbie figured that if one or two of them came to the wedding, they'd _**ALL **_want to come. And you don't want to know how heavy that'd be." Kristoff blows air to whistle between his lips.

Elsa nods in understanding as Flynn slaps on the back the now changed into his riding gear—and long pants—getup as he returns from loading up and hitching Sven to his still spic and span, well-cared for, freshly waxed, Official Ice Master and Deliverer's sled that he was still so proud of.

"That's families for ya!" Flynn answers as if little orphan boy Eugene Fitzherbert knew a lick about what it was like to grow up in caring family surroundings.

Kristoff leaves off the fact that Flynn probably misunderstood his meaning of 'heavy' by overbearing, meddlesome and intrusive, rather than literally 'heavy' in the true meaning of the word—enough to crack and break the polished marble tiles and decorated floors of the castle's front hall.

"Well, when you two do get there, tell your Grandpabbie, and Bulda and Cliff—and the whole clan—that they are welcome here at any time." Elsa had heard so much from Anna of the troll's familial love that she felt she knew them already.

"Just give us a warning and I'll have the town's builders and masons reinforce the castle foundation pilings." Elsa astounds all gathered, now dumbstruck by her construction and building knowledge.

All except Kai, who looks proudly on as he stands, holding the doors open for Kristoff and a usually lazybones Flynn, to carry Anna's bags to Sven's waiting sled. For Kai had been teaching his young monarch in the years of time they had alone, the nuts and bolts type of things concerning the castle's maintenance that her dear father and friend Kai enjoyed tending to as a hobby—as males of like age found camaraderie with each other in doing.

At the thought of her father, whom she had loved and lost along with her sweet mother, all too soon, Elsa's pleasant smile grows a tad melancholy. But the thoughtful young woman swiftly recovers, to give Anna, who had just finished hugging Rapunzel and Flynn and Kai and Johanne a happy goodbye.

But Anna, close as she and Elsa had become in the past two years again, after their years of separation, caught that tiny little change of inflection in Elsa's demeanor.

"Are you gonna be all right on your own, Elsa?" Anna's big eyes were widened in concern, for she had always been a tender, sweet and compassionate girl. She intuitively felt the sudden emptiness of being the first one of the Arendelle sisters to leave the proverbial 'nest' for more than a day or two.

The castle had been both home and fortress for as long as the two sheltered girls had remembered, and she knew when Elsa was disturbed in her heart, now that Anna knew how to listen.

"Hey, I'm the big sister here. Don't worry, all right? I've got this." Elsa smiles reassuringly as she was the one to reach out for Anna. The cold fear of ever touching another human being had long melted away.

"I _**soooooo**_ love you!" Anna practically wails out, throwing both her arms so tighty around Elsa that the tall, thin girl believed she might actually snap in half.

_But I'm not made of ice anymore._

Elsa simply hugs her little sister back, just as fervently.

"Awwww, they're so cute! I wish I had a sister!" Tender hearted Rapunzel coos to a rolling eyes, jaded Flynn.

"Hey! No fair! Why do the hugs always come out when I'm busy somewhere else?!" If anyone wondered where Olaf had gotten to, it being way too quiet around this castle front entrance to see Anna and Kristoff off, he was down in the palace kitchen and larder helping Gerda prepare the large basket of warm beverages and cold meat meals, goodies and sweet treats that would stay good, and keep the young newlyweds well fed during the long journey to the Valley of Living Rock, where the trolls lived in the far north of Norway's countryscape.

It was a long trip, but with the summer weather being so seasonably warm—it actually reached 65 degrees Fahrenheit this afternoon—and the countryside so lovely to sightsee, with its green trees and flowers, the company none too disagreeable—after all Kristoff had along with him his lute guitar to play music and sing with Sven during the ride, whilst the perky Anna would often take the helm of sled driver.

This journey promised to be full of wonderful memories of their first days together as a married couple, although Bulda had strictly instructed her baby boy, cutie Kristoff, that he and Anna wouldn't be completely wedded until they were trollfully married by Great Grandpabbie himself.

So that meant hands off the little lady until after the second ceremony. The platonic relationship would just have to stand until the Valley of Living Rock was reached, and with all due speed, Sven, if you've got anxious new husband Kristoff's drift.

"Oh, come here, Olaf!" Elsa's hand extends to the neglected snowman, needing both hugs and attention. She and Anna bear his snowy touch with sprinkles of personal flurry in a three way embrace.

"Warm group hug time!" Anna sings out with gusto. Her emotional rollercoaster of a day soared to the new high of a loving smile that the magical reflection of a happy memory between the two sisters that Olaf epitomized and always brought to the scene along with him.

"See? I'll be fine. I won't be alone. Olaf's always with me." Elsa whispers in her sister's ear as they part the hug.

"I love warm hugs. Make sure Kristoff gives you lots of warm hugs, Anna, cause I won't be there." Olaf explains to his friend in his simple, unembellished way, as if she'd miss him on her honeymoon as much as Olaf would miss her.

"Kristoff! You have to give Anna at least three warm hugs per day. I always do and she'll miss them!" Olaf loudly yells out the palace doors. His comical voice rings through the castle the silly order that makes Anna laugh hysterically and Kristoff blush as deeply as the red sunset over Arendelle at the thought of he and his new wife being intimately close in any tempting way between here and troll land.

"Here you go, my little Annie! I hope I packed enough food for you and your new hubby!" Now it was Gerda's turn for a warm hug.

The big woman made cooing noises as she lifted the overflowing basket so full of goodies that its wickered lid was popping up to reveal a bulge of jam, cookie tins and waxed papers full of carved, cold hams.

"Gerda! There's enough food in there for like an army—for like a month!" She helps Gerda to carry the heavy load in place of Olaf, Anna has only to take one peek in the crack of the unsealed basket lid to see that generously concerned for her dietary well-being Gerda, had really outdone herself this time.

"Well, you never know if the roads will be closed or there'll be a sudden thunderstorm and you can't drive your sled on, or you'll be stranded by an avalanche and you can't get to any food or water for days!" The doting servant worries prematurely, and hopefully, unnecessarily.

Anna nods with big, freaked out eyes and pursed lips at each disastrous unpleasant situation the housekeeper/cook just saddled her mind with.

"Don't worry, Gerda. I won't let any bad stuff happen to her. Official Ice Master and Deliverer's sworn promise." Kristoff manages a salute to the impressed woman, who was now ooh-ing and ahh-ing at his strapping brute strength as he then hefts the overpacked food basket with one hand up into the sled's cargo hold rear without his well-built, finely displayed muscles breaking a sweat, as they flex admirably in his short sleeved shirt, before her bedazzled eyes.

"Is that even a real title?" Kristoff flashes the badge he always kept tied around his neck, directly into Flynn's face that it nearly whacks him on his prized nose.

"Yup, it's real!" Anna happily answers for her husband, something Kristoff had better get used to with this saucy girl, as she dashes up and grabs his hand, just expecting him to be ready to launch her lithe body's bouncing momentum over the side rail and into her seat on the sled.

And without missing a beat, he does.

Rapunzel marvels at the couple's compatible rhythm, as they wordlessly and simultaneously lean in towards one another, with the kiss of their married life's new beginning—both in body and mind—and it seemed, even into the soul.

_I'm positive that my Eugene's body and soul belong to me…He's proven that in so many ways. I'm just not so sure about where his mind wanders sometimes…_

The beautiful brunette considers her own shaky, now tenuous, marital status after only five short years of bliss.

As if hearing her thoughts, Eugene's eyes meet her across the sunset with a tentative grin.

_See? What is that? What do I see hiding behind those puppy dog sad eyes of yours, Eugene? _Rapunzel forces herself to smile back just as tentatively, as he reaches across the front palace steps, where they were about to wave the newlywed couple off, to brush back a loosened hair lock askew upon her forehead.

_God, you're still just as stunning in this amazing sunset playing magic tricks on your hair, Blondie. _Flynn's deft hand caresses her closed adoring eyes and her soft freckled cheek for an everlasting moment, Rapunzel reveling in his sparsely adequate touch of late.

_I just wish I had a few more magic tricks up __**my**__ sleeve._

As a distant foghorn blows in the distance, Flynn's tender palm just as suddenly falls away, his attention to the loving insecure girl following suit as his hand sinks and his handsome ever present stubbled face turns away from the blissful scene of the two young lovebirds and their well-wishers bidding them a fortuitous journey amidst the quickly fleeting sunset's final rays.

* * *

"I promise to take good care of Anna from now on." Kristoff pledges to Elsa's already lonely yet brave eyes, as the bridal couple ready themselves to depart on their new adventure.

"Thank you." They're the only two words left for Elsa to say as the Queen stands up on her tippy toes to give her sister a goodbye kiss.

Seeing this, Kai rushes over to give Elsa's feather light body a boost—just as he did when they were little children, when they wished to reach something too high up on the Christmas tree.

Anna's lovely face was in full bloom—just as glowing now as it was then, when her sister embraces her fondly, Kai looking on proudly.

"Bye, Elsa! Bye, Olaf! Bye-bye, everybody! Here we go! Jeg elsker deg! I love you!" She cries out, as they drive away into the sunset.

"Jeg savner deg…" Elsa whispers to the warm summer winds. _'I miss you…'_

That low bellowing foghorn from some distant sea vessel blows again a second time more urgently and Flynn's gaze roams towards something unseen beyond the fjord, something even beyond the sea into the darkness looming black and thick, even as Kristoff and Anna's happy sled of spirited love, pulled by Sven's strong furry body drives along the Northwest path until it disappears into the final embers of the short summer sun's last rays in the thankfully opposite direction of those foreboding shadows to the southeast of Arendelle castle.

Its unsuspecting queen waves a fond farewell (along with a light coating of ice to easily start hardworking Sven's path) to her precious littler sibling on her way to a bright future ahead.

There were only traces of tears behind her brave eyes as she gives a silent prayer for her baby sister.

_God go with you, Anna._

With a peaceful smile from within her now tranquil warm soul, Elsa watches the happy couple ride off into the glorious sunset to begin their lives together as one, no longer two.

Upon Arendelle's peaks, faint hints of the Northern Lights sparkle their revolving dance of prismatic magic all around Elsa as she stands alone, left behind by the dusky cooling summer breezes swirling their mysteries all about her…

* * *

_Jeg elsker deg_! - 'I love you!' in Norwegian

_Jeg savner deg_ \- 'I miss you' in Norwegian


	5. Chapter 4 - Relics of a Dream

We do not own "Frozen" nor any of its characters.

**"Frozen Again: 'But The Greatest of These is Love'"**

**Act I**

**Chapter 4**

"**Relics of a Dream"**

As the July moon rises high above the Arendelle castle, a lone dark figure scales its creamy brick and stone walls across the shingles of its raised roof trusses until his furtive slim form reaches a certain high peaked window of the structure's center tower.

Without much trouble, for he _found_ this particular window entrance unlocked, the intruder opens it to slip through the tight window leading into the castle chapel's upper choir nave. He attaches a roped cord across a huge grunnstokker beam, securing it closed with a professional touch that only experience taught, before expertly swinging down, using momentum to bounce back and forth from rafter to rafter, over the pentice and aisles until he stealthily slides down the rope. Its end was securely tied around his ribcage to hover over the chapel altar and the historical, holy treasures that were still in candlelit display, as per tradition of royal weddings and baptisms.

A surreptitious black gloved hand reaches down towards the hallowed altar and wraps sly, thieving fingers around this country's most cherished symbols in all the land—Saint Olaf's sacred orb and kingly scepter. The pair of ancient 11th Century artifacts once wielded by the very first ruler of a united Norway, were lifted to the thief's suspended eye level…

* * *

It was late that night, once the wedding festivities died down, the weddng guests departed and the extra hired servants and ecclesiastical church members retired for the evening, that Queen Elsa finds her exhausted body from the rigorous labors of a strenuous, yet wonderful day, quite unable to sleep.

She was restless again—as often she felt in times when she was alone. The entire castle and its overworked staff were too tired for a bout with sleeplessness—even Olaf, who had thoroughly worn himself out all day and night, dancing and partying in his special way, was also now sound asleep, snow snoring in his porcelain snow 'bed,' specially crafted to catch the stray snow flurries from his personal cloud and create and insulated pillow of fresh powder to rest his sleepy snow head on in Anna's bedroom, which he shared.

_Anna's former bedroom…_

Elsa smiles to herself, wondering how far Kristoff and Anna had gotten to tonight already—_traveling distance, strictly speaking-_as she envisions the surprise for them when they return of the sectioned off wing of the castle she was secretly having redecorated and refurbished to be the newly married couple's 'private' quarters—where they'd have the freedom of being left alone to their own kitchen, dining, and sitting rooms, not to mention several bedrooms, replete with double bunk beds. After all, the kransekake did predict at least six beds needed to be filled.

Elsa suppresses a giggle at the thought of six pairs of pitter-pattering feet skipping and playing and racing up and down the spiral staircase in this castle that had been aching for attention and love that only happy children's sounds and sights knew how to fill.

_Creak Creak Creak_

That wasn't merely a figment of her fertile imagination filled with blonde-headed little ones skittering and sliding around the palace, come to life now.

Elsa stops still in her tracks. Her keen ears perk up as she pauses before entering her usual sleepless night and early morning house of refuge—the Holy Chapel of Arendelle, which served as this repentant Queen's haven of peace and stronghold of tranquility. And now, this sacred bastion of her trusted sanctuary—

-was being raided by a common thief in the night.

"Who are you?! Unhand those sacred relics immediately!" The frightened young girl of yesteryear had been forged by ice, not fire, to stand up for what she believed in. She was raised to be a monarch under Christ, so neither her faith, nor her duty to country would tolerate this holy violation.

But when the dark hooded caped thief ignores her royal order, and scurries up his rope connected to the roof to escape, Queen Elsa, sovereign ruler of the Kingdom of Arendelle, singular monarch of the United Country of Norway, and appointed Head of the Church of Norway, in St. Olaf's pious, yet righteous footsteps, takes matters into her own more than capable hands.

Summoning up her normally stored cryokinetic energies, she sends an intricate pinpointed volley of icy blasts across the Holy shrine at the unknown, fleeing miscreant.

From the distance they had between them, the ice blast makes direct contact with the lower part of the thief's arm. He cries out in pain of instant frostbite and his injured hands lets go of St. Olaf's scepter, sending it clattering down to the altar table, then bouncing across the wooden slatted floor.

"Stop! I order you to stop and return that sacred Orb! Or I will be forced to completely freeze you and you may die." Elsa recognized her powers well enough to know how deadly they could be. She swore to herself, before God, that she would never use her special gifts to harm anyone ever again, but what of justice in preserving all that her kingdom held holy? She pauses before loosing her pent up powers. Her hands were both aglow with the ice's pale bluish light as she rushes towards the altar, her aim sure to be precise now.

But the soul-searching question burning in her ice-unleashed angered heart is answered seconds before she was to let go of her fully powered ice crystal fractals targeted to stop this criminal from desecrating their exalted king's artifacts, placed into her care, for the lifespan of her reign.

In the midst of it all, she hears for a split second that voice echoing in her head: _Don't be the monster they fear you are!_

And her heart stops beating in her chest. The master thief clinging to the cord of his escape route upwards, with his one good arm, was also capable of _stealing_ one's heart as he calculates the inner kindness and benevolence of this nation's leader—no, the tenderness of a young woman.

Using this moment of her indecision, and realizing the extent of her powers—that she could carry out her threat—he throws back his head, the black hooded cape falling back to reveal…

"Tell her…Tell her she'll always be my dream." And with those heartwrenched final words, said with a resigned lump in his throat and overwhelmed regretful tears transparent in his brown eyes directly locking with Elsa's shocked ones, Eugene Fitzherbert returns back to the thieving, lonely life of Flynn Rider. He quickly climbs the remainder of the rope and bolts from the uppermost window, disappearing as a shadow into the night.

Flynn had calculated correctly. In allowing him to escape, Elsa's appalled brain spins with every emotion—even ones she'd never experienced before in her young life, on this level.

Shock, betrayal, sorrow, confusion, shame, hurt, loss, suspicion, fear. Always fear.

And yet amidst all of this terrible, unforeseen implausible situation—there was still love clearly apparent in Eugene's eyes when he turned his face to her.

"Queen Elsa! Are you unharmed?!" Soon, rotund Kai comes barreling in, tugging on his dark green coat with several palace guards in all states of undress and unkemptness, for their benevolent Queen had given the entire palace attendance force the rest of the evening off in honor of Princess Anna's wedding.

Elsa never imagined such a happy, peaceful night could be broken by this distressing upset.

"Yes." Turning to face the sleepy palace guards and a worried Kai, Elsa's mind races to keep up with the speed of her pounding heart's unfurling decisions that only she could adjudicate in these few rapid, life-altering moments.

"Please forgive me for alarming you all. I am so sorry to have disturbed you vigilant good men from your precious off-duty time." She starts the white lie with a disarming apology and matching sincere smile to each servant's relieved face.

"Your Queen was just a little clumsy and tripped as she was finishing her evening devotions and prayers, while returning Arendelle's regalia back into their holdings for safety." She says in some honesty, but now for the little extra rimed frost on the truth's edges.

"St. Olaf's Orb is…away, already." She bites her lip, hoping none would pick up her word-wielding deceit. The holy object was literally 'away,' just a different kind of 'away' than Elsa was inferring.

_More like getting away…_

"Ah, there is the sacred scepter I dropped. Beloved St. Olaf, do forgive your descendant's late night, unintentional and uncoordinated accident." She truly was sending up a prayer as she falls to her knees. Kai and every other servant in the room follow suit, with similarly solemnly bowed heads, to the statue of the sainted past king. She honestly regretted this purposeful misleading of her good and loyal subjects—and also for losing his sacred Orb, which she herself, along with every other past ruler, was coronated with as a symbol of the nation's dominion over this great land.

She lifts above her genuflected head, from the chapel's floor where it had dropped from some twenty foot height, the royal scepter. She, too, maintained it as a symbol of power and strength—and courage…

Elsa closes her eyes and swallows hard as her mind forges a difficult path ahead that this kingdom's heir knew she must travel alone.

* * *

"I heard the Sea Wolf howl tonight." The man in a dark hooded cape places a hand to his mouth as he speaks, both projecting the words and muffling their indecipherable coded meaning, except to the intended listener's ears, as he stands alone in the small dinghy he had rode around the fjord's bends to this particular shielded cove.

"How many times did she howl?" A raspy, deep voice from somewhere on board the ship the smaller craft had docked alongside, calls back in responsive code.

"Thrice." The dinghy's lone occupant answers the query, obviously correct, for a rope ladder soon thereafter is tossed over the class schooner vessel's edge.

_Click Shuffle Click Shuffle_

The sun just begins to peek over the forward deck of the well-worn ocean faring ship, so named the 'Pearl Lady' by her illustrious captain. Although her moniker belied the older vessel's history of bloody, fierce sea battles, in her heyday, the 'Pearl' was widely feared throughout the seven seas she traversed. Boarding and raiding unsuspecting passenger ships, looting and pillaging and plundering its way through the high seas it had circumnavigated the globe in search of ultimate treasure.

For the past three centuries, at least concerning Western culture's waters, the term 'pirate' has made a fearsome name for itself to any soul who traveled the fathomless depths of waters, criss crossed between land masses.

Creative and cunning, charismatic and cruel, this diverse spray of ruthless individuals had been renowned and feared all through the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, when they each made their mark on history, upon the waves with their soaring bravado and antagonistic attitude on their quest for ill-gotten fortune or misplaced fame that each pirate ship captain enjoyed for a specific short-lived period of time in their respective waters.

Though nowadays, clashing with the 19th century's more civilized, God-fearing exploration and implantation of society as newly discovered worlds and unchartered territories become an interest of the past—even to the point of changing the fearsome name of 'pirate' to the more palatably pleased 'privateer' or debonairly dashing 'corsair.'

Neither of which this clinging to past glories, last but not least, scourge of the high seas, Dutch Captain Houtebeen II claimed to be every bit as cruel and crude and rough as his similarly dubbed early buccaneer turned pirate in every true meaning of the word, great-great-grandfather before him, Cornelious Jol. He had been the first in a long line of Dutch seamen, but where son and grandson, and great grandson abandoned the life of piracy on the seas to merely join the Dutch navy as officers commanding it, this aging descendant would be the one closest to keeping their family's revered patriarch alive.

And as ill-luck and crippling accident (plank giving way) would have it, this seafaring Jol would also share something else of his great-grandpappy beyond the big, burly red hair and rough and tumble adventurer's lust—namely his Houtebeen, translated in the Dutch to 'wooden leg.' It was a fitting nickname to his predecessor pegleg and also applied well to this Captain Houtebeen II.

Eyes gaze up as he climbs the rope, seeing by the deck's edge a bit of the wooden notched leg and a menacing sneer that greeted the newcomer, whose able body bragged of its fitness, save for a slightly frostbitten arm as he finishes climbing the rope ladder to throw his long legs over the Pearl Lady's railing to land squarely upon its neatly swabbed deck.

But there was no trace of the peg leg anywhere in sight.

_That old coot can move fast for having only one leg and one eye… _Flynn thinks as he glances about the deck.

"And what took ye so long, Flynn Rider?" A dark skinned, muscular man with a dark moustache and a just as dark brandished pistol, stands in for the over half a century-old patch-eyed peg legged pirate captain and glowers at the handsome thief over the gun's sighting.

"You've had over three days to get the goods, thief. The Cap'n don't be taking too kindly to bein' landlocked and docked for more'n a day's shore leave. Makes 'im reckless." The first mate himself was giving slick Flynn a suspicious once over, the dangerous weapon in his hand still aimed at threatening eye level to Flynn's unflinching head.

"I'm feeling a little restless myself with that weapon trained on me. Do you mind?" Flynn infers, putting his two hands up disarmingly before the first mate, who merely smirks, keeping the gun fixed on him.

"We might be beginnin' to think ye weren't goin' to show up at the third sound of the Pearl Lady's foghorn blasts!" The dark man expounds as he lowers the business end of the firearm ever so slightly.

"Well…here I am. They say third time's the charm." Flynn responds, running off at the mouth as usual with his bravado kicking in when he was feeling stressed.

"Let us go below deck to the Cap'n's quarters. He'll be itchin' to have ye there. I just hope yer luck doesn't run out." The first mate ominously comments as he leads a wary Flynn Rider down into the Pearl Lady's darkened holdings beneath, with naught but the now blocked out moonlight to show the way.

"I'll be warnin' ye, the pegleg's in a foul mood tonight." The dark man whispers in the pitch darkness as he somehow, from years of sea life, identified which door led to his captain's aft cabin and knocked three times, strangely rhythmic upon it.

_Foul is the key word for this place._ Flynn thinks to himself as upon the gruff voiced 'Enter,' he is swept inside the dark quarters of Captain Houtebeen, with all its pungent odors and dank sights.

"Vat took you so long, Rider? Ye not tinkin' of goin' yellow-bellied back on our deal, is ye?" He wipes his reddish, yet now grey beard with the back of his hand before slamming it threateningly on the wooden table he was seated at.

Pointing the fork and rather large knife laid on the table, the Captain seemed to be preparing for a meal as he squints at Flynn with his one good eye.

"Well, you know…stuff happens at weddings. Dancing, kransekake, Snow Queens…" In true 'Flynn-esque' style, he starts rattling off, but that wouldn't fly here as the impatient Dutchman grabs the knife from the table and aims it at Flynn's chattering neck.

"Sit down and be silent! Ye don't speak of food ven Houtebeen hasn't had his breakfast yet!" The aging pirate orders grumpily.

With 'help' from the first mate's firm hand, Flynn obeys and sits with a splat on the chair facing opposite the Captain, feeling rather discomfited to be eyed greedily by a big man wielding a fork and knife hungrily.

"Vere is dat lazy boy?! He's late! Find my breakfast, Job. Don't let dat toff slack off. –Oh, here he is."

Just as the ill-tempered Captain was to blow a grumpy-old-man headgasket open, much to his long suffering, patient first mate's shaking head, the 'lazy boy' in question gives some well-mannered, quick gentle taps to the open door before entering with a balanced tray in hand.

"Pardon my tardiness, Sir." The auburn-haired lad was learning lessons of submission and concession in a hands-on type of way, as he was becoming accustomed to bowing and scraping his noble head to others nowadays.

"I hope this new hashed and browned, sautéed potato recipe with your eggs is to your liking, Captain." Without even lifting his reverent head, Hans still manages to make eye contact with a wide-eyed Flynn, who was mildly surprised to see, on this dirty old pirate ship, a civilized, though hardly well-dressed or cared for, European young man. His flustered hair was askew on his sweaty brow, grease and dirt and food cutting residue left on his tattered shirt sleeves—although through the mess and stains and dark-eyed weariness, there was yet an air of grace (_And sideburns…gotta love the sideburns.)_ about his handsome _(not half as good-looking as me, mind you) _face and thin, worn out good postured stance, even as he bows his way to back out of the Captain's room.

"Mmmhmmm…this is rather tasty. At least dat boy can cook a proper potato. Ye can alvays judge a man by how vell he handles a potato." The Dutch-born captain sentimentally recalls his culture's roots in a momentary bout of nostalgia. He thoughtfully chows down on the new-fangled dish that his cook/cabin boy/deckhand/slave just invented.

"Now there's a proverb to stick to a man's ribs." Flynn's sarcastic joke goes not well-received though. The Captain's short turn of good humor at the delicious meal he was enjoying evaporated in an ephemeral seafoam cloud.

"Ye do not please me! Ye scabbanes dog!" The anger rose in this Houtebeen's face and was in contrast to his fading mass of graying red long hair and beard as he ferociously shoves the remainder of his meal—plate and eggs and tasty hash browns and all—to the floor, as he seethes at Flynn.

"I have this strange effect on people." Flynn murmurs at his own personality flaws, with a frown, then recovers swiftly.

"Soooo, here's your silly trinket. I've kept my end of the deal, as a gentleman thief. So I expect you to keep yours as a…you know…'gentleman' of the high seas and leave Corona's king and queen alone in peace. And we'll just call it a day." Flynn prattles as he carefully unwraps from his satchel Arendelle's treasured Orb thingy and plunks it on the table with a hopeful smile.

The rounded gold and Christian cross decorated relic of blessed St. Olaf gleams in the few rays of sun just piercing through the cabin's aft windows to give the ancient eight centuries' old artifact a glow of holiness, so much so that First Mate Job, still watching silently in skulking shadows, gasps and makes the sign of the cross in deference.

"Ja! Aye! Dis is a key piece to de puzzle! Yes, all should be revealed here." Captain Houtebeen's bedazzled eye glimmers as he delicately scoops up the jewel-encrusted gold artifact and begins to study its outside perimeter critically as he holds it up to the rising morning sunlight.

"Great! I'm glad you like it! Fits right in with your décor here…and since you got what you wanted, and promised to give me what I want…I'll go now and we'll hopefully have to never see one another again." Oozing charm to cover up his nerves, Flynn gets up from his chair and starts talking his back out of a corner, so to speak, aware that the ship's first mate, the big muscular dark man named 'Job,' was still blocking the passage.

"Aye, ye young scalliwag. Cap'n Houtebeen is a man of his word!" The yellow, partially attended toohy grin on the old pirate makes Flynn both smile and cringe at the sheer hideousness of the creature.

But as long as the old geezer was so taken with that Orb, it'd be all clear sailing from here. Excepting—

_Or not._

"Ye've not been a man of yours, ye filthy, lying, double-crossing, dirty cur!"

Flynn had no idea how a man with only one leg could maneuver so swiftly, but Flynn was laid out flat, with his back to the wall, as the merry, greedy grin on Houtebeen's face just moments ago, warps into a menacing one-eyed glower directly in Flynn's face.

_Breath mint, anyone?_

"What have ye done wit de royal scepter? Our deal vas for dat piece, too! If yer holdin' out on me, I'll swear I'll tear ye heart out and feed it to me pet piranhas, here." With unbelievable force, the aged Captain slams Flynn against his pride and joy fish tank—which housed several full grown and fully hungry flesh eating predator fish of the deep sea.

"Yes, me boyos, he does look a tasty treat, don't he?" Houtebeen torments Flynn by discussing his demise with the eagerly hopping in and out of their water tank piranha fishies.

He motions for Job to press Flynn's head dangerously close to the tank's water surface.

"L-look, wait! I don't have it—I swear! Get me up!" Flynn cries out as he feels the grazing teeth of one high-jumping fish on his poor, stubbly chin. Job's strong arm, after a glance to his Captain, stiffens and relents, yet holds Flynn in place.

"Well, master thief, how did dat particular valuable piece get left behind? The pair of relics have alvays been kept together in dat kingdom."

"Have my sources of yer alleged skills as a thief been wrong? Don't be sayin' ye merely forgot de scepter, ye blackguard!" The Captain cruelly quizzes the man now firmly clutched by Job's strong arm as he's permitted to stand again, to face the angered Captain in the one eye.

"I didn't forget it. Look, I had both pieces for you in my hand. But when I was shot at, I had to drop the Scepter. I kept going with the Orb, as not to get caught, so you'd have at least one item, okay? Simple enough." Flynn answers honestly.

"Ye lying dog! If ye're shot at by de guards, de alarm would've got out across de kingdom! And it hasn't yet, for yer arrest, has it? Yer story be soundin' fishier and fishier to me, Flynn Rider." Captain Houtebeen motions for Job to push Flynn back down toward the fish tank's danger and this time, all the way.

"I don't know! Maybe they don't want the publicity of losing such legendary regalia." His garrulous mouth tries to stall. "Maybe word gets out slower here…"

Job shakes his head and continues to plunge Flynn downwards and he already started to feel the jaws of death salivating greedily for him.

"Maybe the Queen didn't want to tell anyone that she tried to shoot me down!" Though hysterically desperate to save his face (_and beautiful nose_) from being devoured by the ravenous critters as Job continues to press harder towards dunking the struggling man headfirst under the waters, Flynn almost whispers that last excuse.

He was almost reasoning inside his own head that a good, loving cousin like Elsa may just rather cover up his misdeeds than confess them to her poor, beleaguered cousin that he claimed as his wife.

_Rapunzel, you married a scumbag, you know that? Might not need to worry about me embarrassing you much longer, though…_

He smiles at the thought of her, despite the dire circumstances of Job's large, powerful hand around his neck.

"Ye say de Queen of Arendelle herself was de one who spotted and attacked ye?" Houtebeen raises a hand for Job to pause again, out of curiosity. "Vat sort of high and mighty monarchy has dere Queen armed and dangerous at all hours of de night in a church wit no guards to protect her?" Captain Houtebeen has seen many a fierce battle, even concerning and Kings and Queens within their ship cabins on vessels he's raided.

But he'd yet to see one toff-nosed snob of a royal house lift a weapon at him, never mind fire it.

"Let's just suffice it say that Queen Elsa doesn't need anyone else's protection. She's got her own back and I wouldn't mess with her if I were you." Flynn adds, wishing that piranha had bitten his rambling tongue first.

But this pirate had been spending most of his time in Caribbean waters and had not heard the rumors yet of the 'Snow Queen.'

"Interesting kingdom…with a dangerous Queen in charge…a clever lady…" Captain Houtebeen strokes his grey beard as the wheels and rudders in his mind slowly turn over the decision to seek and destroy this mysterious woman, who could best a well-known master thief at his own quickness and cunning, to claim the missing item.

But fortunately for Elsa and her innocent Arendelle, the rising sun on the shining waters of the fjord illuminate the Orb that the Captain was brooding over. His examining eye catches a symbol well researched that indicated a secret button latch upon its surface.

"Voila!" The world traveled man cries out and with unmitigated joy, the golden Orb, so weighty and balanced, it appeared to be made of solid gold, pops open its lid to reveal a fist sized stone with an array of ancient carvings upon its granite rock—symbols and runes placed on the stone in a pattern that could only mean, to a trained eye—a map.

Captain Houtebeen, the aging pirate, had plundered and tortured and ruthlessly desecrated holy areas to move heaven and earth for such a find.

"Luck be smilin' on ye, thief, for the scepter is unnecessary it seems. Everyting I need is right here. Job! Hoist de sails. Weigh de anchors. But first, put dis cur in de brig."

"Heey~!" Flynn cries out as he's now shoved towards the door.

"He's only fulfilled half our bargain, so I've work fer him yet. But fer now, I have vat I vanted…"

The capable one man crew of Job silently does as instructed. He strong-arms a smart-enough-to-know-when-one-was-bested-by-a-larger-man-who-had-the-savvy-to-keep-Flynn's-'magic'-hands-bound-the-entire-journey-down-to-the-ship's-bilges Flynn, and into the brig where he is unceremoniously tossed to the ground and locked in a cage. Job adds several extra deadbolt locks to stymie the master thief from thinking he could ever pick its lock.

"What? No complimentary breakfast in this…eww…well-rated establishment? A man's gotta eat to be good for anything. Even if the scents around here are rather odoriferous for my usually dietary—ouch…!" Flynn wrinkles his nose from the smelly dirt floor it was rudely shoved against.

_Always the nose…_

He struggles to get up after his tall, big captor ensures his submission by roping his legs together tightly as well.

"I'll see what I can do, _Master." _Slapping a pair of metal handcuffs around Flynn's wrists, the former slave turned mercenary gives the cynical man, prone on the floor a lordly smirk as he then proficiently adds the deadlock on the cell door. He purposely pockets the skeleton keys of the multiple locks, securing the stall cage door, preventing Flynn's escape.

"Whew…! Another fine mess you've gotten yourself into." Once he's alone, Flynn laughs at his penchant for unintentional trouble as he struggles about the filthy floor in an attempt to loosen his bindings.

"Whew, that big guy can tie a whopper of a knot!" The stubble-chinned man whistles under his breath. His nimble, thieving fingers were trying their darndest to free his tied legs, but to no avail.

"Argh! Now what?" Flynn thrashes about in vain to free his legs, then closes his eyes to recall his backup plan, for when everything went wrong, that he always had on hand.

Some time passes with no sound but the crashing waves as the old pirate ship leaves dock.

"Nope. Nada. Nothing. All that wedding cake and wine and partying last night is really slowing me down. Either that or I'm just getting too old for this kind of—wahhhh!"

After giving himself a good talking to as 31 year 'old man' Flynn Rider was wont to run off at the mouth at all times—even troubled ones.

His eyes snap open to see a fellow cell occupant staring straight back at him, dead in the eye.

And when we say 'dead', this other caged prisoner was reduced to nothing more than a skeleton. The bony skull of which, poor unlucky Flynn had ended up in his wriggling, to be mere centimeters from, face to face.

"That's not even remotely funny." He comments on the side to no one, giving his skeleton friend, who cheerily was displaying what was in Flynn's future, a rolled-eye smirk.

"I've gotta find a way outta here! Before I go stir crazy!" The free spirit of liberated man Flynn Rider valued his freedom and independence more than anything.

_That and my girl, Blondie…who freely gave me that freedom. _

_And I just threw it away._

"What are you laughing at, Smiley?!" A frustrated Flynn so dubs the nameless skeleton head, whose jaw did seem to be in a rather jocular position (if your imagination got away with you in the darkness, that is).

"He always looks like that." A calm voice cuts through the brig's still darkness. Flynn's ears prick up as he hears keys being turned and cage door being opened.

"Even if you tell him a bad joke."

Flynn's eyes struggle against the single lamp lighted in the filmy blackness at the man who entered, balancing along with him a rather full tray of food and drink—silver service, dainty folded napkin, golden teapot and all.

"Whoa! Maybe I shouldn't have lodged a complaint with the management here, after all! Where did you learn to serve a meal like this, pall? Not onboard a pirate schooner, I dare say." Flynn sits up, with some difficulty, and again takes notice of the puzzling cabin boy/ship's cook he had seen serve breakfast to that rascally one-eyed peg leg earlier.

"I dare say." The handsome, young man answers pleasantly, yet reflectively rhetorical. He quietly changes the unhappy subject as he clears a makeshift table and places the tray upon it, spreading out the flatware and tea service as if attending to royalty.

"Do you take one lump or two in your tea?"

Flynn was starting to be able to make out the features of his new 'jailer' as his eyes adjusted to the dim lamplight.

The man wasn't much more than in his mid-twenties, though he had all the airs and graces of a gent of forty. His oval face, surrounded a shock of auburn brown hair, complete with sideburns, was pulled back into a tidy little ponytail, though his eyes looked sad and worn with worry.

Yet still, his high cheekbones, long straight nose and strong chin were undeniably of proud heritage.

_Not too bad looking a fella behind that girly apron. A snob for sure, but I won't hold that against him._

Flynn muses as the man cuts off the rope at his feet to pull up a small stool to the upside down wooden bucket table and motions for him to sit.

"Five stars for your exquisite dinner setting, handsome. But I don't think silverware and I will be exactly 'sympatico.'" Flynn holds his cuffed and bound hands up to the light.

"Well…"

The man seemed to be turning the consequences over in his mind. Flynn's eyebrows were raised hopefully up at him.

"Are you predominantly right handed or left handed, Sir?"

_Strange question. Okay…_

Flynn's right eyebrow cocks ruefully as he decides to play it out.

"Right handed like most regular blokes." Flynn answers nonchalantly, warily eyeing his captor.

"Fine." The cabin boy purposely displays the handcuffed keys before Flynn's eager face. "If you promise, as a gentleman, not to endeavor to escape from this prison cell—"

"Ohhh, I do, I do, I do! I mean, heck no, I won't go. You can trust me, buddy. Scouts honor." Flynn gives his lenient companion his most charming smile, banging his own precious nose with the handcuffs in an attempt to salute like a good, little obedient soldier.

"Good…as long as we have one another's utmost trust." He unlocks a handcuff until the ratchet falls and unhinges Flynn's left hand and it was free.

But much to Flynn's chagrin, the man clamps the loose end of the cuff he'd just removed, still attached to his right hand, to one of the cell bars above the 'table' and places a fork in Flynn's shocked left hand instead.

"Now. Was that one or two sugars in your tea? Do eat while your hash browns and eggs are somewhat warm."

Flynn just looks up at him and blinks with his mouth hanging open. Then he smrks.

"What would you say if I told you I was lying when I said I was right handed?" Flynn clutches the fork and spins it around in his deft fingers as if wielding a weapon, struggling to gain the key ring from the turnkey's belt strap, as he hooks the fork into his opponent's loose apron strings about his neck, yanking his head towards the metal bars with a bang.

"It wouldn't matter because I know you are truly ambidextrous as well as an inherent liar." The self-possessed, observant auburn haired man grunts out, rubbing his bashed, aching head with his right hand, after dropping the cup of hot tea in it to the table. (Thoroughly ruining the fine eggs and hash browned potatoes meal—_alas.)_

"Unfortunately for you—" The cabin boy and master thief were about to be at a standstill in one hand to one hand close quarters combat, as Flynn's forked hand is surprisingly thwarted by the slighter man's strategy of quickly pulling his head through the apron that Flynn was yet fork-entangled in.

He then spins the thin cloth around and around the cell bars, until Flynn was completely pinned to it and now both his appendages were bound to the cell.

"—so am I." When he finishes his swift victory with a flourishing, haughty bow, his fully functional left hand shows off as he uses it to pour another cup of the scalding hot tea from the heavy off balance pot and set it down on the soggy table as his right hand simultaneously lets himself out of the cell and uses too useful left hand to tightly shut every lock with a ring full of skeleton keys galore.

"What? _cough cough_ Ambidextrous? - Or a liar?" Flynn, even in humiliation of his face pinned against the cold, iron bars, both hands fettered, shackled and restrained, recognized that he might have just met his equal in cunning, ingenuity, and ruthless hand to hand combat.

"Hmph…I deserved that." Comes the thoughtful, remorseful reply. "Touche'". He concedes, and turns back to loosen the fast slipknot he had tied the apron strings around Flynn's one free arm and neck, catching the guilty fork with his confessed ambidextrous other hand as he does so.

He hands the cutlery back to a sore necked, but otherwise uninjured Flynn through the cell bars and offers him a conciliatory smile.

"By the way, my name is Hans Westergaard. Not that it matters to anyone anymore."

Hans sticks his hand through the bars in gentlemanly greeting. Their little scrap didn't deflate his opinion of this man one iota—in fact, some respect was earned on both sides this strange morn.

"Flynn Rider." He eyes the hand of the apparent nobleman before shaking it.

"I take four lumps. I prefer things sweet." Flynn utilizes his one free hand to plunk four sugar cubes into his tea cup, letting the brew mix as he swirls the dark waters around.


	6. Chapter 5 - Chin up, Sailor!

We do not own "Frozen" nor any of its characters.

**"Frozen Again: 'But The Greatest of These is Love'"**

**Act I**

**Chapter 5**

"**Chin Up, Sailor"**

As the Pearl Lady begins to move quickly across the waters beyond the Arendelle fjord with the new morning's wind in its sails, and a stolen map in its Captain's vile hands, the kingdom's Queen stands at the Castle's balcony to watch it go with a deep heaviness in her heaving breast.

She sensed inside that this was the ship taking her country's treasure along with Eugene away with it across the sea.

_Should I give chase to retrieve our nation's relics into the wild unknown? Or must I remain here at my post—steady and sure and forever shamed? Who can I tell of what occurred last night? Who should I ask for counsel and assistance? Faithful Kai? Loyal Johanne? Or truehearted Gerda? All three of them would think of my own personal safety first and only—after all, that's what those dear, sweet people have always done for Anna and I. I wish you were here, Anna. You'd know what to do…_

_Well, at least we'd be doing it together, whatever we decided. But I remember that Papa said there are times a good leader must stand up and be counted. Even when the dangers ahead are innumerable, if it is God's will, we will succeed. _

_Isn't that the lesson valiant St. Olaf fought for, died for, was martyred for, as he allowed God to determine his path._

"Dear Lord, please guide my path. Although it may be a difficult road you choose for me, I will bravely face this pilgrimage as would my father before me, to restore Arendelle's heritage."

Elsa had fallen to her knees in fervent prayer at the symbolized cross and statues placed reverently on her night table. Both her hands cling to the Scepter belonging to their revered St. Olaf as she steels her mind and heart to keep her immense powers roiling inside her emotions in check, just as she has been training to be able to do and take on this terrifying new task alone.

No guards nor soldiers of the realm could be involved in this tawdry affair of betrayal she'd rather be kept secret, especially fromhis—

"Knock Knock! Oh, sorry for just barging in, Elsa. That sure sounds like a pretty intense prayer first thing in the morning. Wow! You guys really know how to give praise and glory to God around here! Gotta try that when we get back home. It must be wonderful to be so…I don't know…assured. Well, it looks like it's really working for you, so I'll leave you to it. Sorry…!" A cheery, bubbly and overtalkative cousin Rapunzel, the very person Elsa did not want to be confronted with just now, innocently pokes her cute little nose in Elsa's bedroom door, mistaking her relation's soulful agitation for devout prayerful customs.

"No, not at all, Cousin Rapunzel. I'm fine. I was just finished. Is there something you wish to see me about? Are you all right?" Elsa switches her question with a more sisterly smile, still working on that 'human approach' her more demonstrative younger sibling was always egging her 'stiffness' about.

But years of lonely study, of proper etiquette and form, in practical solitude, cut off from the normalcy of informal human idiosyncrasies in behavior could do that to a girl.

"Ummm…" Rapunzel was, like Anna, an expressive young female, sometimes in need of an outlet for her surging emotions. And she was just about ready to unload after a night filled with self-recriminations and anxiety. "Have you seen Eugene around anywhere? I've been looking everywhere for him. I mean, after the wedding and the reception and then we saw Anna and Kristoff off in their sled, and then we all went back inside. But Eugene said he needed to take a walk and get some air…And I just said 'Okay.' I just said _okay_…" She repeats emotionally.

"He never came back to our room. He never came to bed. I was waiting up for him all night. Do you think…do you think he's okay? Do you think he got lost or even worse, hurt out there? On this own? Do you think-" Rapunzel lets all her pent-up emotional fearful rant spill over with the tears that accompanied her small, insecure voice nearing the end of her tiny percentage of a questioning heart. For her beloved Eugene was acting peculiarly lately—all secretive and disappearing for days on end and never explaining why.

Hence the tension between them as of late.

But none of that mattered to her anymore. Not the strained silences, not the curious awkwardness, not the hurtful secrets that'd been bothering her still, at times, insecure mind.

She just wanted to have him back! The way they were before, for the past five happy, glorious unbelievably wonderful years together.

Rapunzel just wanted to love him again, unquestioningly, as young love should be.

_I should have trusted you. I shouldn't have asked so many times where you'd been…_

That initial argument from some two months ago that started all this unease and discomfort between the previously crazy-in-love pair weighs heavily on her heart.

"Do you think Eugene left me?" The tiniest voice of them all speaks of the once self-assured girl's fractured state of mind. Rapunzel overcome with emotion, bursts out in the unmitigated tears she's been trying to hide from everybody of the lonely aching idea of her funny, clever, beautiful Eugene, her best of friends, her affectionate, teasing ardent lover abandoning her when she needs him the most.

_I'm so scared to be without you anymore, Eugene._

"NO! No, my darling. He would never, ever leave you."

As she moves to tenderly hug her weeping friend and cousin close, hot tears fall to her once cold chest, Elsa discovers that her no longer frozen heart was compassionate and warm enough to truly empathize with someone she and Anna had become as close to as another sister.

She feels Rapunzel's pain intensely, especially since she herself had personal knowledge of Eugene's 'activities' the previous night. Though she didn't understand at all his reasons or motives for stealing Arendelle's crown jewels, so to speak, Elsa did clearly see love and deep caring for his wife plain in his eyes and in his touching words of the last message he wanted expressed to Rapunzel.

"Eugene loves you too much to just let you go. Anyone can see how much he cares for you, in his eyes." She explains, stopping to wipe the tears from the girl in her arms.

"Really…?" Rapunzel needed that type of assurance right now—a glimmer of hope peeking through her clouded with self-doubt and worry eyes. Pascal, who had been seated on her lap, his pupils large and sympathetic, changes his skin to a melancholy blue shade.

"Really." Elsa smiles, on the verge of backing down on her own decision to pursue the criminal thief in order to retrieve St. Olaf's Holy Orb. The Queen was already set to grant amnesty to the poor misled man who took it right before her eyes, and a full pardon when he returned—with or without the golden bauble, if it meant he would reunite with his adoring, wonderful, loving wife again.

"I even heard him say that you are still his dream. Wasn't that a sweet thing to sa—" Elsa hardly expected such a romantic notion of sentimental phrasing to cause such a violent response from her older cousin, as Rapunzel abruptly yanks her crying head back and gasps, grasping Elsa's shoulders with a pair of tensed, clawing hands.

"_**What **_did he say?! Elsa! Repeat to me exactly what Eugene said to you!" Rapunzel was near hysterical as she nearly shakes the arms of her taller relative out of their sockets. Poor forgotten Pascal skittered to the floor in her panic.

For all the noise her cousin was making, Elsa was grateful it was Gerda's noisy washing day. The dear woman always had a song on her lips when doing the laundry and it was loud enough to fill the palace, too.

Every one of her palace guards would have come running at the frantic tone of Rapunzel's panicked voice.

"It was just that! I—uh, let me see…he said…'Tell her that she's still my dream.' That's all. What is wrong with that statement, Rapunzel? What does it mean?" Elsa shivers at the effect those seven simple words had on the chestnut brown haired girl. The Queen herself was now starting to become alarmed.

"It means Eugene's in danger. And he doesn't think he's gonna make it back to me! Oh, Eugene! Wait for me, I'm coming! Elsa, we have to find him! Please help me! We have to save him!" Alerted by those few words to full panic mode, for she knew her love so well after all, Rapunzel starts dashing about the room like a madwoman, because the last time her husband had uttered those particular, sincere words—it was on his deathbed.

And the near tragic self-sacrificial scene replays in Rapunzel's chaotic mind, over and over until her entire body was shaking with fear for his safety, as she clutches at the damnably short cropped strands of her powerless, magic-defunct hair.

But she wasn't the only royal princess here in this room that was born—no, blessed—with mysterious magic running through her imperturbable veins. She was full of reined in passion, duty, sisterly devotion, and yes—yes, there was even repressed love.

_Perhaps I have a dream, too…_

A vision of vulnerable green eyes in her mind's eye, Elsa holds the Royal Scepter high as both women stand on the balcony to gaze at the ship sailing beyond the horizon…

* * *

Summer's tropical fruits of coconuts and mangoes and the like line the sands surrounding the blanket laid upon the summer beach's hot burning summer sand.

The shining blue waves gently crash to the shore as the summer wind's breeze across the sun-drenched morning's summer landscape.

Summer seagulls rhythmically caw their contentment with the peaceful ocean-meets-sand world below the perfect summer sky.

Is it me or do you see a certain seasonal pattern here?

"Doo da dee da do de…" Sitting in a colorful, floating raft, rubber ducky in tow, orange sliced ice drink in hand, Olaf the snowman suns himself on a little cove inlet on the fjord that had been created just for him by his dear friends at the castle for his turning two years old birthday present.

"I'm two years old this year! Yippee! I think I've grown a lot already since my birthday last week. I'm gonna be a big snowman soon, when I get even bigger and taller, I'll be an even happier snowman! Oh, oh! Maybe I'll need a better, bigger, snowier, personal flurry! I can't wait till Anna gets back to see me. She'll think I've grown so big!" Olaf was humming blissfully to himself with these delusional self-satisfying thoughts, wishing he had brought a ruler or measuring tape to gauge his stretching what must be inches taller already, heightened form. He pokes upwards with a stick hand at his now believed 'tiny' snow cloud that would no longer be adequately icy enough to match his 'humongous' birthday growth spurt.

"I'll talk to Elsa about getting me an upgrade." Olaf listlessly sways back and forth as he dips his fingers in the warm waters at the fjord's shore edge. "I love summer…" He deliriously announces aloud to the sun and sky above his prone form (and not melting, courtesy of tiny snow flurry) and puts his dark sunglasses over his eyes for a morning siesta while happy dreams are made on his new raft upon the gently swaying, still waters.

But this pleasant, idyllic summer world for a dreamer of a snowman was about to come to a chilling end.

Happy Olaf, daydreaming Olaf, drooling Olaf, lazily sips his tall glass of fruity beverage from a pink flamingo shaped straw as his raft calmly floats along the currents before he dozes off. Eyes closed tight for a summer nap, he was having so much fun in the sun as he hums a tune, spinning in circles, his wooden arm serving as a rudder—that Olaf fails to notice his multi-colored floating device was getting caught in the swirling current's downdraft. The indiscriminate waters were pulling him towards the docks…

* * *

"Psst! Psst! Elsa! Psst!" Rapunzel's hissed whisper was a littler louder in volume than she intended as she hunkers down behind a set of barrels perched at the dock's edge for their pick up.

If anyone had seen her, they surely would not have recognized the pretty brunette princess of Corona. Her already short hair (that Flynn Rider is a darn good hairdresser, amongst other desirable traits) had been chopped even shorter. She was wearing a pair of tall white knicker stockings pulled up over her grey trouser pants. Her plain, brown button-up shirt covered her tied down bust and loose fitting open vest made her look rather peasant rustic, plainly casual—and definitely boyish.

The drab colors of her attire helped, but the clincher for anyone to believe the wide-eyed cutie was not of the female variety was the loosely, and quite artistically placed, if I do say so myself, dark red bandanna draped across her forehead and draped over her ear as if to shield a painted on, partly revealed scar injury across her eyelid and down her made-up to be more manly toned, cheek.

Her other eye's squint was easily passable as a scrapper of a young boy in his barefooted teens.

"Who are ye callin' for, boy? Shouldn't ye be in schoolin', this fine morn?" A toothy old man roughly grabs the incognito Rapunzel by her shoulder and spins her around accusingly for playing truant.

"Ohhhh! I mean…uh, yeah, you bet, Mister. _cough cough"_ The startled girl remembers to suddenly change her rather high-pitched girlish voice to a rather lower toned masculine one. She succeeded more in her theatrical delivery than her vocal levels.

"What's wrong with ye, young fella? Sore throat's gotcha? Nothing catchin', I hope." The busybodied old coot suddenly recoils. His hypochondriac phobia of contagious disease lets go of her arm as if it were plagued and begins to back away. He suspiciously eyes her dilapidated face cover and slight, perhaps leperous, form getting to his overactive imagination full of newly discovered germs and sickness—all leading to death.

"No! Err, nope, I mean…" Pascal the chameleon peeks out from inside his girl's vest pocket, vacillating his colors with her every word, as the man cocks his head at her fishy story.

A flustered Rapunzel starts to freeze up, right at the start of their journey. She stares at her bare feet, toes facing in, looking for a good excuse to dream up.

"Clear the way, Sir! This boy's skin mustn't be touched by anyone not yet vaccinated." The deep bellowed voice held a command that captures the older gentleman's attention immediately. The tall, blonde haired pale young man with a golden moustache, donning a cap and uniform of a commanding officer in the Norwegian navy, owned all the confident airs of an urbane, self-possessed gentleman.

The man who was an old soldier at heart yet, stands his bent over back up straight to salute this far more convincing male presence.

"As you were." Elsa, yes, our elegantly graceful poised and aesthetically feminine fetching Queen of Arendelle—was posing as a lower timbred, well polished authoritatively impressive at her five foot ten inch height male naval officer.

And doing a fine darn good job of it, too.

Her calm, inner reserve and great powers of observation served her acting skills well today. Her long flowing hair was knotted beneath her naval hat's disguise.

"Come, boy. The ship is awaiting your immediate voyage." Elsa assuredly salutes back to the harbor man before leading 'boy' Rapunzel away by the elbow towards the dock where several ships were preparing for early morning departure.

Pascal sticks his tongue out at the nasty man who sticks his tongue right back as they walk away.

"That was absolutely amazing, Elsa! And here I thought I'd be better at this—knowing a thing or two more about men's behavior, having had one around all the time to study…" A reflectively melancholic Rapunzel trails off in her mumbled accolade for Elsa's compelling performance back there, as the pair of 'ladies' walk towards a certain docked ship with blue, deep red and white flag colors flying—the Saltine and Canton symbol of the royal Norwegian navy.

"Just remember to keep your tone low and even at all times. And take long purposeful strides forward—rather than short, clipped steps when you walk." Though secretly petrified herself of boarding a sea vessel, Elsa helpfully instructs her elder, yet not wiser, cousin under her breath and false moustache.

Rapunzel did her best not to laugh at the tall, beautiful, sophisticated woman now sporting a distinctly male feature such as facial hair. Elsa resembled her father greatly from the portrait Rapunzel had seen in the portrait room of the castle.

She herself attempts to improve her stride in longer steps—a difficult thing to do in the ill-fitting footwear of men's boots she pauses to yank on. They had been stuffed with stockings to add to her short height.

"Let me do all the talking once we get onboard the ship. My father taught me everything there is to know about the Navy. In his youth, he was an officer on board this very ship, after all, and I think I still know someone here."

The girl whose veins once ran cold with ice gazes fondly down at the dark navy blue uniform she was proudly wearing. It had belonged to the most wonderful, most noble, most gallant and valorous man who'd ever lived—and she wished her dear father was still alive right now to tell her if she was doing the correct thing.

_So all I can do is pray._

* * *

"Permission to board the Valborg, for inspection, Ensign?" After giving and receiving a proper salute, Elsa feels nostalgic, for she had last visited this very same ship a long time ago, when she was a small, small girl with her father, the King, who had been awarding medals and commendations in a ceremony for the crewmembers valor in sea battle.

She remembers every little detail of that day—from that serious expression on the Kommander's face which turned a kind eye to smile at the young girl and tickle her chin, as her father, looking handsome and regal in his own Lieutenant Colonel Oberst garb commended the Kommander/Captain's service and loyalty to the Crown.

Though she was very young then, Elsa could still see the naval seamen all standing at attention, down to each Loytnant (Lieutenant) or Fenric (Ensign), looking with eager eyes as her dignified parent waved the holy scepter of St. Olaf over the Captain and his vessel in blessing and symbolism of their nation's dominion over the seas the ship sailed upon.

"Permission granted, Sir!" Though confused about the inspection date being ahead of schedule—strange too, just on the verge of the ship's deployment—the new recruit was intelligent enough to recognize a commanding officer by his uniform's markings and the multitudes of bars and stripes adorning Elsa's jacket, earned respect enough not to be questioned.

"As you were." Elsa's deepened voice and distinguished attitude instilled confidence to whomever she spoke. Each lower ranked officer gave her deference until she is led to the Captain's planning room, near the bridge of the vessel. She motions for Rapunzel to remain outside the bridge's helm, while she enters with a salute at the man inside.

"Kommander Rustung, I know you to be a man of many heroic credential and great consideration from your many years of valued and loyal service to the Crown of Arendelle." Elsa begins her speech before the experience Kommander of the ship could pose a question.

"I thank you…Colonel…for your kind commendations. Although, I am afraid I do not quite recognize your face, though the uniform is strangely befuddling to me." The elder Captain was carefully considering sounding the alarm, for he, as personal friend and former Captain/Kommander of the only officer ranked Lieutenant Colonel, just below his office ever decorated for all three citations of valor above and beyond the call of duty, knew that honorable man to be dead.

"Then, Kommander, I am to rely solely and entirely on your great discretion and willing silence, as I ask you to embark on a special mission." Securing they were all alone, she looks him directly in the eye, still seeing that light of innate kindness aglow there, that told her he was a trustworthy good man still.

With those enigmatic words, Elsa turns around, carefully removing the false moustache, along with the hat which was confining her mass of blonde hair in a tight bun that she releases as she turns around to face Kommander Rustung.

"My Queen…!" The reverent officer bows his head deeply to his Sovereign and she smiles at his expected, dutiful response.

She then lifts his sweet, old chin with a familiar hand.

"I still remember when you did just the same to me, when I was a little girl." Elsa bites back the good childhood memory emotion on her starkly, unmade up and naturally beautiful facial features—especially dazzling when she smiled.

"But… I don't understand? Why all this?" The bewildered captain of the schooner class Valborg queries the girl as she recoils her hair back into a tight bun.

"I don't expect you to understand, because I don't even fully comprehend it. It's all too complicated to explain what must be done—right now. But it must be done in secret." Elsa looks to the gentle man, who had proven to be her father's truest and dearest friend. "I'm just asking you, as a great favor to me, to help me locate a man. Please."

"And who might that man be, my Queen?" Kommander Rustung asks, as Elsa finishes replacing her hat atop her head—her beautiful blond hair hidden once more.

"A good man—like yourself, Sir. A good man who has lost his way, trying to protect the one he loves." Elsa gazes from the ship bridge's wide window to the calm, calm blue sea outside.

Something that glistened there caught her interested eye.

"In that case," he pauses, gazing at the girl in his office with a sight he never thought he'd ever see, standing before him in uniform, looks her up and down critically concerned, then shrugs his dutiful shoulders with his decision.

"I am at your service, Sir."

The Captain salutes his ruler and her pure of heart motives.

"Just as I served with your noble father before you, without a second thought, I would take you to the ends of the earth if you wished it."

"Thank you, my dear Kommander Rustung. Let's hope this journey doesn't prove to be that far-reaching." Elsa smiles a bit wistfull hopeful up at him. "And Kommander,"

"Yes, Queen Elsa?"

"My true identity is to be concealed from the crew…for the time being." She reattaches her 'man making' moustache beneath her nose. "No one must find out I am involved in this endeavor, or all could be lost."

Feeling the great weight of leaving her home country, the Kingdom she and Anna had lived in such a sheltered life, for the first time leaving its shores to travel into the great unknown…

* * *

That 'something' that glistened on the rolling wave of the peaceful sea that disturbed Elsa earlier was so rocked to sleep by the gentle tides that he was snoring.

And nothing was worse than a snowman's snore, for all the air expelled around his mouth turned into ice fractals shimmering in the sun like diamonds that might perchance to pierce and pop the new innovation of a rubber raft he was snoring upon.

Snowman plus warm ocean water, without a raft betwixt, was never a good idea.

But brainless Olaf was not widely known for entertaining good ideas.

* * *

"Well? What did he say?!" Almost tripping in her oversized boots, Rapunzel quickly skirts away from uselessly eavesdropping at the door of the bridge, anxious to hear how Elsa had fared in convincing the schooner's Captain to take the pair along in search of her missing husband.

"Kommander Rustung is a dear, dear old friend." Amidst scanning the waters in the distant east, as they leave the fjord to enter the Skagerrak strait, Elsa smiles encouragingly to Rapunzel, who appeared to be a bit green around the gills already as she suddenly clutches her dizzy head.

"Are you all right?" Elsa asks, concerned, though her mind was being pulled elsewhere in this moment.

"Yeah, oh sorry…Must be a little seasick again. Had it bad on the way here from Corona. Eugene laughed at me at first, but then he was so nice—so warm." Rapunzel fights back both mal la de mer and her own aching torment of being apart from her true love when he was most certainly in peril but it wouldn't become the tough 'boy' she was portraying, to start weeping. Pascal's colors change from pink to puke green on her shoulder in sympathy.

"We're on our way to find him. Just wait right here. Someone needs a wake up call, first." Elsa squeezes Rapunzel's shoulder as she sits her down on a deck bench before weaving between many rushing men on deck, aft and starboard, as she moves to the far end of the craft. All sailors were on hand to ready the vessel to leave the fjord for the strait.

Each man was performing his duty on the newly remodeled, three-mast schooner's deck as they raise the top sail and the gafferigged bowsprit high into the cloudless blue sky with the nation's history of proud naval precision behind them.

Whilst everyone's attention was on getting the ship in shape and Bristol fashioned for its departure, Lieutenant Colonel Elsa finds a rare, quiet spot near the ramp behind some wooden crates beside the life boats where she kneels down, removing one Navy issue white glove of her father's uniform.

_**Zzssht**_

A silent, delicate webbing of ice forms into a net that she expertly manages, with cryogenic powers now at her trained command, to wrap around the occupant of the colorful raft, fortunately yet unseen, in the Valborg sailors' hectic work at the ship's riggings, to scoop him up, just moments before the tiny raft is sucked into the surging pull of the powerful vessel's deadly spinning back steel rotors.

"Huh? What? HEY! What happened to my—?!" Elsa slaps a quick ice muzzle over Olaf's loud mouth as he is rudely awakened, nearly napping through his choppy trip to the Big Sleep.

"Shhhh—! Olaf! Speak more quietly, please." Elsa whispers fiercely, in warning, to the disoriented snowman, swinging in mid air above the crashing waves as her ice magic delivers him over the ship's railing via her frozen net, surrounding his rounded body to land into her reaching arms.

"I love warm hugs!" Olaf happily murmurs into her chest, indulging in the embrace as Elsa hugs the frosty little friend in relieved greeting.

"Olaf, you have to be more careful on your raft. If you float out this far, the ship's engines can pull you in and—" Elsa's cautionary words are hammered home solidly as both she and snowman gaze over the Valborg's rail to see his multi-colored raft and all its creature comforts on board (thankfully, minus one silly snowman) are sucked under its rapidly revolving, back rotor wheel, leaving only a trail of shredded pieces and painted scraps in its wake.

"My new raft…! That was my best birthday present…" Pitiable Olaf stifles a regretful sniffle as his cocktail glass bobs to the water's surface listlessly empty.


	7. Chapter 6 - Ships That Pass in the Night

We do not own "Frozen" nor any of its characters.

**"Frozen Again: 'But The Greatest of These is Love'"**

**Act I**

**Chapter 6**

"**Ships That Pass in the Night"**

As Hans Westergaard emerges from the prisoner's brig kept in the pirate ship's lower bilge decks, he gazes around the kitchen gallery and the tiny connecting area with a single bunk style of bed and simple basic living accommodations he'd been subjected to for the past two years—since his brothers practically sold him as a slave to the highest bidder.

This unpalatable situation reminded him much of the Biblical Old Testament story of Joseph and his clan of jealous brothers who banished their younger sibling into slavery bondage, as Hans was taught in church Sunday school when he was small.

_Ah…why didn't I keep to the lessons I learned then? I was given every opportunity to be a righteous and moral, better man._

Hans remorsefully reflects on the torrid turns and bitter bumps his wicked heart had taken him on. It was a cold and calculating road, as far away from his childhood's church teachings as the Good News of their moral Scriptures he was drilled in as a rebellious young boy could be.

At night, this was always repeating in the dank darkness in the back of his contrite mind. Sometimes only those ethical precious parables that the adult man had rejected in his wanton pursuit of self-worth and ruthless greed, fueled by power hunger, still existed.

_So I hardly can compare my story to Joseph's, besides the fact that I have **twelve** older brothers, not ten and one younger. I'm the unlucky number thirteen. Joseph was always a good man, despite his distressed circumstances. I was exactly the opposite—and just too much of a liar to admit it to myself before…_

Hans hears that Flynn Rider's words from just before as well. Something about the Captain's new prisoner interested him greatly. He couldn't explain exactly why, but he wanted to know more about him.

_Perhaps because he was clever enough to be a worthy match._

"Look at me. Still thinking I'm clever." Hans chuckles to himself, as he stares into the small mirror hung on fishing hooks over the wash basin he used for shaving, primarily. (Even an indentured servant must be clean-shaved and fit to the see the Queen, sideburns and all.)

One impermeable virtue, and perhaps a touch of vanity for his good looks, was still ingrained in the oft-dejected young man's brain.

He examines the slight bruising on the side of his head's cranium and upper cheekbone from the earlier scuffle, and dismisses the light injury, brushing a hand over his mussed and askew hair.

For some reason, in the looking glass, you could see more of the truth about yourself than you could normally see in everyday life.

Hans notes in the reflection his once pristine, white hands—always kept safe beneath unburdened leather gloves—were now worn and tanned, with rough calluses from nonstop physical labor.

Yet somehow he didn't find the hard work so abhorrent anymore, as he first did. And from that fight with the physically fit thief, he serendipitously just discovered that these two years' worth of harsh tasks gave industry to his now strengthened hands that had previously known only hunting and fencing and fishing and the like, for gentleman's sport—all soft and effeminate.

But now, he realized, he could survive without such menial trifling activities, nor servants, nor luxuries—from swabbing the decks, to rinsing the laundry and cooking, of course, to every other mundane domestic task that his spoiled, haughty youth would have never before deemed worthy. He had even learned to rig a ship's mast, weigh anchor and hoist sails when an extra hand was required. All this now made a man out of this mollycoddled 'baby' of the family in small ways that he didn't even recognize with his head to the proverbial plow practically all day and all night aboard this aging ship in servitude of the aging Captain and his 'crew' of just one other able-bodied man—a patient man, suitably named 'Job' to take up the slack.

And though his twelve brothers meant this sort of harsh life as punishment, perhaps in the end, Hans would see—just like Joseph after all—that it was all meant for his good, as God's Hand often worked in mysterious ways, placing the right star in the correct heavens at the right time.

* * *

The stars were indeed aligning as the modern three-masted Naval warship, Valborg's crow's nest lookout spots the ship that fit Elsa's description of the craft she was searching for, as it pulls into the same dock for supplies.

Elsa and Rapunzel and their two companion stowaways, disembark from the Valborg alone, although Kommander Rustung highly voiced his concerns. Elsa was quite certain in her authority, afterwards embracing the older gentleman with a surprise kiss to his cheek as the 'Pearl Lady' docks for its supplies at a port on the mid-Norwegian coastline.

Elsa had insisted Kommander Rustung hold back his vessel from overtaking the smaller, older craft, and to break off the search once she and her friend secured passage onboard.

_By hook or by crook_—or so the saying goes—and Elsa was not quite sure which of these foreboding choice terms she preferred.

"Where's your father's uniform?" Rapunzel whispers in the darkness from beneath her too-long dark hooded cloak as a similarly turned charcoal black Pascal rummages about to find a comfortable nook in the cloak's deep pocketed folds.

"I asked Kommander Rustung to take good care of it." Elsa whispers in the pitch black darkness that she and Rapunzel were both ensconced in.

The stately, tall, beautiful blonde was now wearing a tight black shirt and borrowed tight black pants from the Valborg's vast uniform supplies. Elsa's slinky dark choice originated from the underwater diving section of the clothing department, meant to fit beneath heavy diving gear.

But who would argue with this scintillating Queen in black?

"How are we going to get onboard?" Rapunzel asks, as she watches Elsa finish tying up her hair in a black cap, impressed at how quick change an artist her tall cousin was proving to be. Elsa slinks in the shadows to the pirate ship's edge and back again with her report.

"The ship's getting ready to leave." She says.

"Do you really think Eugene's in there?" The worried wife bites her lip, fearful of what might have befallen her kidnapped love.

"Of course Eugene's in there!" Olaf whispers with enthusiasm. "Who's 'Eugene?'" Fitted out with a black cape and black hood, with cut-out eyeholes of his own, Commando Olaf was a dark sight to see. His pure blizzard white body was deemed too stark against the moonless night that it might be seen. So a quick costume was created for his peculiar sized, two-humps plus head body, by a girl who grew up sewing clothing fashions for strange-bodied little friends in her spare time. Rapunzel had become an expert seamstress whilst waiting for her life to begin.

And right now, her life has taken off in dramatic ways she'd never envisioned.

_Oh, Eugene! Please be okay, okay?!_

Rapunzel takes a deep breath to quell the worry in her queasy stomach as she looks to strong leader Elsa to show them the way to save him.

"Right, this is it." Elsa's cat like eyes had adjusted to the night's dark clouded summer moon above the ship—enough for her to make out the towering, tall form of a dark, well-built man emerge from the lower plank of the Pearl Lady.

Job climbs down the wooden plank he'd just lowered to the dock with large empty casks, flagons and jugs roped around his sturdy shoulders and neck, to be refilled with some certain brand of liquor or 'moonshine' to the Captain's liking.

"We don't know how long that man will be, so we must quickly sneak on board and conceal ourselves somewhere on the ship below deck, where we won't be noticed, so we can begin our search surreptitiously. Silence is life or death here. Olaf, can we trust you to keep quiet at all times, so as not to reveal our whereabouts?" Elsa turns to the weakest link on the talkative chain.

Olaf's two black as coal eyes blink before his branch hands shove themselves up under his hood. The two girls hear the tinkling sounds of an icy zipper now coating his soundless lips.

"I didn't know he could do that." Rapunzel whispers in the pier's still darkness.

"Neither did I." Elsa doesn't waste another thought on Olaf's interesting new aspect for now. Right now, she had other fish to fry. "Follow me." Words thrown over her elegant shoulder, Arendelle's Queen picks up the snowman in black and races like a sleek black panther across the empty docks.

"Okay, I can do that. I think…Eugene could…Come on, Rapunzel!" Rapunzel takes a deep breath and copies her swift as the wind cousin, dashing in and out of the shadows of various structures and posts that were lining the pier, like a frantic gazelle until she too reaches her destination—the dark and foreboding mouth of the pirate ship.

She pauses before its menacing yaw a second before blindly thrusting all of herself—hopes, fears, doubts and faith—into the unknown fearful belly of the proverbial beast with a courage only spawned from her great love.

* * *

In the darkness of the pirate ship's prison hold, a man was hard at work trying to utilize a useless fork. Its clinking sounds of scratching at hard metal were drowned out by the vessel's sounds as it lurches back to life from its short stop at some dock.

"No, no, no, no…! I'm missing my chance!" He furiously twists and spins the already bent fork, poking at his own wrist more than at the uncooperative tumblers. But inside his head, he already knew it was too late to make an escape. The ship was already on its way.

He stops.

"I am really losing my touch." Flynn Rider had, from years of finely honed skills of thievery, trained his left hand to be just as useful as his right, being able to open doors and grab small objects, to picking locks.

_So why is this particular handcuff being so darn persnickety?_

He sighs, slamming back his trapped right hand, still linked to the iron cage bars, in anger.

"That felt good." After a seething fit, Flynn pauses to collect his cool. He gazes down at his still captive, and now painful, right hand sourly. His wrist was raw from the constant pulling and tugging from trying to wriggle out of it. But it was useless.

"This should've been a piece of cake! Come on, lefty! Do your magic finger thing! Stupid hand!" He berates his inadequate appendage, studying its ineffective fingers distraughtly with a frustrated sigh. "Stupid! Stupid…" That exhausted hand rubs his stubbled chin, as was his habit, in an attempt to get his brain's motor started.

However, another piece of metal bound around his fourth left finger, that as bad luck would have it, scrapes against his already bruised jawbone from his hand-to-hand metal bar smashing combat with that guy before.

_I can't believe I was beat by that dandy fop!_

"Ouch! That felt good, too…" Flynn sizzles his breath at the extra pain that the ridges of his wedding band caused as his left hand moved across his battered chin.

Staring at the ring encircling his left fourth ring finger, Flynn lifts his hand in the dim lighting from where he was sitting plopped on the scratchy wooden floor of his prison, his right hand still strung up.

"Rapunzel…Let down your hair…" Flynn Rider, out of options, out of energy, out of luck, allows his distracted mind to reminisce, recalling that tower, that witch, that mirror and his adorable little lady lovely locks, who was willing to sacrifice her freedom to give him his. He lets his pathetic head fall back against the cold bars.

"I don't have any left. Sorry…!"

Was he dreaming? Of course, he had to be hallucinating.

"That's okay, Blondie. Just wanted to say your name aloud, 'cause I miss you badly." He murmurs a smiling answer to his illusionary companion. His eyes were still closed as his head was raised to the ceiling.

"Oh, Eugene! I'm so glad to hear you say that! I'm so glad you were kidnapped and didn't run away from me! I've missed you, too!" But Rapunzel's snaking in arms through the bars, around his shocked neck in a choking embrace was disturbingly real.

Flynn's poor yanked back down body and head, snap around so fast he could've gotten whiplash.

"Rapunzel! What are you doing here?!" He voice reduces furtively, though increasing in frantic state.

"It's me!" She sings out, perky and exuberant, lifting her eye sling so he would recognize her. "We came to save you!" She squeals out triumphantly, waving her arms high in the air, then lowering her volume, after her husband's left hand gives her excited yell a tempered lowered hand gesture.

"…we came to rescue you…" She repeats in a whisper, letting her crimson bandanna fall back in place over her big eyes as Pascal emerges from her dark cloak to squeak through the bars and give a weirded-out Flynn a slow motion, two fingered salute, before going to work on his handcuff's lock. The lizard's entire arm actually slipped into the lock's sticking tumblers.

"When you say 'we,' you're not telling me it's just you and frog, right?"

Locksmith Pascal pauses to give his client a dirty look. Flynn's one eyebrow raises in response at his sardonic expression of hoping for more cavalry than that.

"No, not just us!" Rapunzel's sweet giggle fills the dank prison. "We wouldn't have gotten anywhere nears this far-docks and ships and sailing for days-looking for you without—" Rapunzel begins to rapidly explain the incredible journey, she and one other—not counting Olaf and Pascal, that is—had embarked upon, in search of him.

"Let me guess. Elsa." Flynn's eyes look quizzically up at a dark hooded and cloaked Rapunzel through the bars, both serious and guilty. They then look past her, to the other dark woman, all clad in black, just slinking in to the ship's lower bilge deck, to look around pensively first before her true blue eyes alight on him.

_Quite fetchingly, too, Queenie…_

"Eugene." Neither Flynn nor Elsa were willing to speak freely of the royal theft that brought them both to their present situation on this pirate ship at the moment.

Flynn gleaned, from the way Rapunzel was acting, and what the pirate Captain had stated, that Elsa hadn't shared some of her knowledge with his wife, concerning him.

"Are you hurt? Why did they take you? Oh, Eugene! I've been so worried! I thought I lost you!" Rapunzel was on the verge of tears again. The tough little soldier from before had melted into her overwrought emotions within the harbor of his eyes.

Wanting nothing more than to wrap his weepy girl in his arms, Flynn's one free hand reaches through the bars to touch her cheek. She kisses it to her moist lips as she closes her eyes and presses her relieved head to it. Her hood slips down to reveal her nearly entirely chopped off, short cropped hair—her tomboyish disguise.

"Your hair…?" Flynn was utterly surprised that she had cut her already too short prized possession.

Her eyes become sheepish up at him.

"I love it…" He whispers, running his hand's fingers through her diminished locks, when suddenly his hand, as well as his entire body stiffens. The uncanny sixth sense of a master thief kicks in to feel imminent danger drawing near.

"Rapunzel! Hide!" He orders her in a frenetic whisper and pushes her body back. She quickly takes to her feet at his rare, authoritative command to dash around the far corner and dive into the relative safety of a dusty, dark coal hopper.

"I've only found one other route up to the higher decks behind this—" It was just then that Elsa returns from her scouting reconnaissance expedition. Her serious blue eyes grow wide with fear when she returns to the hold to find Rapunzel gone and Flynn waving a panicked, warning hand of someone coming down the main steps.

Now, there would have been just enough time for her as well to find a covert spot to hide amidst the many strewn wooden crate boxes and barrels, especially since she was wearing all black and able to blend in the dark surroundings—had there not been a stumbling block in the way, namely a black clad snowman named Olaf, waddling in his half-blind hoodie-ness, directly to pause in front of the stairwell opening.

He puts a stick hand over his black balaclava covered mouth when he spots Flynn in his cage. The snowman points to him emphatically, waving up and down.

"Psst! Elsa! Psst! Rapunzel! I think I just found Flynn-er Eugene!" A pleased as punch with himself Olaf, talks out of the side of his crooked zippered mouth.

Elsa had left him on 'guard duty' to alert them if anyone was coming into the cargo hold from where they first entered. She had figured it would be the safest place for the less-than-inconspicuous snow creature.

Olaf had wandered down into the prison bilge deck, (actually, rolled down the ramp by accident) to help hunt for the missing man and have the chance to prove himself a courageous hero.

"Olaf!" Elsa proves her own courage when defending her friends as she runs like a madwoman to frantically scoop up Olaf, push him into an empty rum barrel, and pulls the lid on top most of the way before turning to find herself a concealment when—

"Who goes there?" A hand roughly grabs her startled upper arm from behind. Elsa, cool and collected up to this point, was able to hold back her panic—and thusly her powers—but the cold fear of being apprehended by ruthless pirate men gripped her soul. It was almost too much bear.

"Let me go!" She cries out in a shrill voice. The ice shards instantly build at her fingertips, ready to fire a deadly volley directed at the man's heart.

"_Queen Elsa! Don't be the monster they fear you are!" _

She hears his voice, repeating once again, in her provoked mind.

"Go ahead, goodness knows I deserve it." The voice echoing in her head was the same voice as the man standing before her.

Elsa's wild-with-fright eyes were unable to grasp for a moment the ever-spiraling destiny that God used to shape a human existence.

"Prince…Hans…?" Disoriented and dazed, the frozen ice that permeated her every pore longed to lash out against this despised bearer of evil intent upon her country's Crown, with vicious attacks on herself, and most particularly, the attempted breakage of her Anna's golden, pure, warm heart.

"Especially for what I did to you, Queen Elsa." He recognized the singularly beautiful queen despite her disguised appearance as the woman who haunted his dreams as well.

Hans whispers, as his falls to his knees at her feet. His green eyes tremble back at her, not with fear, but with emotion that spoke more of regret and repentance than any word of apology he's tried to put together for the past two soul-tortured years since they'd last met. He boldly takes her icy hand and presses her cool touch to his forehead.

"Please forgive me." His whisper causes Elsa's entire body to shudder as she gasps for breath, unprepared for this encounter with this purveyor of both nightmare and dream.

The brittle ice rimes formed upon each of her long fingers begin to defrost, as the calm reserve she's been honing to control her cryogenic powers comes into play. She gazes down into Hans' openly humble and well-mannered supplication.

Was this cunning, persuasive man playing her like a fiddle, as he did sweet Anna, in the past? Or was the past in the past? No one understood the need for atonement and restitution more than she.

But before either Elsa or Hans could utter another word of forgiveness or judgement, the eerie sounds of _slide, clunk, slide, clunk_ echo from somewhere not too far behind the ramped doorway Hans had just appeared in.

Hans drinks in Elsa's wide lustrous blue eyes as they dart around to the other room, back to Flynn's cautionary hands and then finally back to Hans in panic.

Hans was fully aware of the extent of the Queen's formidable powers, having seen the vehemence of her crystalline prowess first hand. Certainly her massive skills had only increased since then, so why wouldn't she use them to attack the cruel pirate captain with her deadly ice powers?

_Why didn't she use them to kill me just now? Why not take just revenge on me for my past transgressions?_

Hans' sharp mind could not keep up the multiple questions passing though it. He only knew, from the past two years' astute observance of the way this dirty old man of a wicked pirate would react, to find on board in his possession, not only the Arendelle Crown stolen regalia, but now also the royal Queen herself, come to reclaim her nation's treasures. Hans knew what unspeakable things old peg leg Houtebeen would do to this handsome woman, if he knew who she was. Especially if he knew who she was.

_But I don't believe those lovely eyes would ever hurt anyone purposely again. Too bad, for your own sake._

His own alert eyes glimpse not only Captain Houtebeen, but also strong man Job descending the ramp from about, about to converge on them.

In those few moments he had for reflective thought, circulating around his still savvy, intellectual brain, Prince Hans of the Southern Isles takes thoroughly unexpected action into his own observant, capable hands.

Literally.

He shocks awake Elsa's every single sense by suddenly embracing her lithe, slender body, rendering her stunned utterly speechless as his dissembling handsome face moves in to claim Queen Elsa of Arendelle's first kiss.

And it was not just any kiss. After the first few astounded seconds, each participant of the full mouth liplock throws abandon to the wind. Hans purposely messes her coiffed hair as she wraps a wild arm around his neck, as repressed emotion runs the gauntlet between their recklessly impassioned past. Good and bad collides with dreams and nightmares, as all of her ice melts away with the heat rising between them.

"Boy! Vat is de meaning of dis!? How dare ye sneak dis damsel on board!" The blackguard Captain didn't need much explanation for a lonely seaman's basic necessities, but he didn't permit his minions extra dalliance time on his 'well-run' vessel.

He pushes the breathlessly kissing pair apart with his walking stick.

"Oh, do pardon me, Captain, Sir." _huff huff_ "But, my Elsie…was too…_huff huff_...inconvenienced when the Pearl Lady pulled from that last port after we made up our quarrel. She didn't get the chance to disembark quickly enough."

Hans was as manipulating as ever, when it came to applying himself to a necessary lie. The way he had expertly mussed her tresses made his story believable.

The worldly old Captain's suspicious frown at them transforms into a naughty, simpering grin. He never quite took this stuffy, well-mannered chit of a slave for having his way with the ladies.

And never one so tantalizing as this tall beauty, all clad in black, delectable to this pirate's roving roguish eye.

Putting on his most charming smile, Captain Houtebeen carefully balances himself on one peg leg as he reaches one admiring, grubby, knotted old hand out to tactile touch the beauteous pale maiden. He hadn't glimpsed one so fine, so close up in such a long time…

Just as he expected, Hans could see what was about to happen. He weighed in his calculating mind the consequences if he were to gallantly intercede—

_**WHACK!**_

Hans is flabbergasted by quick Elsa's fierce slapping hand, connecting violently with _his_ surprised cheek, rather than striking the odious Captain to fend off any unwanted attentions.

"Ohh! She's a sprightly one! Ha ha! Ye'll have yer hands busy wit dis lively lass, me boy. Me reckons ye could use yer little bit o' spirit to put some vigor in those pallid cheeks, ye rakish roustabout! Ha ha! Ye're such a hard workin' lad and good cook. Yer Captain can see his way to givin' ye a scullery maid for de galley…and a bit of fluff on de side for ye, poor lad. Dis lovely lady will work off her fare for passage on board de ship for whatever services we require, ye smarmy bilge rat! Take her down to the galley and put her sassy hands to the washing up. Just don't let it affect yer cookin' for me or we'll toss yer pretty guttersnipe overboard, ye hear me? And don't ye say to any sailor, Cap'n Houtebeen ain't been kind to his crew! Har har ha!"

After a blinking second to absorb all that just happened and marvel at what Elsa had ingeniously achieved, Hans Westergaard, master manipulator, had been upped one by a Queen. Hans touches an astounded hand to his long-fingered impressioned red cheek as the chuckling, maniacal Captain pushes his way between the reticent shocked pair of reunited 'lovers'.

Hans had to give Elsa some extra credit for managing that situation even more than even he envisioned.

Elsa, for her part, was both part exhilarated from the successful con, and part mortified at her own out-of-control unleashed passions in that impromptu kiss she just shared with that insipid man who would now add his exciting kiss to her nightly dreams as well.

_Anyway…_

A flustered Elsa gives the self-possessed man, who had been studying her confused face, a deer in the headlights look, before turning to follow the old pirate back into the prison bilge area, where he was headed to speak with Flynn.

She was afraid Rapunzel would get caught on her own.

"Captain said you two belong in the galley. Not here. So GO!" Job's deep voice bellows as he comes out of nowhere—as he always did, unheard and unseen, from the edges of darkness to ensure Captain Houtebeen's orders were carried out.

Though protective Elsa was unwilling, Hans understood that Job's words shouldn't be questioned, if you were wise, as he gives the young woman before him a faint smile and a tug on her elegant arm to lead her up the ramp into the nearby pleasurable, pungent world he's been enslaved to—his deep, dark, dank kitchen.

"Please sit down. I'll make you something to eat." He politely offers as they enter the galley. Elsa gazes down incredulously at the squalid living conditions this haughty, high-class prince had been enduring. Her eyes land upon him in a newly awakening light.

"Don't worry, I won't let them hurt you." He says in an even tone, as he cracks a few eggs into a sizzling frying pan.


	8. Chapter 7 - Hidden Treasures

We do not own "Frozen" nor any of its characters.

**"Frozen Again: 'But The Greatest of These is Love'"**

**Act I**

**Chapter 7**

"**Hidden Treasures"**

"Soo…to what do I owe this pleasant visit from the big man himself to my humble abode?" Flynn Rider drawls in his off-hand style, in part not to give away his hidden wife's whereabouts and cover it in a blustery bluff, and in pat not to reveal the fact that handy dandy Pascal had accomplished his nimble toed task of unlocking Flynn's handcuff just a mere moment before he was stashed under the teapot dome.

"Ve have set a course for our next destination, Meester Rider. And Captain Houtebeen wishes to discuss our new arrangement." Speaking in the third person again, the peg legged Captain struggles to take a seat opposite Flynn, inside the cage once Job had multi keyed open the multiple deadlocks on the cell door for the Captain to enter.

He props his aching old wooden appendage upon the food strewn table that Hans had 'set' for Flynn earlier.

"My, my! Aren't ve a messy eater? Are you not an enthusiast of ze fine potato dishes my cabin boy's culinary creations?" Houtebeen had no idea of the confrontation that had ensued before between Flynn and Hans, as his one eye surveys the large amount of egg and hash brown potatoes wasted on the filthy, dirty ground—cracked plate and all.

"It seems your 'cabin boy' has a good eye for all kinds of 'dishes,' if you know what I mean." Flynn insinuatingly comments. He, even from the dusky distance, could still make out that man and Elsa's silhouettes locked in a passionate kiss, and then the Captain's order for her to be taken away by the younger man.

The little bit of chivalry that resided in Flynn Rider was anxious for the tall blonde's feminine safety at the mercy of that underhanded, slick customer.

_I don't trust that guy…He's got too snazzy a hairdo._

Flynn was more than skeptical of relying on the virtues of that sly cabin boy with excellent sideburns.

But there was nothing he could do about it right now — after all, his hands were tied.

_Ha ha…that's a joke. I'm a funny guy._

He longed to flex his already freed wrist, but the farce had to be maintained for the time being. Flynn expertly covers up the cracked open end of the cuff around his right wrist with wavering digits in sleight of hand disguise.

"Har har har…Agreed, ye blackguard! His lass is a 'dish' at zat! Har har—now to business." The joviality of the elderly Dutchman abruptly turns serious. He squints his singular eye at Flynn in scrutiny.

"I've deciphered ze map ye've brought to me, so now I be knowin' ze location of ze treasure. But when ve arrive zere, the map seems to be indicatin' zat ze'll be a locked door or holding vessel, or somezing requiring a key to be opened, prior to finding ze treasure — as seen here and here." The usually dour Captain appeared to be abnormally excitable—almost gleeful as he deems to reveal to Flynn a section of the map sketch he'd plotted and drawn markings on, representing some type of underground catacomb he'd gleaned from the marble stone.

Flynn looks to the part of the map that Houtebeen's bent, gnarly finger was pointing at. Beyond a slew of indecipherable numbers, up top amid ancient rune letters that Flynn couldn't read at all, the map was pretty straightforward. Stairwells, subfloors, secret passages, whose symbols were all leading to gravestone markers where 'x' marked the spot—

"Wait, gravestones? I'm a respectable thief. Not a graverobber. I do jewelry and gold thingys. Digging up old bones and decayed bodies just doesn't go with my stunning complexion." Flynn uses his one free hand to vainly brush back his still stunning hair coiffure.

"Enough of yer bloody, bilgeous foolishness, Rider! Houtebeen still has yer favorite in-laws in his crosshairs—ye mark me words. Yer beloved king and queen and yer fancy Corona Castle best be watchin' zere sainted backs for ze rest of zere lives if ye wrong me again. And don't ye be thinkin' zat gone soft as a squashed open sponge Hookhand and his motley crew of worthless, washed out flop pirates ye've befriended will make a scrap of difference to ze great Houtebeen! Corona's king and queen are marked if ye don't do exactly as I be wishin' now." Never one to suffer fools, the Captain pokes his walking stick into Flynn's chest.

"Ohh!" A smothered gasp escapes the coat shoot not so far away.

"Vat be zat?! Job!" The pirate captain's old ears prick up and he cries out for his first mate to come and investigate the area.

"That was me, Captain! Sorry about that slip of the tongue! But I've been known to throw my voice around the room, you know, thieves' tricks of the trade." Flynn's panic for his wife's unhappy discovery was none too evident in his smarmy voice as it rattles off.

"In a woman's shrill voice, ye blackguard?" Houtebeen's one eye slits at Flynn in skepticism.

"Yeah, well, if I'm feeling really stressed, sometimes I tap into my feminine side! Ohhh!" Flynn's quickening voice does indeed rise to the high-pitched level of a squeaky female that entire sentence, finishing it up with a quite convincing 'Ohh!" mimicked to girlish perfection and thrown across the room, before the Captain's dubious eye, followed, of course, by a Flynn-esque slick smile.

"Ye'll be squealin' like a little girl if ye don't follow my orders, Flynn Rider! Job!" The gravelly throated Captain dismisses the effeminate antics of the master thief as long as he had Flynn's submission and fear under his dirty old thumb. "Get me away from zis lunatic freak! He makes me head to ache!" The old man's beckon comes just in time, as Job was about to uncover the coal shed's blocking lid…

"Yes, Cap'n." Good thing the dark man was instantaneously obedient. He turns on his big heel, mid hand opening the lid, and just drops it again.

"Whew!" Flynn could breathe again after holding his breath so long in nail-biting trepidation with each step Job took towards Rapunzel's hiding spot, his eye was trained upon. Flynn exhales in relief as the dark man moves away from her secret cove.

"But maybe I'll be havin' a cup of me cabin boy's excellent tea first, before I leave. Houtebeen be a-thirsty." Captain Houtebeen's anger is quelled by the pleasing scents of Hans' cooking and familiar golden teapot placed invitingly upon the 'table.'

Job quickly enters the cell to pour some brew for his boss.

"Noooo! I mean, I already drank it all. Pirate ships sure give me a powerful thirst." A swallowing hard Flynn now attempts to halt Pascal's discovery while the chameleon was now cowering under a teacup as Job flips it over to pour some hot, scalding tea for his captain's pleasure.

_Cough cough Choke Cough!_

As Pascal's skin goes all porcelain white to meld with the inside bottom of the China teacup he was clinging to, just as Job was about to pour tea into it, Flynn begins to cough and choke until he was nearly convulsing across the table, where he knocks the cup, quite by 'accident' right out of Job's unsuspecting hand. It's sent skittering across the floor.

"Steady zere, lad." Captain Houtebeen gives Flynn's choking back a harsh whack.

"Argh!" Flynn doubles over at the punishing smack from the pirate's 'helpful' cane.

"Don't wallow in the shallows yet, matey. Ye've the greatest treasure yet to pilfer for me before yer journey's over." And with that, after firmly locking all the locks on the cell door again, Captain Houtebeen and Job depart, leaving an aching, bruised back now to add to his part frostbitten arm, to poor Flynn's infirmities.

"Oh gee, thanks for the save…" Flynn murmurs in his highest feminine voice as he rubs his painful back and falls to the floor with excruciating pain.

"Eugene!" After a lengthy pause to ensure both pirates were safely out of earshot range, Rapunzel comes popping out of the dusty coal bin she'd been hiding within and barrels across the bilge deck towards her injured love.

"Eugene! Oh, Eugene! How could I ever have doubted you?!" The remorseful girl feels so very guilty for her months of distrust eating away at their relationship. She flies like the wind to his hurt-in-shielding-her-presence side. But there were too many cold bars of iron locked shut between them.

She reaches her hands through the cell bars to touch him at least, hold him like a child, rub his injured back and then caress his wincing in pain face in both palms.

Tears stream down her blackened with soot cheeks, creating tear streaks down her wobbling jawline.

"I wouldn't blame you, Blondie, if you did…Argh…I've kind of been doubting myself lately. Zzzsttt!" Flynn 'sizzles' at the pain through clenched teeth, as Rapunzel continues her tender ministrations on his back.

"I'm so sorry, Eugene! I should've realized you were only being so distant for my own good—for my parents' own good. I should've believed in you more. I'm a terrib;e wife!" The pent up tears of relief and joy at finding his motives for their relationship's rift were exemplary in his caring. Plus, the sympathy for his painful wounds that she herself and her loud mouth was at fault for causing, brings Rapunzel to her knees, hugging Flynn to her through the iron bars.

"I love you, Eugene…" She whispers the truth of her soul. Her fierce embrace unfortunately squeezed at his stinging, frostbitten upper arm muscles. His face once again cringes, causing her to worry again.

"And I…love you…my Rapunzel." He smiles away her fears, as his face lifts to meet her gaze, with that ever present smirked, naughty look on his good-looking chiseled chin face.

"Oh, Eugene! I was so scared." She whispers, tears forming in her eyes as Flynn uses all his might to sit up and move his face closer to hers, with only the bars between them.

"Shhh….shhh, Blondie. I'm here." Eugene's voice loses all the bravado to give his girl all the tenderness of his heart, as he reaches his one free hand through the bars to stroke her sooty, wet cheek dry with a smile.

He then starts to fondle her hair, finding the nearly shoulder length brown locks were reduced to being feathery short.

"I thought cutting your hair was my job." Caressing her through the bars into a nuzzle, Flynn was trying to lighten the situation that looked pretty darn bleak in actuality about now. He had absolutely no idea on how to get her, and Elsa for that matter, off this dingy old tugboat in one piece.

_Never mind me, Blondie, I'm a lost cause._

"Eugene," Rapunzel recalls all that happened on that fateful day, what seemed forever ago, when her guy was so selfless that he even cut off the healing power of her hair before allowing her to lose her newfound freedom to save him—all out of love.

"You're still my dream, too."

She presses her face to the cell bars and whispers before her tongue engages his lips so close at the other side of the bars she could feel his hot breath mix with hers. The pair of reconciled, passionate lovers find some solace in one another's stabilizing 'kiss' amidst the churning seabound craft's darkness.

"Now, I've got an added incentive to open the locks in this cage. Pronto…" He whispers mischievously, seductively in her ear that he had managed to chew loosely upon before showing off like a strongman to break apart the handcuffs that Pascal had freed him from earlier. He sits back and runs his hands beneath his black suit, searching around his muscular form's secret places as his thin fingers whip out a thin wire—

Namely, a lock pick tool of a professional thief, tucked near the safety of unmentionable places.

A hungry Rapunzel smiles at her smooth operator's moves, as his deft fingers begin to spin their craft.

"Please, hurry!" Rapunzel kneels back on her haunches, elbows up, hugging her knees to her, hands balancing her interested cheeks as she rocks back and forth to witness her 'brilliant' Eugene begin to pick each one of the locks—one by one—with an urgent enthusiasm she hadn't glimpsed in him in a long time.

"I'll, _uh_…be…right…_Yes!..._with…you…_No_…Well, maybe not yet…" Flynn's gyrations as he industriously applies himself to the lock jimmying task were quite comical. Rapunzel was pleased anyway to see him be so…himself again, and she giggles.

"So you think I'm funny, Blondie?" Flynn, his pride at his thieving skills being doubted, was wounded by his little wife's laughter on his magic fingers' failures, and he steals an upward glance at her with a snickered, incredulous glare without moving his head.

"No, I think you're wonderful." She patiently sits back as Pascal, shaking himself conscious again in a pink shade, and hobbles over to aid Flynn in his multiple, difficult, old rusted lock picking from inside the cell cage.

"And I think you're adorable in that new hairdo. It'll be all the rage someday — you just mark my words." His snigger melts with her giggles, as ever together, they cope with the suspenseful tension closing in around them as the vessel cuts a specific track forward amidst the surging waters…

* * *

Tension was an understatement to describe the atmosphere setting in the ship's galley, on the deck just above the bilges.

Beyond the sizzling and clanging of pans frying meats and potatoes, there weren't many other sounds passing the still air between the two lone occupants of the kitchen.

Elsa was uncomfortable to say the least. She sits primly at the table, her hands folded as she tries to reason out everything that had just happened to her. Calm and collected, she holds her own counsel.

But each time she glances at his back busy cooking at the stove, she touches her pursed lips, remembering the feel of his lips on hers, and her mind draws a blank.

_Why did he kiss me? Just to escape the pirate's wrath? No one's ever dared touch me like that before. And he knows the danger of my powers…my powers…Please Good Lord, let me be able to control them this time._

Elsa silently prays, as being trapped alone with the man she feared most on earth was coupled with her integral fright of ocean travel—for it was the sea that had claimed her beloved parents from her.

It was all becoming too much for her emotional control now at the limit. And to top it all off, Elsa knew not what to do to rescue both national holy treasures — and Cousin Eugene as well — now that she was actually here and face to face with the danger.

_What kind of leader am I for my kingdom? And there's no one left I can consult for counsel. Papa, it's now I need your guidance most…_

"Queen Elsa? Why are you trembling?"

Elsa didn't realize in her quiet contemplation of introspective dread, she had involuntarily begun shivering. Each lonely fear she concealed inside with detached isolation laid a shard of ice across her already heavy heart.

Lost in her own thoughts, Elsa is more startled that his warm hand, placed compassionately upon her shoulder, was not instantly repelled by her own raw instinct as she would have conjectured their reunion would have been.

As she looks up at him, her trepidatious eyes upset him greater than he'd care to admit. Hans quickly removes his hand from her person guiltily and swallows hard as he looks down at the spiced potatoes he had been sautéing in the frying pan in his hand, feeling equally as blistered by her disquieting perturbation directed up at him.

"Do I frighten you still, Elsa?" Hans asks in an unusually small voice. His gaze was down and he occupies himself with serving out the prepared food onto her plate.

"I—I don't know…" Elsa surprises herself by answering him in all honesty.

"Hmm…" Hans smiles inwardly as he returns the frying pan to the counter stove and returns to pour her a cup of hot coffee. "This should warm you up." As he looks at her, Hans' pale green eyes seemed to be trying to assess the quiet, pale woman's bent of mind towards him.

_It couldn't be benevolent. It shouldn't be kind. You should hate me. But you don't look like you despise me…you didn't __**kiss**__ like you despised me. Maybe because your eyes are too beautiful to despise anyone…_

His eyes trace hers.

"Thank you for that." Is all Hans actually says, with a bowed head in gratitude towards her.

"For what?" Elsa asks, puzzled by the urbane man's mannerly statement to her.

"Being honest. As you know from personal experience, truth is a hard commodity for me. And they say a person admires most what he himself is lacking." Hans modestly capitulates his own failings with a sad smile on his lips, as he stares at his callused hands blindly.

"They also say a person can better himself in the search for that which he is lacking." She looks across the table to say. "If his heart was sincerely reaching for it, God will provide an answer."

Elsa hears echoes of her own questioning soul, as it stood almost two years ago, when the storm that raged inside her was yet fresh on the eaves.

And then Anna's endless faith and relentless forgiveness gave her heart hope for the warmth of love to grant her heart peace.

_Maybe we just need that one person to believe in us…_

"It's funny—that's what Sister Bernard told me in the parish school when I was ten years old. Strange what you remember vividly." He muses reflectively.

"Your heart's a peace now, Queen Elsa. I'm glad of it. In fact, I envy you." Hans meets her eyes with a resigned smile.

"How's Anna?" Hans was really treading on dangerous iceberg entrenched waters here. But by now, Elsa's edginess was washed away by the young man's surprising sedate demeanor.

"She and Kristoff were just married. She's very happy and in love, and very lucky to have him as her friend." Elsa takes a sip of her coffee. It indeed warmed her cold insides as she was a bit proud in relating that particular piece of good news to the man who once aspired to marry her sweet little sister.

"Happy and in love with her best friend. Sounds idyllic, like a song from a storybook fairytale." Hans was envious, but not in the way Elsa could have imagined.

"It must be wonderful to love and be loved back like that." Hans offhandedly ponders the weighty subject aloud. He realizes that not a single person on this earth cared for him to that degree.

Even his twelve brothers, who were supposed to be _family_ disliked his combination of brains, good looks and charm — and they always treated the 'baby' of the clan like an outcast for it.

His bitter father became a widower on the detestable day of his birth and he had blamed the vulnerable little boy named 'Hans' for it, and reminded him every day, in subtle demeaning ways that his other sons had picked up, until the poor child was bullied, singled-out and shipped out to boarding school without visitations by anyone. He was cruelly ignored by his own relations, who shunned any effort on his part to join them in any familial way when he came home, once graduating the military academy with honors in every category.

The all-male clan had little or no compassion to the one who stole away the life of the only woman who perhaps could've taught her boys anything of kindness or gentleness, or about constantly not treating her youngest child as if he were 'invisible' his entire young life.

* * *

"So…how long have you been here?" Elsa could sense some inner demons being battled. She nervously (after a small, polite sampling of the eggs and salt pork bacon he had whipped up especially for her, for etiquette's sake) dabs at her mouth with a dainty napkin and then rises to collect the plates and silverware from the table to bring them to the wash barrel on the floor, still half full of soapy water and dirty dishes, left undone.

"Long enough." Hans, his back to her, begins gathering the basic ingredients from the larder cupboard near the floor, to prepare the Captain's luncheon, as he did everyday he was here, by rote by now. His points one thin-fingered hand back and up towards a 'calendar' he had devised from some wooden carton lids. Each carved checked mark signaled each passing day since he'd arrived, Elsa presumed.

On quick assessment, there were well over five hundred slice cuts into the wood piece hanging above the kitchen cutting board butcher block.

"But the better, more pressing question is, why are _**you**_ here?" Hans had never envisioned coming face to face (never mind lip to lip) with such a queenly beauty in his hellhole (_Pardon the expression, my lady_.) of a dirty old pirate ship.

"I…" Elsa considers sharing what she knew with this former, convicted enemy of the state, to the full extent of her journey's objectives, as she rolls up her sleeves and mechanically dunks her ladylike digits in the soapy, ice cold waters (_not a problem_) and begins to doggedly apply herself to scrubbing the remaining soiled dishware with the roughened sea sponge she finds inside the barrel.

It was the singular sort of task that this well born, sheltered royal princess turned pampered exalted Queen was never to have undertaken. But Elsa was learning that life—real life—was something best experienced hands on.

"Whoa—what?! _Ouch..!_ Queen Elsa, what do you think you're doing?! Ouch..!" Hans, who had been on all fours on the ground, collecting some root vegetables and food supplies from the hidden box stored behind the larder to keep them cool and preserved for long ocean voyages, uncharacteristically, clumsily, bumps the top side of his head at the same sore spot, of course, as he jumps up with a start upon hearing suds and water amidst scraping dishware clattering about.

He was up and on his feet in a matter of seconds, quickened steps across the small kitchen room bring him close to Elsa's dishwashing side. Hans falls to his knees again to her own kneeling form to the wash barrel, as he boldly grasps her hands up from beneath the swirling soapy waters they were submerged in.

"Queen Elsa! These hands were not meant for such hard, physical labor! Please, allow me." He chivalrously says, gently lifting her bare palms and wiping them dry, all the way up her exposed wrists and forearms with his chef's apron.

Elsa pauses at his caring touch, then remembers herself again.

"Prince Hans, the Captain permitted me open passage onboard this ship in trade for work as a scullery maid's services rendered. I must learn to adapt to my new occupation and bide my time wisely — just as you have." Elsa, too, finds herself unafraid to employ her 'too delicate' hands to turn his over in order to display the rough callused, rugged yet manly tone of his once similarly spoiled royal white appendages that she had felt, and secretly admired when he touched her before, with much regard.

"I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." And with that holy statute on her lips, spoken directly to his eyes, Elsa extricates her hands from his grip to industriously take on the large pile of dirty dishes, used teacups, caked dried-food silverware, and greasy pans in the wash barrel at the ground level she'd been kneeling down to scrub.

Hans watches with growing respect in his gleaming eyes for the beauteous blonde ruler, as she puts her entire backbone into this new indefatigable task.

All of a sudden, Elsa finds the large barrel full of splashing water, rising above her, to be set upon another taller cask. Hans had also pulled a handcrafted wooden stool just at the correct level for her to sit upon as she washes.

"At least let me try to lighten your burden in whatever way I can. Besides, it is an unfit offense for a Queen to be on a level lower than her humble servant." Hans extends a diffident smile and strong hand out to Elsa.

She gazes up with her wondrous big blue eyes affixed to his as she accepts his gentlemanly lift from where she was kneeling on the floor.

In this moment, Elsa never knew how sublime it could be just to touch another human being's hand.

_His warm hand…_

Elsa muses with a small smile as she gets back to hard work, elegant elbow deep in scrubbing dishes clean, upon her stool's workstation.

Hans wordlessly gives in to her sovereignty as he returns to digging up his stored potatoes with a newfound smile on his lips.


	9. Chapter 8 - Lucky in Love

We do not own "Frozen" nor any of its characters.

**"Frozen Again: 'But The Greatest of These is Love'"**

**Act I**

**Chapter 8**

"**Lucky in Love"**

"_La la la la sweet potato pie…la la la la piled to the sky! La la la la la la LALAAAAAAA!_

_I wanna eat and eat and eat and eat and eat until I die_!"

"Potatoes'll make a good lunch! Especially when they're sweet!" An enchanting young girl who had not a care in the world (unlike her poor sister) sings out to the noonday sky above the moving sled she was perched precariously upon. Her high, exuberant voice serenades the vibrant hills and snow-capped mountains, the busy green trees and summer grassy flowers—and each one of nature's woodland creatures found in the middle of nowhere, scurrying about the verdant valley in the back of beyond, as her bedazzled eyes take in the scenes greedily.

But as all the beautiful splendor of a flawless blue sky and green trees and colorful flowers she'd always dreamed of rumble past her upon the road, Anna's eyes filled with pure love, catch glimpse of something she now believed was even prettier.

"I am just so, so totally—" In her lovestruck distraction, Princess Anna of Arendelle, whose wistful gaze had turned from each of nature's wonders to rather set her sights upon what must be classed as nature's eighth wonder of the world—her handsome, ripplingly musclebound sturdy husband, who, since their true honeymoon began (last night!) was all she could think of, all she could hear, all she could see.

"I am so, so totally—" But every time her mind, so lost in her proud ogling of one section of his body or another does so, Anna generally begins tripping over her own feet. Maybe this time, the jostling of the sled could be mildly to blame as it hits a rock in the road, though Anna's dizziness was more attributed to her being so deliriously in love with her hunky ice harvester.

"Right." Instantly dropping Sven's reins, neither man nor reindeer was in a real panic. Both were getting used to these necessary quick saves. His girl had a clumsy streak, but Kristoff didn't mind if the intimate rescues gave him extra opportunity to hold his wife close.

_My wife!_

Kristoff, in his calm, level-headed way, still was in disbelief that a big nobody Lapland oaf like him, could've landed such a rare, shining gem such as Princess Anna.

_I guess it's like Bulda said—we're 'meant to be'._

The big, strapping lad quite skillfully manages to lunge across the sled to where Anna insisted on being a balancing ballerina. She dances over on her tiptoes to their ample food supplies, so she could play 'good little wife' and make a neat little packaged lunch to go on their road trip for the pair of not so weary travelers.

"I gotcha." Kristoff manfully grasps her tiny waist as the girl was about to tip off the rear end of the moving sled backwards.

"—so lucky to have you…!" Anna breathlessly finishes her klutzed out observation right in Kristoff's smiling face.

"Anna, what part of _'not standing on the sled when it's in motion_' do you not get? Do you even hear me when I'm talking to you? What if I wasn't here to catch you?" He tries to lecture her but the eyes spinning around in her pretty head to land crossed over her cute little nose was too mind-numbing.

"But you were!" Anna snaps out of it, getting her wind back to positively sing out loudly in his poor ear as he lifts her up to him, and Kristoff goes deaf for an ear waxy second.

"Yeah, and I guess I always will be." The big blond Ice Harvester runs a smiling hand through his 'unmanly' hair. His powerful arms then spin Anna's spry little body as if she were thoroughly weightless, around to sit on his lap. He dangles both their legs over the sled's edge and a his little woman leans her head against his chest, toying fingers automatically beginning to count each one of his upper pectoral muscles. Her hands slide up beneath his shirt to admire his well formed intercoastals in a flash.

"Good idea, Sven." Kristoff abruptly calls up to the half-interested reindeer, who, driverless, begins to stop for a graze of some sweet honeysuckle on the path.

"Why don't you two stop for a picnic in the field on this fine day?" 'Sven' says in his slurring, comically deep voice, while the real Sven merely rolls his eyes at the silly games humans play.

"I think a picnic lunch sounds wonderful, Sven! I thought you'd never ask!" Though enjoying every moment of their hours' long ride spent chattering and singing with Sven and his musical lute, Anna had that kind of bubbly personality that embraced every opportunity life dished out, with enviable vivacity and pluck.

After finishing reaching around his ticklish torso, _(yes, he is deliciously ticklish!)_ she hops from Kristoff's lap onto the grassy knoll to spread the blanket her hands had grabbed across his toned railroad obliques from behind his tight bum, onto the tall windblown grassy ground with true busy bee flair.

As she skitters back and forth from the sled he was idly leaning over to obtain various food delights, Kristoff marvels at how much energy his beautiful new bride (_twice over_) still owned after that noisy raucous ordeal of yesterday's troll marriage ceremony. All the noisy singing and raucous dancing, with dried hay and grass capes and wooden stick crowns and all—Valley of Living Rock style—would wear most people out.

And then the subsequent introduction to his childhood home that _'love experts_' Cliff and Bulda, made sure to outfit their Kristoff's old 'room' with a few more fresh leaf pillows and a new feather down mattress on his rock framed bed, proved that still excited and pleased to no end Princess Anna of Arendelle wasn't 'most people'.

Thankfully, his adopted parents had enough courteousness to have covered the 'room' with a thick curtain of bark, and to shoo away all the troll village's curious eyes blinking in the cave's peephole, to give the newlyweds some space and privacy.

That is, once overbearing Bulda had ascertained that Kristoff had just washed well at the nearby hot geyser spring. The mother hen of a Rock Troll even embarrassingly checked, within a giggling Anna's hearing range, that her adopted 'cutie' thoroughly washed those lucky blue undies while he was there.

There may not have been much room left for romance under the circumstances, but there was plenty of love between the two of, at first, thoughtfully tentative (mostly Kristoff) then impulsively impatient (all of Anna) double honeymooners who were about to finally consummate their twice blessed union...

* * *

"I'm ready! Oof…! Almost! I got this…! Kristoff! Just wait a second!" Bouncing to and fro like a magic pixie, Anna cries out in her boisterous spirited way to her new husband, who suddenly found her quixotic movements so very…alluring…

And absolutely—

"Take a ten minute drive over that hill's rise, Sven old buddy." Kristoff quietly suggests under his breath to his best friend of a reindeer, who knew instinctively what Kristoff was up to.

After all, Sven was used to playing the part of Kristoff's conscience.

The mysteriously smiling young man leaps from his Royal Ice Master and Deliverer's sled in a single bound. As, with a purposeful and urgent intent, he rushes towards to sneak up on his unsuspecting bride who, none too gracefully at the moment, was sprawling herself across the laid out blanket in her attempts to stretch it out to be big enough for their luncheon to enjoy their repast upon.

But it wasn't the food the virile and brawny, well-built and restless mountain man, feeling his oats, was interested in partaking.

"_Lucky to be in love in every way…_" Now it was Kristoff who was now serenading the skies and trees and grasses as he sneaks up with playful hands. Kristoff covers his wide palms over Anna's startled eyes where she was knelt down on the ground, still struggling to stretch the woolen blanket so it wouldn't have any wrinkly bumps to disturb their meal.

Though Anna needn't have gone to all the trouble for all the mussed fabric was about to endure through their giddy tussling tickle-time match as Kristoff kneels down to match her level.

Pausing before he begins to take the fun another step further, Kristoff's rugged good looks go all soft and squishy with the tender love he felt for his Anna evident as he intertwines in her yummy caramel hair a sweet buttercup stem he plucks from the bountiful grass at eye level, near by the blanket.

Anna's voluminous bright eyes go all wide and inviting up at him. "You're so pretty…as pretty as that buttercup…all velvety, _butterfully_ yellow." Losing it, Anna murmurs dizzily and runs her fingers wildly adoring through Kristoff's blond tresses. His masculinity protested her effeminate wordings, but his sweetness didn't have the heart to argue with her.

"Did I tell you how much I _love_ butter?" Anna luxuriously prattles in the quiet still of this, as yet untouched by civilization, stretch of land beneath the warm, buttery, summer sun.

* * *

Once the washing up was accomplished, Elsa, the able bodied 'scullery maid' goes to work in aiding Hans' preparation of the pirate's next meal as the sun starts to sink beneath the sea's horizon.

"Be careful. It's getting dark and that knife is sharp." Hans warns, as Elsa picks up the utensil he'd just finished using to slice some cheese for the potatoes au gratin he was dishing up as a dinner side.

"I will be. Thank you for your concern." Elsa addresses him in that oh-so-proper way in which she spoke to strangers, though the amount of nighttime dreams and/or nightmares she'd spent with Hans Westergaard over the past two years would constitute him as more than that.

Elsa suddenly senses his curious eyes upon her, and she nervously folds her guilty hands together in that wringing action she oft took when psychologically perturbed.

"Oh, is it permitted? Pardon me, I should've asked. May I take some of this cheese?" Secretly storing the slices she cuts away in the pocket of the apron he had given her earlier to wear (on which she faintly still detected his scent, though he wore no cologne).

"You can have anything here you wish, Queen Elsa. You needn't ask my permission." Hans answers kindly, though his sharp eyes did begin to wonder why she was spiriting bottles of water and milk and now foodstuffs in her clothing, behind his back, thinking he hadn't noticed.

Now Elsa glances down to her lap with express guilt at being caught upon her lovely features, she chewing on her knuckle nervously as a result.

"Did you know-" He suddenly interjects, clearing his throat with a disarming smile to ease her tension.

"Did you know, that there are over 33 methods of preparing potatoes that I have learned and used in practice here to high regard since beginning life as head chef aboard this vessel?" Leaning his head in to gain better vantage of her eyes, Hans directs his query to the shy girl as he waves a hand towards the potatoes in midst of preparation on the butcher block.

"No. No, I had no idea there were so many different ways." After gulping down her fear and shame, Elsa meets his inviting eyes in wonder of where this interesting turn of conversation was going.

"From simple boiled, to roasted, creamed, scalloped, grilled to mashed and made into shepherd's pie, there are numerous useful varieties to this amazing little guy." Holding it up in fine example as he speaks, Hans hands her on the table's cutting board she was working at, the potato he had just finished peeling.

"I'd like to show you how someday..." Strong hands then wrap around her unknowing inexperienced ones from behind as Hans starts to guide the young woman's shaky digits along with the knife, his fibrous sinewy arms tight around her upper torso as he proceeds to mentor her attempts.

After a few less than ideal cuts, nervous, uncoordinated and thoroughly bewildered by his rather intimate physical proximity, nonetheless, under Hans' tutelage, Elsa was soon slicing the tuber with all the expert precision and ease his capable firm hands clasped around bestowed upon her.

"...to make a mean Potato Lefse." Adjusting his husky tone in her ear, Hans innocently whispers to her wide eyes of the traditional favorite tasty Scandinavian potato pancake that was more resembling a crepe than the mere breakfast fare.

_You are so warm..._Surprising herself when her innate ice abilities do not overreact at his too near embrace, Elsa glances at their still joined appendages, Hans lingering his grip around her, by now, trembling form.

_Should I trust him with our secret? Will Rapunzel be safe if I don't, with __Eugene__ still locked in that cell? And what of Olaf? I tossed him inside a barrel…I believe…_

The startling ensuing actions that occurred directly after her swift dashed save of the conspicuous snowman somewhat blurred her precise memory of that time of this perplexing man's enthralling kiss.

Noting her sudden bristle for unknown reasons, Hans frees her hands from his, takes a step back and pauses before he begins to speak.

"If there were someone else—I'm just hypothesizing, for instance—who had accompanied you aboard this ship, perhaps I might suggest that there is a small area in the bilge's lower deck, not too far behind the cell hold where a living quarters with an unused bunk exists, just beyond the old boiler. It's leftover now, when the Captain cut the crew down to nil, save Job and I, and unoccupied where not a soul visits any longer."

"How can you be so sure…?" Elsa asks, then bites her lip as the natural question slips out aloud. She somehow already felt accustomed to talking familiarly with him.

"Let's just say I spent some time in that boiler room before I realized learned culinary skills were far more advantageous." He smiles that gorgeous smile as his focus returns to his cookery on the stove.

"And it's ready. So I'm off to deliver this meal to the Captain in his stateroom. Job should be where he is normally at this hour—above deck at the helm." Hans casually - and quite informatively- speaks from experience as he glances through a porthole on the edge of the galley at the choppy rhythm of the waves as he passes by, carrying his tray.

Just as he is about to exit the deck up the ramp, he pauses to give a pensive Elsa a cautionary look.

"If you do leave the safety of this kitchen…Please be careful." His eyes meet hers in genuine concern. She was surprised to see such care for her well-being there, but this wouldn't be for the first time that Prince Hans had inexplicably extended his protection over her.

Elsa recalls again memories she'd been trying to shy away from, of those horrid days when she couldn't control cryokinetic powers to the point of sentencing Arendelle to an Eternal Winter. The mountain she climbed, the ice palace she'd built, the Duke of Weselton's men—and their crossbows—that Prince Hans had deflected, that ice chandelier, and then the blackness…

And the dungeon…

And nothing in between.

On information learned from Kai, Gerda had told her, much later, that it was Prince Hans who had brought her back to Arendelle, back to her home. That is, after he'd carried the injured woman in his arms without the fear all the other soldier's expressed, from her ice palace, on his own horse's back all the way down the North Mountain.

And again, Gerda herself, through the door's peephole, had witnessed Prince Hans' vigil over Elsa's unconscious form at her bedside. To Gerda, from the way he'd looked sorrowfully at Elsa, to the compassionate way he'd covered her highly unprotected body in the cold, dark prison with a blanket, even placing a warming hand upon her cheek, it appeared to Gerda a tender gesture of uncommon affection.

_But why? Why does he keep showing me kindness? It was to his detriment at the time to save me—and not to let me die by the hands of those evil men of the Duke of Weselton. And then to cover me with a blanket in compassion?_

_When he was left in charge of the kingdom by Anna, and could have claimed all power to the throne, if he had just let the others execute me, out of their own worthy fears..?_

_So many questions that I can't—I just can't bring myself to ask him—perhaps that is the cause of my nightmares—the fear of finding out the truth…_

_Yet, what of the dreams? Why **is **he reaching out for me to save him there? Oh, Prince Hans, can I trust you now? Can you tell me that this isn't a trap that I'm walking into?…_

Elsa's churning emotions cease abruptly when her eyes look up from slicing the cheese, to glimpse the kitchen table, where a fresh baked loaf of bread was all sliced and done up in strings, around brown paper wrappers. There was small note scribbled upon the top of the parcel in a fine, strong hand.

'_Everything I have is yours.'_

"I will trust you…" Elsa whispers to her convinced self as she quickly wraps the bread, along with the cheese to secret them in her apron. She adds them along with the bottles of water she'd prepared before into a basket she 'conveniently' finds awaiting on the butcher block, as if it were all planned out for her.

With these supplies in tow, she takes off. Her nimble feet race off into the dank ship's corridor. Elsa glances about furiously as she stumbles down the ramp and back in through the doorway leading to the bilges, where she and Prince Hans had…

_Focus, Elsa! _

She wipes her moistened lips, imagining-_-no, re-playing_-his first, thrilling kiss with a little shake of her elegant head. Elsa expels the vivid memory from her foremost thoughts as she speeds towards the cell where Eugene was still caged within, still tinkering with the locks, while Rapunzel was sitting on the floor of the outside, massaging her poor husband's sore neck and back.

"Elsa! Are you all right?!" Rapunzel jumps to her feet and runs to embrace her supposedly captured cousin, left to some underhanded cabin boy's mercy, according to the tales Eugene had been relaying to her as he worked.

"I'm fine." Elsa answers, her eyes darting about as she gets her bearings.

"But that man! Eugene told me how he kissed you! You mean he didn't try to—?!" Rapunzel asks in a lowered eye whisper at the delicate subject she, as a married woman, knew quite well about.

"No, not at all. He's been a perfect gentleman."

"Yup, watch out for those slick types. They lull you into a false security and then it's too late." Flynn comments snidely, believing sheltered Cousin Elsa had been hornswaggled by that drippingly handsome and cloyingly clever chap.

"You don't understand. I know him. We've met before. And he knows about us—about all of this. But I don't think he'll let on he knows about it. He's even told me of a safe place for you to hide, close by—just around the corner, near the boiler."

"Great! Let's go see about it." Rapunzel was enthusiastic and trusting of anyone her cousin deemed reliable.

"Wait! Wait! Wait! Your _friend's_ working for the pirates now! Why do you think you can still trust him?!" Though Elsa seemed taken by this charmer, Flynn was more chary to believe the sly guy for anything—even without having any idea of his treasonous past with Elsa's kingdom.

"Because his eyes are kind." Elsa's heartfelt answer was not comforting to a jaded Flynn at all.

"Don't worry, Eugene! We'll just take a quick peek and come right back and tell you if he's right or not." At Rapunzel's words, Pascal's big eyes blink at Flynn with a thumbs up, and he leaves his cell mate to hop onto Rapunzel's shoulder.

"…'_Because his eyes are kind…_'" Flynn taps into his feminine side again but this time more mockingly. "Gotta work on my eye contact skills. Who knew? Even ice queens can fall for a pair of goo-goo eyes. Or was it that guy's kiss? I got that one covered, right, Blondie? It's all in the tongue action. Keep 'em beggin' for more—that's my motto…" Flynn Rider had a compulsive way of admiring himself aloud still...

* * *

After settling Rapunzel in the albeit small, yet sufficient boiler room attendee's bunk, and assuring Flynn of its hidden aspect, Elsa unloads the pretty full basket of drink and food, she gives Rapunzel a quick smile and was just about to hurriedly return to the kitchen when—

"_...or the funny way he talks…or the clumpy ways he walks…Or the—"_

Elsa, in a panic at all the noise, rushes up to the rum barrel and pushes its heavy lid that she'd forgotten she had pulled over to seal in a poor, by now unwittingly drunken, Olaf.

"…_way he likes to tinkle in the woods!" _

The snowman's droopy eyes and unsealed lips were on plain, crude singing display for his black hood had been removed to soak up the residual rum in the base of the keg barrel that was now filled with the snow flakes of his flurry.

"Shh! Olaf…!" Elsa couldn't quite blame the innocent creature for **her** folly in tossing him into the casing containing the odious alcoholic beverage.

But in her haste, she had believed it to be empty.

"Elsie…watch out! That was…uh…Prince Hans' voice…methinks I heard…Ohh! Why is your head spinning around the room?" Olaf was tipsy (more than usual) and collapses in Elsa's arms as she reaches in to lift him out of the barrel.

"He might be tricking you, Elsie…!" Obviously having heard some of their conversation, Olaf drunkenly exclaims as she tries to clamp an icy hand over his mouth.

"Please don't call me that, Olaf!" She hisses at him.

"What? 'Elsie?' Prince Hans did."

"Well, I don't like it!"

"Why?"

"I just don't!"

"Why?" He persists in his lowered eyelid wavering uncovered head.

"Because it sounds like a cow's name!" The royal queen unwillingly admits her vanity through quiet, clenched teeth.

"Why did Hans say that? You're too sleek to be a cow. Hans is wrong again."

"The snowman's got a point there…" Flynn adds coal to the fire. He just happened to pick up that bit of their conversation, as Elsa reaches where he was sitting on his cell floor.

"Olaf!" Elsa was too flustered by the question to even answer it civilly. She shoved his tinged with rum balaclava hood back over his head. "Behave for Cousin Rapunzel while I'm gone." She orders, passing the dizzy snowman over to Rapunzel, though planting an understanding, sympathetic kiss on his black-covered forehead.

_Ick! I don't like the taste of alcohol…!_

Olaf just starts to hum. "Okay, Elsie! No! No…that's wrong…'Elsa!' Olaf will be good—good fixer fixer fixer upper…" Back into his happy song-filled state, Olaf sinks, deliriously smiling into Rapunzel's growing more ample chest. She- _Or was that Eugene's wandering arm and thieving fingers?_ \- had already unlatched her tied down cleavage.

Rapunzel gives a squeeze of the hand and a wiggled fingered wave to Elsa as she leaves, with Olaf following suit.

"I can fix this fixer fixer upper with a little bit of love…!"

_Love?_

Olaf brings a smile to Elsa's lips as she leaves him in Rapunzel's care in the secret hidden room Hans had somewhat cryptically suggested to her while she was trying to covertly smuggle food here.

_How does Prince Hans know what I'm thinking?_

"Slow down there, lady." Not strictly speaking of only her pumping legs speeding past his cell again, Flynn casually calls out in insinuating double entendre. "And have a _good_ night with your old friend…!"

She hears his insinuating voice echoing behind her.

* * *

Upon Elsa's harried return to the galley, she was relieved to find the kitchen still vacant. As she returns the basket to its hook near the cupboard, Elsa's ears are suddenly drawn to the calm, lilting sound of music softly emanating from inside the doorway connecting to an interior room.

Entranced, her cautious mind screams to pause before the door, but she could not keep her enchanted feet from entering.

"_Are you the sweet invention of a lover's dream? Or are you really as wonderful as you—"_

"Oh, pardon me, Queen Elsa. I do tend to take to song when working. I didn't even realize it."

Hans abruptly ceases singing in mid-melodious perfect note, whilst his industrious hands had been adjusting some quick construction of a tall wooden screen and fabric curtain that he had devised in the short time she'd been down in the bilges.

"What are you—?" Elsa gazes around the room, lit by the swaying, dimmed candlelight.

It was a small, to put it mildly, and simple, for lack of other words, living quarters, designed to house the single cook of the connected galley kitchen, for quick access to his employ.

A bar was across an inlet that served as a clothing cupboard behind the door. There was a little table holding a chipped porcelain wash basin with a miniscule excuse of a piece of broken mirror, whose luck had run out long ago, hanging over it on a hook that also doubled as a little towel holder.

There were extra cloth towels and a sharp knife for shaving placed neatly beside them. Beyond a dilapidated chair whose slatted back was chunked out and its multiple legs appeared to have each been repaired, the remainder of the room appeared Spartan.

Although, a great part of the already diminutive room was obscured by the piece of hewn plywood screen that Hans had just finished nailing with a hammer to stay lodged in place.

"I hope you don't find the accommodations too arduous, but my—this—sleeping chamber is rather tight." The tall man, though having no prior building experience whatsoever, used his brains to create the wooden partition screen he was just hammering together with a hinge he had found below deck, to make it movable as a kind of sliding overlay to shield a hidden area.

"Sleeping chamber?" Elsa repeats as the reality of his tentative words begin to sink in. Her eyes widen as Hans flexes his slim but extremely fit muscles to slide this newly erected screen back to reveal a bed concealed behind it.

With much on her mind all the day long, seeing to Rapunzel and Olaf's comforts, Elsa had not thought through what would become of her own living 'accommodations' for the night, on this dangerous venture she had boldly undertaken.

Her eyes flash up at him in sudden fear, recalling what the pirate Captain had intimated before.

"Oh, no! I didn't mean— This bed is entirely yours now, Queen Elsa. I only wanted to give you the privacy a lady deserves." Hans had noticed her implicating fright and puts up both hands guilelessly innocent.

"But what of you? Where will you sleep?" Elsa's leeriness turns to concern for this high-class man's selfless act of chivalry. His gentle eyes then completely put her mind at ease.

"There have been harder floors than this." Hans smiles a bit sardonically at he points at that narrow alcove of the cleared out cupboard across the room where a beat up blanket or two were ready to be laid out for him to sleep in the recessed cove on the wooden floor.

"But you need—" Elsa shakes her head at his gentlemanly nature, still foremost at hand, as she glimpses the multiple sheets and fluffed pillows piled on the bed's mattress awaiting her.

There was even a long shirt draped over one of the bedposts to suffice for a nightgown.

"—I need to take care of you. Please allow me this—if only to pay some small recompense for my past crimes against you and Arendelle—and perhaps give my fruitless life some meaning." Hans once again astounds Elsa by fearlessly taking both her hands now in his, to lace their fingers and kiss the back of her pale hands to his lips in reverence.

"Thank you…" Elsa manages to say after a long pause spent watching their coupled hands. She was surprised to find her hands did not even begin to emanate the frost at his touch that she believed such close physical contact with a man would.

But the warmth in his eyes took the cool of her breath away…

* * *

Greetings, Frozen friends!

If you want to see a beautiful portrait inspired and based on a scene in this chapter, search the submissions of SetsunaKou on DeviantArt or TsukimoriKahoko on Tumblr! You'll see a close-up, loving Kristanna artwork from this chapter of 'Frozen Again' there at full resolution!

Check it out on DeviantArt or Tumblr-you won't be disappointed!

God bless,

HarukaKou


	10. Chapter 9 - A Morning of Revelations

We do not own "Frozen" nor any of its characters.

**"Frozen Again: 'But The Greatest of These is Love'"**

**Act I**

**Chapter 9**

**"A Morning of Revelations****"**

"A-ha! Now I'm talkin'! Who da man?!"

In the wee hours of the morning, Flynn Rider's triumphant whisper can't help but cry out in pride as he, after a long night playing with his locks, finally succeeds in cracking open the final latch of the last difficult deadbolt he'd been tirelessly working on.

There had been seven (_Count them!) _difficult types of all makes and model of lock—two of which were so old they were nearly rusted out, never mind the three deadbolts that had been clamped on his cell door fully designed to keep the master thief from escaping.

_But these boys don't know who they're messing with!_

A smug Flynn was so full of it as his excited hands remove the last despicable barrier to his freedom, his arrogance was palpable in the air…

As was that pungent stench, suddenly pervading the entire already none-too-fragrant cell hold.

_P-U! _

"I wondered how long it would take you."

_That insipid smooth voice again! Man, if I didn't have bad luck…How do I get this jerk off my back?! He's everywhere! Like horse puckey!_

"So what's the procedure here? Are you gonna sound the alarm? Or are you planning on keeping this cell door between me and my freedom shut—all with your own namby-pamby bare hands, pretty boy. **You **just got lucky before." Flynn drawls the challenge to the thinner, in his opinion, scrawnier man. After all, he was endowed with big muscles, which he counts on, though his own hands, fingers and wrists were raw, painful and pounding—and had somewhat lost sensation from the hours of being strung up yesterday. (_Thanks, pal_.) His flexing muscles could still manage a mean left hook to wipe the simper off that guy's face.

And with his freed legs, Flynn powerfully kicks the unlatched cell door open with a smile on his bumptious face.

"Who said I was bare handed?" Prince Hans of the Southern Isles displays his own prowess as his haughty imperiousness rears its magnificent head once his pride in his own abilities was questioned.

For Hans knew every inch of this ship backwards and forwards by now—especially this brig's contents as he ducks into a siding where a secondary cage cell resided near the ramp entrance he came in.

"Hey! I know I'm good but I didn't really expect you to tuck tail and hide, Handsome." Flynn Rider's voice was full of mocking bemusement at this interesting dandy fop of a cabin boy.

"Ooo-kay…That is a _**BIG **_sword…"

As he walks out of his cell a free man Flynn loses some of his starting bravado by the end. His normally lowered eyes bulge out when Hans swiftly reemerges from the dark barred cove with a rather dangerous and deadly looking broadsword wielded in his 'namby pamby' bare hands.

"Please return to your captivity, Sir. It is unwise for you to attempt an escape at this time on the open seas. Return to your confinement or I'll be forced to run you through."

Flynn swallows hard as the resoluteness in Hans' voice expertly shows off his proficiency at swordplay by slicing the long blade in throwing in a few practice swings that appeared redundant as he tosses the wide bladed weapon back and forth between his ambidextrous hands.

GULP._ Where's a frying pan when you need it?!_

"Since I'm truly growing rather tired of cleaning the dirty floors, I'd prefer not to draw your blood here."

The casual way that Hans Westergaard spoke of blood-letting was a bit disturbing to Flynn, who 'preferred' to keep all his blood in his veins—thank you very much.

However, he had a ship to commandeer with a pair of females, a talking snowman, and a color-changing frog—that he was single-handedly responsible for bringing safely back to land.

"Well, I don't do the housekeeping here, so I wouldn't mind spilling yours all over the floor, good lookin'." A mocking, courageous Flynn, having more than a bit of observation skills of his own thieving variety, recalled seeing that one of the metal bars of his cell looked stressed and loose and—

"Urghhh!" With a loud grunt, he utilizes all the strength in his equally half-paralyzed and half-frostbitten arm to **_rrrrippp_** that wobbly bar the rest of the way from its cage structure.

"Impressive." Hans gives credit where credit is due. His own cold, calculating eyes widen at this interesting prisoner's singular feat of wrenching one of the iron bars from his cell with his hands alone.

"Yeah…I didn't know I had that in me! Maybe after all these years, Blondie's magic hair powers did give my hands super strength! Who would've thought it?! Hah!" Flynn Rider puffs up with pride as he makes this happy discovery of his newfound manifesting massive strength.

Hans pauses before speaking. His clever mind decided it would be more to his advantage to have his opponent imprudently believe in some 'magic' superpower that didn't really exist. Hans personally knew that particular cell bar was already loose in its mortar base. Some past occupant obviously already put in the time to chip at the mortar holding the bar in place, but failed to finish the job before he was probably a goner.

"Come on, Sideburns! What're you waitin' for?! Bring it!" Flynn, feeling powerful, armed with his long metal bo-staff runs, lunging forward at Hans who deftly sidesteps out of the way of Flynn's first punishing blow.

_**Clang! Clang!**_

Iron staff deflects sword. Sword blocks staff.

The two able-bodied men go at it with a vengeance. Hans Westergaard's years of honed fencing and trained sword wielding skills pay off dividends; though Flynn Rider's wild improvisation techniques of attack and bob and weave style give the experienced swordsman a run for his money.

_**POW! Clang! BANG! Slice~!**_

Hans' sword comes within millimeters of gashing a serious wound across Flynn's concaved, avoiding chest, as his tight black shirt's sliced tear flips open to reveal his rather hairy and very masculine chest heaving wildly with all the effort.

"Hey! That was my—_Ungh!_—slickest shirt!" Flynn idly comments as he whacks his bar into thin air, then glances down at his trashed, favorite black shirt peeling off his exposed chest, as if he was not in the middle of hand-to-hand, life in the balance combat.

"If I ever get back home—ugh!—I'll be sure to purchase you a new one. _Ungh_!" With his natural acerbic wit, Hans smiles. His own normally held back male testosterone levels enjoyed this sparring rematch more than he had imagined he would.

"After all—_ugnh_—black is the color always worn at funerals—even for a thief." Prince Hans lets his darker side peek out again, as unleashed in their fierce battle, a man's ferocity could not be quenched by mere words anymore.

"Oh, yeah? That is hitting below the belt!" _**Whack!**_ In synchronization with his choice of words, Flynn uses Hans' diving momentum to spin around from the sword's vicious blade thrust and horizontally hold his long iron bar to hit just the correct spot.

_**Bam! **_

Flynn's iron bar, though not swinging with as much force as it was crashed into with precision, connects painfully with Hans' lower torso. The auburn head bends over as he backs off, clutching at his no doubt bruised hipbones with an angered expression on his pained face. His breath comes out ragged and hard.

"You, Sir, are no gentleman…" Feeling this man was his wily equal again, Hans retorts with a grunt, eyes to the top of his skull as he doubles over trying to catch his breath back.

"Well, I never claimed to be! Just a good looking orphan boy with magic fingers!" Flynn answers with a conceited chuckle as he lords over Hans' doubled over form, deciding on how hard he would clobber the guy.

But when he nears, Flynn's precious nose wrinkles in disdain at Hans.

"Ewwww! That smell is on you! What have you been wallowing in, pal?" Flynn covers his nose with the grossed-out question.

"Forgive me. As I stated before, I just came from my most _**favorite **_weekly task on this vessel—scraping the extremely full between deck. I merely was going to peer in to enquire of your well-being before changing my work clothes when I caught you escaping." Hans apologizes, as the conscientious neat-freak in him looking rather embarrassed of the dirty and most odorous of his shipboard responsibilities.

But someone had to do the filthy deed and of course the worse chores fell to the paid-for 'slave.'

"Hngh…I'd do more than change my clothes if I were you." Flynn backs away, pinching his offended nose closed.

"Yes, thank you for your kind advice. Could we please get back to our joust?" Hans asks this most exasperating foe.

"Only if you stay downwind." Flynn demands under his breath, still holding his nose with the back of one of his hands.

"Then, the advantage is mine." Hans swiftly takes this opportunity of Flynn's single hand holding his iron bar, to suddenly make a grab for the metal with both of his own capable hands, after he sheathes his sword in his belt.

With determined resolve to win, Hans capitalizes at Flynn's shock to his quick, underhanded actions unbefitting a proper sword match. While the two men vie for control of the struggle, Hans' energized, sinewy arm muscles bristle in raised pumping veins, forcing the larger man backwards to trip and crash into a remote area of the bilge.

Flynn's head bashes into a solid steel wall. It smarted, but he was actually knocked out cold, as his luck would have it, by the heavy metal staff they'd been fighting over clunking down on his poor noggin for good measure as his dazed body sinks to the ground.

"It's not time for you to show your hand, Rider. Believe me, I know. This pirate Captain Houtebeen possesses a cache of many weapons onboard this ship—too many deadly firearms that have become his pride and joy in his dwindling years. Both he and Job are expert marksmen. You wouldn't stand a chance against a lead bullet for all your deft skills of maneuvering and thievery." Hans speaks in respected deference, not knowing if the semi-conscious man was understanding his recommended advice of non-aggression until the right moment.

"If I were you, I'd wait until we were docked to make my move. At sea, this pirate has the advantage. On land, we may just be able to outwit him—once his intent us revealed in his weakness- lust for greed."

An astute strategist in his clever brilliance, sagacious Hans finishes dragging the heavier man back into his cell, then relocking each of the locks that Flynn had so tirelessly slaved over to open. He even reapplies the handcuffs to Flynn's wrists again to ensure his wily digits could not master the locks again so quickly.

"We only have a few days left of ocean travel, if I correctly perceive the ship's course settings. You should be able to have these sorted out by then. So, don't try anything rash again to alert the Captain of your betrayal as his henchman—for the sake of the ladies—_err, _lady—please." Hans leaves the now completely secured cage. Though uncertain of Flynn's ability to hear his shrewd pointers, he had ascertained with his keen periphery that there was an audience to which his voice grew to a louder volume would hear, and who might have more pull than he in convincing this sly thief in the wisdom of his warning.

"I leave you now, to go and bathe—as per your advice. Good day, Sir." Hans pauses as he returns his sword and sheath to its rightful owner (another skeletal former prisoner) to make a clipped bow to the man who had nearly bested him again.

Hans had never felt so equaled by any other man than this Flynn Rider in artful cleverness.

"_Be therefore as cunning as serpents, and as gentle as doves." _

The phrase of Christ-like wisdom stabilizes Hans' stalwart heart and mind.

* * *

Now Elsa, who had been calm and composed all morning, after she had helped the breakfast meal to be prepared and her dishwashing completed, had sat in Hans'—now their _shared_—_sleeping chamber_, (the very combination of words gave her goosebumps yet) to gaze about at what Prince Hans had been subjected to for these past two years.

In the morning's daylight, the surroundings of his small, galley cabin had a more quaint, cozy atmosphere than the dark claustrophobic mystery it retained at night.

She walks over to touch each of the items there with a delicate finger on the small table that served as his wash basin stand. A crude bar of soap, that shaving knife and those small towels were all carefully arrayed and neatly stacked as they were awaiting her this morning when she had awakened to find Hans already busy cooking at the stove.

Upon walking out into the kitchen, she almost felt domesticated to find him there, yet again harmonizing a pleasant tune. She even almost joined in with his singing but the shy reserved side of her held back.

Looking around now, there was another littler night stand piece made of a thick wicker type basket material at the head of the bed she had slept shockingly soundly upon last night.

_And not a trace of the dreams either…How puzzling…_

As she was in passing thought, Elsa's eyes catch sight of a bit of yellow paper with some small printed words transcribed upon it, peeking out from some of the basket's weaves beneath the candle in its wax holder.

Though she knew she shouldn't pry into someone else's business—her dear mother had taught her better etiquette than that—Elsa still felt compelled to open the basket to see what was hidden inside.

Slowly, cautiously, regardfully, Elsa picks up the candlestick with her left hand and lifts the basket's lid with her right. Her gaze was surprised to see the multitude of pieces of paper, most of which were torn and uneven scraps that appeared to be folded and battered as if read over and over, then crunched in a pocket or leaned on a food stained kitchen pot or pan numerous times each.

Gingerly delicate, Elsa chooses one paper shred with particularly neat handwriting to peruse with a guilty bitten lip, as she secretly desires to discover the mystery to her who was Hans Westergaard.

"'_Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth where moth and rust do corrupt and where thieves break through and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in Heaven where neither can be corrupted or stolen. For where you treasure is, there will your heart be also._ \- Matthew 6: 19-21'"

Elsa quickly grabs up another scrap and reads to herself in a whisper. "_Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy-laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of Me; for I am meek and lowly in heart and ye shall find rest in all your souls._ \- Matthew 11: 28-29."

And once more, her eyes dart across the small, uneven scribbled missives written all in the same hand.

"_Whoever wants to be great must be your servant first; and whoever of you is a servant must be a slave to all. For even the Son of Man comes not as a master, but as a servant—to give His life for a ransom to many._ – Mark 10: 43-45"

The unmistakable penmanship was the same as that on the note she'd read yesterday that said _'Everything I have is yours_.' By now, tears were biting right behind Elsa's beautiful eyes as she realizes the voice of the Bible's wisdom showed there was truly beauty in Hans' soul amidst the torment, and he was reaching, through the Word for God's guidance—guidance, path_ and_ forgiveness.

Elsa reaches her hand in the basket for another crumpled text. "_If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins—to cleanse us from all unrighteousness_."

Elsa's eyes were opening to a new aspect of Hans that she had not known existed. It was one that she found, to say the least, admirable, as she reads his written words obviously jotted down from memory that looked so worn and tattered with food stains and dirt splattered across each of the no-longer white papers that it could be seen he had pored over each many times on his long, lonely penitent journey.

"_So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary but what is unseen is eternal._' 2 Corinthians 4:8"

Elsa pauses here to consider.

_Prince Hans, you found solace and forgiveness in the same place I did…Is this part of why I feel so connected to you? We have both been searching alone for so long—but do I see something more in those pleading eyes of yours in my dreams…?_

"Queen Elsa? Are you in the kitchen?" Hans' voice breaks through her circumspective inner thoughts. A guilt-ridden Elsa, feeling prevaricatively indiscreet at peeping through his private affairsuninvited, quickly gathers all of the papers from her lap and shoves them (_Forgive me, Lord_) back into the wicker basket used for a nightstand.

She glances about wildly, looking for the candle to sit on top again as it was, but in her haste she knocks it over on its side.

"Yes! I've been here cleaning up!" Elsa tries to hide her breathless rush back to the kitchen's cutting table. The reserved, shy little girl in her was still afraid to be caught doing what she was not supposed to be doing.

She was telling the truth, after all. She **_had_** been in the kitchen cleaning.

"Oh, I thank you for that. May I impose on your kind nature a bit more and ask you to…Fetch a rutabaga from the further back larder box where it's kept? And then chop it up finely…please?" Hans' normally steady voice sounded a tad perturbed as it cracks, emanating from somewhere outside the galley entrance.

"Certainly…" Elsa answers, confused. He had shown her earlier where the winter vegetables were kept, buried deep in a thick wooden box, stored behind the stove and cutting board, in the dark, to retain their freshness.

She just wondered why he was not actually visible as he was speaking to her.

_Oh, well…_

In his apron, in his oversized shirt, she kneels down, quite unsuitably for a queen, on all fours, as she had seen him do, to pry open the somewhat heavy wooden lid—

_**Whoosh!**_

_What was that? _

Elsa's tense mind mildly notes, then dismisses the gust of breeze she felt vaguely blow across her bent over brow. She was having enough trouble distinguishing which rooty vegetable was which (a Queen wasn't normally trained to know raw veggies by name). She was distressed to find that he couldn't tell a rutabaga from a radish.

"Prince Hans?" Elsa stands up and dusts her apron, holding two brownish, bulbous roots, one in each hand. She wanted to ask him which vegetable he was requesting before she cut up the wrong precious commodity on a ship. Or if she got either right at all.

But upon a glance about the kitchen and not seeing him returned, she quite innocently strides into the bedroom—_err, sleeping chambe_r—becoming more acclimated to just waltzing in and out and just seeing him here and there.

But not like this.

The modest young girl in Elsa verbally squeaks aloud upon entering the small room. For even in the dim lighting, she could clearly make out Hans' basic silhouette form from the backside.

And he was not wearing much yet on it—save for his tall, trademarked pair of black boots and a towel slung over his shoulders.

"Ohh! Please pardon me." Elsa just about can excuse herself as her wide, ashamed eyes soak in every slender line and well defined toned muscle perfectly intersecting along the curving arch of his gorgeous back—all the way down to the incredibly tight flats of his divine thighs.

"—Elsa!" He calls out after her retreat.

"Err, Queen Elsa! I should've dressed more in haste. I am so sorry you had to see that! I just expected you to take longer in cutting up that—" Still pulling on his billowy white shirt over his open chest, his pants firmly on, Hans comes into the connected kitchen to find his blamelessly, faultless, innocent and untainted angel named Elsa—

—had taken to her wings and flown the coop.


	11. Chapter 10 - Part of Your World

We do not own "Frozen" nor any of its characters.

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act I**

**Chapter 10**

**"Part of Your World"**

Elsa was still tightly clutching rutabaga and radish in either tensed hand as she blindly races from the galley and up towards the welcoming light of day on the upper deck to escape her new trials.

Looking left and then right, trying to get her bearings, Elsa pauses in her hysterical race to pant against some unfamiliar wooden wall.

_Why did I go in there without knocking first?! Elsa, he must think you such a fool!_

Losing her control over her ice powers, again in her manic confusion, Elsa rushes through the corridors, needing to feel the warming sun on her tempestuous face again as she always did now when seized with sudden tumultuous spasms at those times when she first began her emotional rehabilitation under Anna's bright shiny care.

"And vere do you zink ye're goin', Missy?"

But just as Elsa takes her first incoherent step up onto the 'Pearl Lady's' deck, the brilliant, blinding sun greeting her face almost immediately sets in the flash of a dark, foreboding, unctuous second. Both rutabaga and radish fall to the deck with a splatting clatter.

"Aye. Ye come a-runnin' to get ze attentions of Captain Houtebeen, have ye, lass? Zat toffy nosed pup not treatin' a fine lady like ye, proper like? Houtebeen be at yer service, ma'am." The condescending, oozing simulated charm of the 'sympathetic' odious pirate, as he grabs Elsa from behind, smoothly exudes feigned compassion for the 'poor, misled' lass moments after she appears, scared and blinking in the sudden sunlight from below deck.

"Come closer, pretty girlie, so Houtebeen can have a better look at ye. Then I'll take ye below and show ye how a real man should treat ye…"

Elsa shrinks within herself, trying to back away, uselessly attempting to pull away against his stronger brute force, as rough, dirty hands travel along her curves and his hideous face leers at her. His graying red beard was all grimy looking, the closer his face comes towards her. His cracked, blackened teeth and foul stench of him was almost bad enough to cause panic-stricken Elsa to faint as the vile pirate moves in to steal a kiss from her struggling, unwilling, delicate lips—

But there was a self-defense mechanism inside of this frightened young woman, that was almost about to kick in with terrifying result as Queen Elsa shivers uncontrollably in fear, and ice once again begins to grip her heart…

"Unhand that lady!" Just as Elsa's ambient ice powers were about to be unleashed, Hans Westergaard's fiercest voice, full of genuine caring and protection for her, warms her now thoroughly chilled heart to pause in its attack, as he appears above deck.

Chasing her frantic dash, Prince Hans had rushed up through the ship and up the ramped steps in his tall, imposing pair of boots. His unbuttoned shirt was open and blowing in the breeze, his auburn hair caught fire in the sun, still damp it glimmers with water particles in the fresh sunlight, and the steely expression on his handsome face made such an impeccably ideal picture of a perfect hero, the likes of which Elsa had only glimpsed in storybooks of old—that he quite took her breath away.

"Vat did ye say, leetle cabin boy?" Captain Houtebeen was not as impressed, though. He demeaned Hans with his uncomplimentary words, accompanied by a sneered gnarl on his mug at him.

This was the defining moment as the pair of men glare across the ship's open deck at one another the challenge, with Elsa caught helplessly in between.

Although, she wasn't the helpless 'damsel in distress' that needed saving. For this evil Captain had absolutely no idea of how deadly her inherent powers could be.

But Hans did. And his calculating intellect already knew how the sadistic pirate would react to discovering Queen Elsa's secret magic. He would either kill her right now on sight and be done with her in his irrational fear, or kill her later, after he had raped her powers for his own wicked, villainous depravity and intent.

And Hans Westergaard would rather die by the sword first, before allowing any man to mar regal, beautiful Queen Elsa of Arendelle's purity.

"I said _**UNHAND THAT LADY, **_please." The courageous, distinguished young man closes the distance between he and his new enemy with long, purposeful strides, and a quickly gathered pirate cutlass along the way.

He draws, with scraping metal against its scabbard as his eyes meet Elsa's with explicit instruction to keep absolutely still.

"Have ye lost yer senses, boy?! Don't ye know who Captain Houtebeen is?! Houtebeen's been called ze finest shot wit a revolver on ze high seas!" And with that prideful statement, the vicious peg leg reaches for his trusty weapon in its leather holster at his side. He trains its sight at Hans' pretty boy head…

"Since'n yer such a goodly cook and usually a handy slave by me zese past two years, Houtebeen will give ye one chance to recant yer childish struck dumb wit young love threat—if ye return to yer kitchen duties and let me have me way with zis wench."

The Captain's focus was on Hans, with his sniveling, smiling ultimatum—though perhaps he should've been paying more attention to Elsa, who, inspired by Hans' bravery in the sight of immense danger to himself calmly finds her center to reach her long, dainty fingers and their endowed 'claws' as she was still in close proximity, pressed against the dubious pirate's foul chest, waits for Prince Hans to utter the word she knew instantly was on the tip of his tongue that would certainly seal his fate. Her pleading eyes reach out for his now, begging for his warning glance to concede and just let her go with her ice powers—

"_**NEVER!"**_

Hans' strong tenor voice rings out. He utilizes all his speed and focus and skills with a blade—any blade—even a pirate's rounded cutlass. Long ago, Hans had trained himself to hone his balance and inner strength as his cunning mind calculates everything, from wind velocity to trajectory, in a split second of racing time.

Captain Houtebeen, for his part, keeps to his dark promise of firing off his pistol's dead eye shot...

_Pity…Houtebeen enjoyed zat boy's potato soup and will miss his cooking much. Ah vell…zere will be others…_

But before his single shot's lead bullet is sent careening wildly towards the impudent lad who had become infatuated with a woman, and let her be his foolish downfall, the 'wench' herself in his unattended grip, breaks free. She rips her long, pointed fingernails across his face, scratching off the despicable man's eyepatch in her clawed wake, causing the old coot to growl and scream as now his misdirected bullet zings towards Hans.

The quick-witted man had to recalculate his actions, as he dodges and simultaneously swings his cutlass at the multi-roped canvas riggings. Its released tension does indeed send the gaffe rigged fore-to-aft mainsail loose to spring forward to swipe its powerful sweep back across the deck and, as mind-boggingly calculated by a genius—

—directly where Captain Houtebeen would have been standing.

Note the auxiliary future perfect tense verb, '_would_ _have_.'

In his vehement anger at his one good eye being almost scratched out as well, enough to cause blood to be spilt down his frightful, menacing features, a crazed Captain Houtebeen viciously fulfills his earlier threat. And before either Hans or Elsa could think or speak another thought, the burly pirate lifts the terrified Queen of Arendelle over his roused to rage bloody head that she had personally injured. He sees to it, in a maddened fury, that he tosses her flailing body overboard.

"_**ELSA!"**_ Hans' screech was soul-wrenching as he dashes to the ship's rail ledge beside the evil Captain.

Hans was not calculating nor scheming nor planning anymore, as he fearlessly makes a diving leap over into the deep, to save the woman he—

"Elsa! Elsa!" Hans bobs around the crashing waves surrounding the full steam moving seacraft. His muscular legs fight the ship's undertow into its surging rudder and keel.

_But did she go under already?_

Hans' mind was furious with himself, as he dives under the murky waters, eyes greedily scanning for this delicate young woman's slender body most likely in need of his breath's resuscitation.

If it took all he had, he'd give his last breath for her.

But there was nothing. Again, he dives, headlong under the sea's crest. His own breath was sparse and thin by his fourth diving search for the young woman.

He didn't dare allow himself to indulge in the belief, until right now, in his desperation to find her and bring her pure magnificent beauty back safe, that he truly loved her.

Not for some schemed plot to become ruler—not for some selfish conquest of manipulating her wealth—both physical and magical. No.

This was the most honest, simple, truthful feeling, beyond his renewed relationship with the Lord, that Hans ever felt.

That beautiful, pure of heart, innocent, demure and vulnerable—yet still strong and firm in her beliefs Queen Elsa of Arendelle was, after all his dreams, the singular angel he'd fallen madly in love with.

_Do I love you because you're wonderful? Or are you wonderful because I love you? _

_I will never know now. _

_Because of me, must she be punished? My fallen nature—I always lose everything I love in the end. Perhaps it is my fate to walk alone. Please, God, help my angel find Your light…_

Job's dark arm cuts around Hans' upper torso, just as the frantic man, too, was slipping under the deep blue. He drags a despondent Hans back from the dark depths onto the Pearl Lady again.

* * *

_**Into the watery dark depths, under the sea…**_

_Sinking, sinking…I can't stop falling. Where does it stop? When do I hit bottom?_

Queen Elsa's incoherent mind floats across the swirling waters, as does her flailing, unresponsive body.

_Is this what it feels like to drown? I feel like there is no up, nor down, no left nor right, no back or forth…Just drifting, with no anchor and no hope of a horizon. Did this happen to you, Mama, Papa? _

Elsa's semi-conscious mind gazes about the undercurrent of churning ocean waves as she tries to reach out to her parents, who too suffered this same fate when their ship sunk some five years ago.

_Dear Lord Jesus, if this is the end, please take me to be with You and my papa and mama, and let Anna know…_

_Tell Anna I died feeling her warmth, her love all around me._

Elsa closes her eyes in pious submission to His plan for her with a fond farewell thought to her beloved little sister.

_And please take care of Prince Hans. He's searching for You, too, just like I was._

Elsa's final thought, as she lets her mind go, reflect the current state of her heart—a heart which another lost soul touched enough to believe she could've found out what true love was perhaps.

But their time was far too short.

_Thy will be done, Lord…_

Somewhere inside of her, a warm and safe peaceful sensation overtakes her and a tiny sparkle begins emanating from inside Elsa's no longer frozen heart.

Her cryokinetic powers spring to a life all their own. A thin coating of ice vergles form over her mouth and nose as involuntarily, the ice creates a small vacuum over the last breath of warmth held inside her mystical body. A cryogenic status coats her unconscious form from the inside out. She was frozen, but her life force, her spirit and mind, still had hidden warmth within as the currents pull her further away…

_Swim flutter flutter flap swim flutter flutter flip bubble_

A school of young flounder fish quickly swish past the strangely floating, unknown entity with their father fish in lead. Several playful dolphins create bumper cars alongside a carp making harplike music who slowly eyes the new discovery, as he floats towards it in A major.

A slew of sea horses tinkle their tiny cymbals, seeming to call many other varieties of sealife to have a curious peek at this odd, pale lavender blue skinned creature who owned a pair of -_\- whatd'ya call them? - Oh, feet!-_\- floating in their ocean, until a deep crimson red crustacean clamps his claws together authoritatively and the lot of ocean dwellers disperse to make way for a beautiful melody flowing closer across the gentle ocean waves…

* * *

"C_ough cough _cough..._"_

The next thing Elsa remembers is waking up on a sandy beach with the sun's vibrant rays doing their work, melting the outer cryogenic state of her body and bringing the inside back to a normal warm rate. (For the Snow Queen.)

The next thing she had to work on was breath.

_Huff, huff, huff _

"Where am I…?" When Elsa is finally able to speak, she glances around an empty afternoon beach front, wondering just how long she'd been lying on this shore.

How did she get here? How did she survive the chasmless sea's terrors? How did she—?

"How did I end up wearing this?!" She glances down at the very small, beautiful light blue seashell corset type covering. "And why is it so immodest?!" Elsa blushes at her exposed upper torso, very glad to find herself alone and in a long matching, slinky skirt. It shimmers in the bright sunlight as it drags upon the shore.

"Whoever gave me these clothes at least has some good taste." Elsa tries to smile at her strange situation. She glances at the pearl necklace bracelet with a very special conch seashell pendant attached. A matching seashell decorates the well coiffed braid of her pale blonde hair.

"I wonder who gave this to me? Who took care of me?" She stands to her feet shakily and gazes about for anyone to ask a question of. She grasps her aching head as she does. She may have had a headache but the prick of the rocks of the sand between her bare toes told her she was still alive.

_After all, there's no pain anymore for us in Heaven._

Elsa smiles, the love and warmth in her heart given this second chance, longed to embrace the little sister who adored running barefoot along the beach, once upon a long, long time ago, when she and Anna were tiny, tiny girls—

"Papa and Mama would bring us—"

Thinking about her dear, departed parents, Elsa's thoughts are reminded to give praise and thanksgiving—first and foremost—as she falls to her knees in her shimmering skirt in the sand. Her hands were clasped together in deep petition.

_Thank you, Lord. Now I know my time here isn't finished yet. I have a lot of love yet to give._

She sings to the endless blue sky amidst the thousand sparkles of rays of light.

"Thank you!" She waves indiscriminately to the ocean that she had found friends within, though she wasn't aware how or who or when—but now Elsa was no longer afraid of the ocean, for some of its great watery mystery was not as frightening as it was amiably generous and kind and full of unforgettable music.

A song carries her up the sand dunes, and onto the grassy path above.

Now, all Elsa had to do was find help to save Rapunzel and Eugene, Olaf and Pascal, King Olaf's orb and—

Hans, too.

From whatever that evil pirate was up to, and there was only one person left on this earth who she could rely on, through thick and thin, to stand beside her in this crisis, just as before. Everything worked to the good, when sisterly love came together as friends.

And, by Providence, she wasn't too far away. Elsa's eyes light up to see a great big advertisement sign at the end of the long road, reading, with an arrow pointing to the store cabin, just up the hill:

**'Wandering Oaken's Trading Post and Sauna'**

"Sorry, little sister, but I need to ice your honeymoon." Elsa says to the wind on the desolate path, trying to cheer herself up. This sheltered young woman, all on her own, was so in fear for her friends and family and…her new love that she was trembling inside.

Elsa had learned that nervous feeling could be overcome by Anna's prescription for smiles, singing and laughter—all to be found at 'Wandering Oaken's Trading Post and Sauna.'

* * *

And that was exactly what was going on within Mr. Oaken's place of business. Anna and Kristoff had arrived a day or two ago and had been sampling the Sauna's perennially warm hot spring that savvy businessman, Oaken, was cashing in on.

Too bad, after the first night, Kristoff had to say something to rub the big man (big, big man!) the wrong way, about the extra charge for renting a 'Honeymoon Sauna'. Kristoff just didn't see how anything was different that Oaken had changed for the sauna room, save for a sign on the window peep that said either 'In trouble' or 'Out of order' on the reverse side.

The joke of which Kristoff didn't find funny at all.

The end result had Anna and Kristoff laughingly spending the remainder of their paid stay out of the sauna and in the barn only.

"—And stay out! You dare call Oaken a shameless money grubber in his own place?!"

"And just when we were getting to be friends…"

Well, the laughter that Anna found when Kristoff was once again physically kicked out of Oaken's store to land on his bum hard to the stone garden fit that prescription again.

"Here, let me see!" By the time Anna had gotten her big 'baby' of a new grumpy husband into the familiar haystack homey smelling barn haven beside Sven, who was calming chewing his cud, Kristoff was in a better mood.

Especially after Anna quite forcefully wrestles him out of his pants to make sure 'you didn't get cut on those jagged rocks and I'll have to put some medicine on it!' she threatened whilst her frisky little paws were a-wandering.

"Oookay! Backside is all clear." Having a ball by now of embarrassing her new husband, making poor Kristoff lean over as if he were a child, Anna giddily slaps his tight rump, humming away happily as she peeks down into his fully washed, light blue undies, not able to resist a pinch or two on the way out.

"Anna! Stop that!" Kristoff hollers at her incessant playful pinching of any spot on his bare skin, so Sven decides to take his bow (several times a day, the rate this foreplay is going) out the side stall door that the reindeer kicks it tight shut behind him.

"What?!" A giggling Anna feigns innocence as Kristoff turns around to sit on his sore, pinched bottom. Anna was none too gentle a girl and none too shy anymore, either, as she sidles in between his outstretched muscular thigh legs before he could get into a more comfortable position.

She returns to her favorite new hobby of counting each one of his ripped pecs, cobblestone abs and horseshoe obliques along his open chest and abdomen. He had been ready for a sauna bath, but got her giddy digits' shower of love instead.

"Heh he, feistypants, didn't you hear me say it tickles when you do that. Heheh…" Kristoff lifts his arm to scratch his still-sweetly-shy-at-moments head beneath his cap.

He semi-protests her endless enthusiasm over his manly physique as he chuckles with each of her tickles tinkling with his troll crystal necklace that had been their wedding present from Cliff and Bulda, Anna having a matching one.

"Yes." Anna answers, half-heartedly listening. Her count was up to fifteen when he breaks her concentration and she has to start over again.

"One, two…"

With a scoffing, high-pitched laugh, Kristoff was wondering if Anna was trying to turn him on, the slow methodical way she fingered and traced each hard bump on his upper abdomen, breathing a number on it before starting on the next.

But it was working.

"Ahem, hmm…how about some music?" Not that there was something wrong with his testosterone, but Sven had climbed over four hills this morning alone and Kristoff was beginning to wonder if Anna was on some kind of crazy mission to fulfill the kransekake prediction all at once on their two week vacation.

Kristoff reaches over her anxious on all fours form. She rolls over as he picks up his lute guitar and starts to strum it, with a smug smile on his face, for he knew nothing could calm a love frenzied Anna more than a sing-off.

"Yes! I love it when you sing to me!"

As foreseen, Anna scrambles back up and drops back from her blatant fondling of her man to listen to him serenade to her.

"_Anna is better than most people…I can't think of a girl more bright!_  
_She's soft and she's sweet and really likes to eat_  
_And she's mine, today, tomorrow, forever…all right…!_"

"Awww…" Anna had a melty face as she kneels before him like an adoring puppy.

"Again! Again!" She cries out in utter childish excitement. Anna always loved it when her papa sang to her, just like this.

_Okay, Papa was wearing more clothes…and didn't have muscles like you…and wasn't blonde at all. He had hair my color! Oh, Papa, I miss you!_

Tears freely spill over from her eyes and onto the hay sprinkled floor she was kneeling on.

"Anna? Was my singing that bad?" Kristoff was getting used to these little emotional outbursts from his dizzy but absolutely lovable girl and he always knew when she needed a—

"Warm hug time, baby." Kristoff's sincere smile on his caring face was more than inviting enough for Anna to crumple like a little girl into his arms, weeping hot tears onto his hairy bare chest.

"Olaf said you needed one of these at least three times a day, right? I don't mind upping it to five warm hugs if you don't, feistypants." Kristoff, a sensitive, big bear-hugger himself, wraps the small girl up until she almost disappears in his larger bodied embrace - along with her sorrows.

And he was glad of it.

"I love you, Olaf!" Anna repeats her childhood chant to the inanimate snowman. Her ditzy mind now wondered how Elsa was doing right about now, if she too was lonely without her sister.

"Uhhh, I would rather you didn't mix me up with the snowman." Kristoff teases in her hair, starting to blow in her ear. Their intimate proximity was at the limit of all he could take about now…

"Elsa?!"

"Now you're calling me your sister? That's weird. Whoa…! Anna, what?!" Kristoff is actually dropped like a bag of coal, to his painfully bumped chin, (as he was coming down for the 'kill' so to speak, heheheh) when his slippery wife slithers out from underneath him (something that would disturb a less confident man, but not solid Kristoff). He protectively jumps to his feet to rush outside and see what had shocked his little firebrand so.

She was nutty enough to rush headlong into any danger, though Kristoff doubted much could go wrong way up here in the peaceful North Valley.

"Anna! Kristoff! I need your help!" Elsa was astride a determined looking Sven, side saddle. He had luckily found her stumbling up the path, barefoot and exhausted.

Elsa cries out to her dearest friend - her baby sister - whom she didn't want to interrupt in her time of happiness and get her involved in this madness but it was all becoming a bit too much for her to bear alone.

_But that's what families are for, after all._

Good-natured Kristoff smiles and waves at Elsa until he realizes how little he was wearing down there, and he then flies back into the barn, quite ashamed.


	12. Chapter 11 - The Other Half of Me

We do not own "Frozen" nor any of its characters.

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act I**

**Chapter 11**

**"The Other Half of Me"**

The cell door is forced open and Hans Westergaard's unconscious form is roughly shoved inside by Job, who promptly removes the broad sword and any other item that could be used as a weapon from the secondary cage's former occupant. The old skeletal swordsman crumbles apart under the dark man's harsh actions and the disturbed lifeless skull clatters across the dusty floor to crash into the back of Hans' passed out head as it was residing face down upon the ground.

A growing puddle of his own blood emanates from his whipped and lashed bare back. Job nonetheless coarsely ties a tight knot with a thick rope around Hans' unaware wrists behind his back, equally shackling his flailed out ankles with the same sturdy long cord ensuring his captivity.

But at the moment the young man was far too beaten, battered and bruised to attempt any escape for a long time. Job lets out a heaving sigh as the faint rays of sunlight peering down from the ramp above reveal how much damage his—at Captain Houtebeen's relentlessly cruel and brutal command—fierce whip's punishment had caused, as the blood was still trickling down Hans' slashed back from numerous strikings from the chastising lash.

The Captain, in fury with his slave's betrayal, still had a bit of a soft spot for the wayward boy's usual quiet servitude and fine cooking skills, left it up to Job to decide whether his only other ship's workmate would live or die, after expressly demanding the bloodsoaked beating to "knock out of ze damned boy any fantasized notions of rebellion or silly dreams of a girl's love zat's been lost."

But before Job turns to leave, he takes off the long colorful decorated sash belt from his waist and kneels down to Hans' prone and profusely bleeding back. The big brute of a man gently places the treasured article of clothing from his Caribbean home beneath the injured man's head as a pillow, and he turns Hans' unconscious, still sopping wet face to the side and not face down upon the dirty cell floor.

"Thanks for that, big guy! Personally can't stand to see a fine nose like that being squashed. He~y, what'd the poor beggar do to deserve forty lashes after a dunk in the drink? And what of his lady friend, may I be so bold as to inquire?" Flynn Rider had manfully held his tongue since the moment his attentive, adjusted eyes had glimpsed in the near pitch darkness the hulking first mate carry and drag the slender 'cabin boy' into the brig's opposing cell cage catty-corner to his.

The dripping wet sounds slathering down to the ground in Hans' passed out wake when Job brought him in caused much curiosity on Flynn's behalf as to the reason why he had to speak up.

That and his growing concern for Elsa's safety.

"He defied the Cap'n. Same'll happen to you if you don't do as you're told once we hit land tomorrow. But I'd enjoy ripping your gizzards out even more, Thief." Job threateningly sneers behind his back at Flynn as he slams shut and locks Hans' cell door behind him, all rings of keys now clutched in his large dark hands.

"Now there's a pleasant thought…and the longest sentence I've ever heard you utter yet! Top of the morning to you, too, Friend." Flynn sarcastically retorts. His running off, taunting mouth made it no wonder his 'sparkling personality' was none too popular with anyone, save Rapunzel, who comes flying out of her boiler room hiding place the moment Job's heavy footsteps fade up the ramp from the dank bilge deck.

"Prince Hans!" Rapunzel, without giving her miffed hubby even a '_good morning, my darling'_ greeting or a how-do-you-do, rushes to the singular other cage on the opposite side. She tries to reach the drenched injured man from her side of the iron bars, but her artful fingers were just able to touch the top of his head as she brushes his wet hair back from his closed eyes tenderly.

"'Prince Hans?!' When did this lowly cabin boy get upgraded to a prince, Blondie?" _And why do all women feel the need to caress a passed out man's hair…? _Flynn recalls his little wife's fond fondlings when he was in unconscious peril, once upon a time. _Not that Sideburns over there has the style or rugged good looks of my caliber._

"Hey~! That's enough of the fondling!" Flynn orders, his jealousy rising as Rapunzel scurries around the cage to position herself to be able to delicately dab at Hans' bloody slashed bare back with her handkerchief. She gently pets his soft haired neck for comfort with her other hand.

"Elsa told me his name before. Eugene, he's hurt bad…" She was practically cooing like a mother hen. Flynn marveled at his girl's natural mothering instincts.

That and her new style of dress.

"Whoa…! Blondie, what happened to your boyish pants? That look for you was starting to grow on me. Not that this one isn't working…" From this new angle of her backside, Flynn's eyes were, by now, glued to Rapunzel's rather high pink skin revealing pair of hot, hot shorts.

_That'll be all the rage someday, too…_

"Oh! Yes, Olaf and I have come up with a plan!" With a slightly embarrassed, lower lip bitten smile, she answers distractedly as she carefully begins to minister to Hans' deep wounds with her now thoroughly bloodied hanky.

"Ohhh, great…Everything's gonna be just fine, now. The snowman has fashion sense and a foolproof plan." A disgruntled Flynn rolls his smart aleck eyes to the heavens at the very ridiculous idea of an animated pile of snow deciding his fate.

_And maybe Queenie's, too…Without this guy there to watch out for her, I've gotta get up there and make sure she's safe from those ruthless pirates…_

Worldly man Flynn Rider imagines Elsa's unprotected fate. His eyebrows knit rather grimly at the thought.

"You think so, too, Flynn-er-Eugene?! See, Rapunzel! I told you it would work." Unspoiled by sarcasm, a prattling Olaf chooses this moment to come waddling out to see where his companion had gone. "And if a smart and fast and nimble heroic guy like Flynn-er-Eugene agrees it's a good plan, it'll work for sure!"

Flynn throws his still tightly shackled wrists up in the air in total frustration.

"What will work?!" Flynn wished his hands were free so he could throttle the annoying creature into shutting up. He jars poor, helpful Pascal, busy at work yet again on his locks, as a frazzled Flynn bangs the jammed locks with his handcuffed wrists.

He was more than pleasantly surprised when one pops open from being improperly locked, as if on purpose.

"Well…" Rapunzel turns her head to respond to her dark in-the-dark husband as he immediately goes to work on the multiple locks of the cell door.

"Olaf and I have been constructing a small boat craft from the old broken boiler's metal tub-like container that I used some candlewax and tar that I found around the room to seal any cracks or holes in it. We've been using every bit of fabric scrap we can lay our hands on, hence my deducted pants, to add to some of the rope I swiped from the laundry line in the connecting area over there. It's just Olaf's size and light enough to be buoyant and since he doesn't need air, it will make the perfect escape pod when we lower him over this pirate ship's edge with the length of rope I've woven and we braided together. Once in the water, he can paddle to shore ahead of our arrival with these coal tongs to find help from the authorities there on land." Rapunzel was so wrapped up in her brilliant, imaginative scheme that she almost forgot to take a breath in between each enthusiastic sentence.

Olaf shakes his own head affirmatively up and down the entire time back at Flynn, just as giddy with excitement as Rapunzel was.

"And how exactly are you going to deposit said 'buoyant boatcraft' with our little hero, Olaf, secreted on board, over the ship's top deck ledge - without being spotted?" Flynn didn't enjoy punching pinholes in his adorable love's audacious plan, but someone had to do it.

"Why, Elsa will! You should've seen her at the dock! She's really good, and fast at being all mysterious and covert and—" Rapunzel in all her industrious meanderings within the confines of her boiler room craft workshop suddenly thinks about her cousin's whereabouts. After all, if Prince Hans (whom Elsa had only briefly inferred their past relationship as being "_too painful a memory, it was hard to explain"_, that hopelessly romantic, daydreamer Rapunzel had taken that to mean '_so madly in love I couldn't tell him'_) was down there with them, then poor Elsa was up there alone, with the pirates.

"Where's Elsa?!"

"Where's Elsa?!"

Rapunzel and then a mimicking Olaf cry out concurrently, with sudden panic written on either face when they both realize their fellow musketeer was sorely unaccounted for in their cozy prison brig area.

"She's gone. I lost her…"

Rapunzel snaps her head back around to gaze at the quiet, displaced, emotionless sound coming from the blood encrusted lips of the beaten man lying on the cold, uninviting floor.

"I couldn't protect her. I tried, but I failed her. I am a failure. God forgive me…" It was the distressed, pent up emotion speaking from his once frozen cold heart — now thoroughly melted by his love for this rare beauty of light named Elsa.

Hot, raw tears begin to relentlessly overflow from his dull eyes. The broken man's formerly haughty ego was utterly destroyed. His tormented mind, distraught with hope for second chances dashed, was beyond any mental caring of decorum or male pride as Hans Westerguard, intensely overwrought with self-reproach and self-loathing, for the first time truly in his adult life, breaks down in unmitigated, unchecked tears.

Impassioned, suffering, remorseful tears for a life lost — a beautiful life — the only one life who could bring him to a glimpse of redemption for his past wrongs against herself and her kingdom. In his agonized soul he felt that pure and delicate Queen Elsa's protection and express safety was placed by God under his own menial and worthless care as his ultimate test of penance and forgiveness.

And the unworthy man found himself wholly inadequate to deserve any morsel of pardonable mercy—human or holy—ever again, as rightful consequence for his monumental failure as a gentleman to protect a lady.

_No, an angel. I lost my angel…with the dust of the stars in her eyes…_

_Her lovely eyes I will never be able to beg forgiveness from again…_

"…Elsa…" Rapunzel felt her own heavy-hearted tears stinging her cheeks, as the poor man that her hands through the bars were cradling, was physically wrenching on the cell ground with grief and loss. She did her best to hold onto him.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN '**YOU LOST HER'**?!" The quiet is broken by Flynn Rider's usually smooth voice, as it bellows out in furious reprobation at the already wounded man's actions or inactions. Flynn didn't care which caused the tall blonde's demise. The masculine anger surges within his own guilt-ridden heart at knowing the very reason Queen Elsa had been present here onboard this damned pirate ship — was because of him.

And that inner kindness of hers, to let him go and cover up his sorry behind for her cousin Rapunzel's sake—that was only worthy of a genuine, truly regal and majestic queen.

_All my fault…I let you down, too, Queenie…_

Flynn stifles his own tears with his ire at the other man rising with each passing second.

"I couldn't stop him from throwing her overboard. I wasn't good enough to stop him…" Hans was muttering under his tearful breath as Rapunzel strokes his brow as if he were a baby. Her eyes plead back to her husband to show some sympathy for this former 'friend' of Elsa's — for both Rapunzel and Eugene believed him to be someone Elsa had known far too well in her past from the vague way she spoke of him.

But Eugene was not in the mood for pity parties.

"Get away from him, Rapunzel." Flynn growls low as he ceases his incessant animalistic pacing around his cage in sheer anger.

"But, Eugene—!" Tender Rapunzel starts to protest, looking up to see her beloved standing directly behind her, and no longer behind his own cell's bars. His hand was immediately on her shoulder, pulling her away.

"I said to stop mollycoddling this fool!" Yanking her away a bit too roughly, Flynn, somehow in his anger and wrath, had found his focus enough to unlatch every single one of seven locks standing between him and the freedom to beat the living daylights out of this little piece of—

"I'm glad you figured out those locks. Please kill me now. I know I deserve whatever darkness awaits me. A fitting sentence for failing my angel when she needed me most." Hans manages to choke out, encouraging his own demise, aware that the enraged and incensed other man was close enough—and capable enough—to reach strong hands in between cell bars and finish off the sorry existence that ever was Hans Westergaard.

_Maybe my brothers were right to count me as invisible…_

But after a few moments of breathing hard, Eugene Fitzherbert surprises even himself by being a better man than a dozen other princes.

He, for one, with widening eyes, touched by Rapunzel's sweet golden heart, clearly sees the pain of extreme loss plainly visible on the auburn, sideburned face, as brokenhearted Hans closes his eyes, resigned to his ill-fate for all eternity, fully prepared to have his outstretched neck broken by Flynn's rightfully outraged powerful hands.

_I'll not find the other half of me where I'm going…But I deserve where I'm headed. Farewell, my beautiful Snowflake…_

"Maybe…Elsa still needs you to do one last thing in her place. Maybe she needs us both to work together to do it. Then we can kill each other after that. Deal?" Flynn senses Hans' sincere remorse and the extent of emotion he would expect from a forlorn lover, the thought that Elsa once cared for him softens his irate heart . Rather than being the instrument of his doom, Flynn plays the role of the encouraging older brother that Hans never had. He even scruffles Hans' still wet shock of hair with his hand rather than strangle or crack his neck.

"Deal..." Hans faintly responds at the mere mention of Elsa's name. His blood drained body and disturbed consciousness, along with his broken, perplexed and very, very sorrowful heart, finally slips fully away again. Her beautiful eyes followed every thought as his depressed devastated head sinks down to the dirty floor, once again passed out.

"Oh, Eugene, I love you! Thank you…!" Rapunzel jumps up from her sitting in a fetal ball position on a bucket in the corridor to forcefully hug her freed magnanimous guy in gratitude and love for his hidden inner goodness shining through, though the tears for Elsa were still running down her cheeks.

"Oww…" Flynn's stabbing conscience begged to differ as he too indeed feels the sting of his iced, frostbitten arm. It was a vivid reminder of the strong, magic-blessed woman, whom they had just lost. He now wishes the benevolent queen had unleashed all of her powers to do away with this 'underhanded, useless scrap heap' of an orphan boy turned aspiring man who had delusions of being a prince of thieves.

_Queenie, I'll get back your kingdom's St. Olaf orb and stop whatever this monster of a pirate captain has plans to use it for, even if it's the last thing I do. I'll right this mess I made…for you…and those gorgeous gams I'll never have the pleasure of seeing again, Beautiful._

Flynn holds his weeping wife close to his chest, feeling her warm tears soaking straight into his heart.

"She was so young and graceful and good! What am I going to tell Anna?!" Rapunzel whispers to her husband in grief for her gracious and dignified cousin who had undertaken this dangerous adventure without aid from her own countrymen — for their safety.

"Why are you crying, Rapunzel? Isn't having Flynn-er-Eugene out of his cell a happy thing? Isn't he hugging you right? I'm sure Anna would approve — she likes warm hugs from everybody." Olaf, in his naivete, once again with a silly grin up at them, guesses wrongly a woman's reason for tears.

"Olaf, I'm gonna tell you something that'll hurt your feelings, but Elsa would want you to be strong, okay? Promise me, you're not gonna fall apart or anything, okay?" The healing flower who was Rapunzel, extends her golden heart out even for this funny little snowman friend as she kneels to the ground, searching for the right comforting words to inform the simple snowperson of his Queen — no, his childhood friend's — death…

"Elsa's not coming back with us to Arendelle." Rapunzel starts, trying to be gentle.

"Why not?" But in his straightforward, non complex way, Olaf would make it no easy task to do.

"Because she's…she's—" Rapunzel's big watering green eyes dart up to her Eugene's for help here.

"—because sadly, your beautiful lady has met with an unfortunate demise today." With a long sigh, he offers, not scoffing for once at the black balaclava wearing snowman, blinking his dark eyes up at him in artless wonder.

"Ohh, that sounds awful." Olaf comments idly, nodding his head up and down as if in total understanding.

"What does the word 'demise' mean, exactly?" He suddenly asks. Pascal slaps his own intelligent head and rolls his eyes in his shaking, sad now blue scaly head.

"Dead, Olaf. 'Demise' is the polite term for just 'dead'." Flynn answers bluntly. This beating around the bush caused more pain for his little wife's emotional state than necessary.

"Ohhh, okay." Olaf answers with a comprehending smile beneath his carrot to this sobering news.

"Why do you think so?" Olaf adds an extension to his normal query. His eyes were wide and curious up at the frustrated couple and their chameleon, who shakes his head again and turns purple.

"Olaf…I know it's hard to grasp right now. But Elsa has been drowned in the ocean. She's gone." Rapunzel chokes out the end of her regretful comment, and puts her head into Eugene's welcoming chest.

"O-okay. I got it now." Olaf repeats himself as Flynn, Rapunzel and Pascal all wonder at his total lack of sorrowful emotion for his friend and sovereign's loss.

Shaking their heads in passing amazement, the married couple start to move back to be in planning their next strategy without her.

"But if Elsa were dead and gone, so would I be." Olaf concludes succinctly as he begins following them in his normal pleasant waddle.

"Olaf! What did you just say?!" Rapunzel immediately spins around and falls to her knees to be at eye level with the uncomplicated snowman. She shakes his shoulders.

"But if Elsa were dead and gone, so would I be." Olaf literally repeats in all honesty.

"Why?!" Rapunzel, quizzically confused, but a glimmer of hope begins to shine in her green eyes.

"Because Elsa made me with her powers and she has to constantly keep me alive all through the year with those powers." He answers with a knowing smile.

"How?" Flynn questions suspiciously, but he was catching on to the hopeful jive alight in his wife's eyes.

"With my personal snow flurry over my head, of course! It's still there right now. See?" Olaf proudly points above his eye-crossed head.

"Oh! Hood." He pulls off his black hood to reveal the previously hidden cloud, still as yet emanating, steady and strong, snowflakes down over him, to keep the snowman in any weather at a constant below zero temperature all the time.

"So I would just melt if something really happened to Elsa. You guys were just trying to scare me, right? You foreigners!" A condescending Olaf begins babbling and chuckling at their naivete when it came to snowmen and Norway's Queen.

"You guys really don't know anything about Elsa, do you?" Olaf chuckles at their exchanged astonished looks as they wipe tears from their eyes to reveal smiles of hope and joy.

A raucous Flynn lifts a laughing Rapunzel straight off the ground and spins her around in the air before the happy pair settle into one another's delighted embrace at the startling news of Cousin Elsa's 'un-demise.'

"That gal's full of surprises." Flynn says with a proud smile.

"And warm summer magic buried beneath the cool winter ice!" Rapunzel tries to imagine what mystical travels her beautiful, sophisticated, compellingly fascinating pale blonde cousin was experiencing on her journey right now…

* * *

A pale young woman stands trembling with both fear and cold at the edge of her massively impressive exquisite ice palace's balcony. She was alone and shivering and the look on her gorgeous face was filled with hesitant anticipation as she steps out even further on the high ledge, as if to glimpse the tiny, trifling figure drawing imminently nearer beneath her snow capped horizon.

At first small, the singular dashing figure of a man astride a noble Fjord steed looms closer and closer as he races up the icy mountain as fast as the wind could take him to her. Inside his pounding heart, he sensed it was urgent and imperative that he reached the waiting woman quickly and at all costs.

Finally arriving at the glittering ice palace's stately long winding spiral ice staircase entrance, the handsome prince braves the ice whipped cold, gallantly dismounting his whinnying horse, as his own long legs fearlessly leap and bound two and three steps at a time up the dangerously fragile ornate staircase.

_I must hurry! My Queen needs me — my angel of pure light._

The prince, whose determined eyes never strayed from gazing up to his love, runs and races upwards. The sparkle radiating from all around her slender body and in the form of her glorious song, wafts through the thin air down to his adoring ears, inspiring him to forge ahead despite the biting cold and thin atmosphere forcing him to take shallow breaths.

Once atop the long intricate staircase, never once looking back or down to its hundred foot or so drop amidst the endless lofty mountain heights, the prince raises his auburn head to call out to his love, still serenading him with inviting luminous eyes from atop her royal balcony.

"Wait for me, my angel! I'm coming!" His tenor voice was as strong and sure as it had ever been. His flexing muscles then thrust open the large ornate double front doors to the palace, only to find a huge monster wearing a tiny gold crown to greet him inside.

The humongous fifty-foot 'Marshmallow' (as Olaf had so dubbed him) was the formidable snow creature's name who guarded the ice palace. It takes one look at the new intruder to the castle he was created to be protector of, and lets out a momentous, deafening roar of "GET OUT!"

But the courageous prince does not heed the frozen monolith's words. He brandishes his own well-trained broadsword and makes a wide, charging dive straight towards the angry creature's leg, immobilizing it instantly as he severs the snowy appendage completely.

_I feel as if I've done this before…_

His mind swirls with a cloudy memory as the snow monster comes crashing down in the stately ice palace's front anteroom.

But Marshmallow's arms were still attached enough to reach out and physically grab the attacking prince in large, massive hands — attempting to squeeze the life out of him.

Suddenly, the prince musters all his energy to slice and slash his way out of the ice monster's palm — shredding each finger to bits.

But each piece of ice falls to the palace's ice floor with crack after crack until there were so many crevices in the shattered floor that it begins to split apart.

The prince, in his adrenaline pumped fervor for survival, his quick, calculating mind spinning a mile a minute, utilizes the creature's own arm lifted in pain from losing its digits, to climb up it and use his sword to mercilessly behead the snow beast. His swift hands snatch the golden crown from its decapitated head before it tumbles down.

_**FALL! Bang! CRASH!**_

When poor Marshmallow's head is severed from his unsuspecting neck, its final baritone bellowed 'NOOOOOO!" reverberates throughout the entire palace as it rolls into the doors, breaking the delicate frames, ornate rafters and ice beams apart. The icy bodyguard's flailing body brings the remainder of the ice pillars, one by one, down like icy dominoes.

The prince looks around frantically at the destruction he'd caused the once beautiful, pristine, perfectly pure crystal castle. He races up to her balcony and with terrified, maddened eyes, he watches his magnificent angel be struck by icicles shattering from that same ice chandelier again as its translucent falling weight sheers the balcony itself straight off the icy second floor — and the ground disappears right beneath the frightened woman's feet.

She lets out a piercing scream as her hands reach up for him to rescue her.

"Prince Hans!" Elsa helplessly cries out for him, her heart in her hands that slip straight through his as if they were nothing more than an illusion.

Prince Hans rushes to the edge of the shattered crystalline ice palace and sinks to his devastated knees as he watches every piece of its delicate, intricately woven edifice defaced and obliterated at his ruthless hands.

"I've lost you again! Before I was able to tell you how I feel…Everything I touch is always taken away from me, because I annihilate all that is pure and good." He disdainfully sneers in contempt of himself as he gazes down to his hands where Queen Elsa of Arendelle's golden bejeweled crown, that he once desperately desired to possess, was still clutched within.

Though without her, it meant nothing to him anymore. Nothing at all.

But even the golden crown and all it symbolized disintegrates into the painful ethers of his derisory nightmarish delusion in his unconscious state of utter self-blame.

Hans' heart was in free fall now that he believed his Elsa's quintessence forgiveness was lost to him forever.

"Come home to me…_Please…"_ Though his voice is lost in the chasm-less depths that had swallowed his tender new love wholly away from him, there was the faintest glimmer of light sparkling back up at him through the refracting endlessly spiraling snowflakes, offering the lovelorn man an inexplicable other worldly twinkle of hope...

_I need you...Because you are the other half of me..._

It was the one burning thought within Prince Hans as his consciousness slowly stirs awake...


	13. Chapter 12 - Mutiny of the Pearl Lady

We do not own "Frozen" nor any of its characters.

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act I**

**Chapter 12**

**"Mutiny of the ****Pearl**** Lady"**

**_Drip…drip…drip…_**

The gentle snow that had flurried down over Prince Hans' lying prone form whilst he was in a state of unconsciousness begins to melt along his furrowed brow down to the perfectly curved line of his firm jaw.

The wetness begins to cascade along his well-born cheekbones until the snow droplets completely dissolve upon the heat of his tall, sharp nose and long noble chin.

**_Drip…drip…drip…_**

"…Snowflake…" A dazed, depressed Hans whispers a fond diminutive for the woman he'd believed lost, that perhaps he could have cared for even more, as he awakens from a choked, disoriented dream. He is quickly snapped back to cold reality by the chilled particles of icy frost descending over his head.

"Actually, I'm a 'Snowman' or a 'Snowperson' if you like the non-gender personal sound better. I don't mind either."

The nearby voice that pleasantly continues to drone on astounds Hans as his groggy eyes flutter open—not to see a person talking, but rather the self-described 'snowperson' of a creature hovering close over his downed face.

"What manner of magic creature are you?" A wide-eyed Hans emerges from his depression to ask the happily humming snowman, who pauses in his peering down at the unconscious prisoner to return to his industrious weaving and braiding of a long ribboned cord from various patched together fabrics and ropes, with his strangely animated branchlike hands and wooden digits.

"Oh, pshaw! I'm not magic! Elsa made me! Just a working snowman named 'Olaf.'" Busy at his task, Olaf modestly states to Hans' quizzically evaluating eyes. The cogs spin furiously in Hans' intelligently astute head at the sentient being blinking back at him pleasantly.

"Olaf…?" Hans lifts his curious, aching head to stretch painfully beaten and whipped back muscles so he could get a better look at the living and talking and moving snowman close by with the private 'snow flurry' cloud still encompassing his elongated head.

"Queen Elsa made you…? So, if you're still maintained alive—then she yet lives! _Ergh-_!" In his jubilant excitement, Hans attempts to leap to his ecstatic feet as he cries out the realization logical to his swift mind. The immense injuries to his wounded back and shoulder areas cause him to just about be able to sit up instead, as he places dauntless hands around the snowman's rounded upper torso, not flinching at the icy cold touch one bit.

"Where is she?! Can you draw an inference to her location with your ice capabilities? I will go to the ends of the earth to make certain she is safe!" Hans ignores the pain to shake poor Olaf senseless (even more so than usual) in search for a hopeful, positive response to his impassioned, wild-eyed plea.

**_Blink, blink._**

"Do I draw an 'inference' with a pencil - or a crayon, maybe? What does it look like? I love artwork, and paints, and pastels—aren't I a good artist, Cousin Rapunzel?" Just about managing to keep his head piece attached, Olaf once again diverges on his own amiable tangent, raising his voice to call across the cell and around the corner to where he knew the small girl was diligently making use of her own hands in constructing another ingenious article honed in her new 'workshop' boiler room that Hans had alerted Elsa of, what seemed a lifetime ago.

"Olaf…? Is he awake?" Whispered in a squeak, a brown, short-cropped head peeks out from around the corner. "Remember, Eugene told you to be quiet while he was gone…!" Rapunzel rushes across the brig with the result of her newly finished work still strapped to her. The anxious whisper, as she patters up to berate the loud-mouthed snowman, who promptly zips his mouth shut again pleasantly, told of the intense worry of her harried heart.

"Eugene…?" He intuitively knew that the girl was referring to the man introducing himself as 'Flynn Rider.' But Hans' smooth voice seemed to catch on the name as his eyes begin to ponder under a deeply thoughtful brow.

_Focus, man…_

He shakes his naturally inquisitive subconscious back to return to the more pressing moment at hand.

"Oh, yeah…Eugene's my husband. My name's Rapunzel. I'm Elsa's cousin. Are you feeling a little better…Hans…?" The empathic girl doesn't heed good old Eugene's words herself as Rapunzel recklessly dashes straight into the prisoner's cell where Olaf had carrot lock-picked the final singular padlock her master thief (who was getting too darn used to playing with those blasted hasp and staple chain linked locks) had left to keep the passed out man contained.

In her mind, the scene from just twenty minutes ago replays—how Eugene had handed her his treasured lock pick set that she had been fastidious in learning his tricks of the trade for fun on afternoons spent together in their blissful marital castle life.

'_Just in case, Blondie.'_

Attached to a rather intense, lasting kiss with one last uncertain glance at the other man lying on the cell floor, Eugene had murmured to his doe-eyed wife, who had fearfully trembled at the thought of him going above deck as dusk was falling.

His intent was to first retrieve Arendelle's stolen treasure and vindicate himself in poor Elsa's unseeing eyes, then overpower the Captain and his first mate to commandeer the ship just as the 'Pearl Lady' was to set anchor and they would be taken by surprise.

But since Rapunzel 'technically' didn't have to utilize her newly trained lock picking skills to unlatch the cage that Olaf's carrot had opened for her, the guiltless Rapunzel didn't see much deceitful wrong in disobeying her hubby to this degree.

Besides, she had a back up plan of her own that would involve Elsa's 'ex-lover' as her fertile imagination, bolstered by Eugene's first hand observation of the 'couple's' first reunited, volatile kiss, believed to be face.

"Never mind me. We must disembark from this vessel and locate Queen Elsa whilst halting this pirate in his insidious plot to ravage her country's holy treasures."

"Wow~! You're good! I can see why Elsa likes you!" With a pleased eye up and down Hans' exposed chest, Rapunzel smirks at how ardent and zealous her tall cousin's former love interest still was.

_If she had any idea…_

Hans' eyes glance down sheepishly at her inferred meaning, causing her to think his handsome face cute and sweet all at once.

Rapunzel touches the gauze strips she had applied to his bloodied back earlier, and removes them as she reaches for the roll of first-aid bandages she and Pascal had newly made out of the remainder of Eugene's sliced up shirt.

_I love it when you go all hairy bare-chested…!_

She wraps the kerosene-oil dipped 'ribbons' around another fine specimen of a man's torso.

"Now, this might hurt…" Rapunzel bites her own lip as a non-vocal Olaf aids her in covering Hans' multiple, wide-open back and shoulder wounds with her homemade homeopathic treatment. (Medicine was another venue for filling in her idle, free time when Eugene was sleeping in.)

This spunky Princess may have lost her powers to heal, but the compassion to try to relieve others' pain was undiminished.

Hans grunts manfully as the sugared kerosene and rum tincture seeps into each freshly opened wound. Rapunzel softly hums her familiar chant as she administers both bandages and gentle caresses. Although the music had little effect anymore, it just felt 'right' to sing to make someone in pain feel better.

"As I said, never mind me." Hans finds the wide-eyed, cute woman's mercy for a stranger quite touching, though he was man enough now not to require this degree of mollycoddling.

"Ookay… Eugene thinks the ship is docking soon and was worried the pirates would have more minions on land when we arrive, and he'd lose the chance to get the Orb back. So he's up there now, alone, fighting those pirates. Please…maybe you can help? I have an idea." Rapunzel stops her fussing over the injured man to return her fidgeting fingers to the work she had wrought.

Hefting himself up to his black-booted knees at her feet with a silent prayer for fortitude and uncommon strength, Hans breathes in deeply, imaging a platinum blonde head in his mind. Every bit of his stamina is tested when the man's slim, muscular form rises the rest of the way, to his tall six-foot-two stature. But there was a proud glisten of a crystal beauty aglow in his chivalrous, determined eyes that could never turn down a lady's request again.

"I am at your service, Madam." Hans gazes with curiosity at the most interesting article in the young woman's proffered hands and just as eager hopeful eyes, pleading up at him.

* * *

_So, how about that for impeccable timing?!_

Flynn Rider inwardly congratulates himself for his fortuitous, sly, unobserved entry into Captain Houtebeen's unoccupied stateroom. The 'former' cunning thief had been lucky enough to just narrowly escape being seen by either the Captain or Job's keen eyes when he surreptitiously snuck onto the cabin deck by ducking into the corridor's shadowy corner as they were heading up to the main deck.

_Now where could that blasted Orb of yours have gotten to, Queenie? I know we copied the map from it, so why would he want it still?_

Eugene's mind was whirring as fast as his slippery hands were rifling through the aged seaman's desk and drawers. His curious digits just graze over a rather interesting item within the pirate desk's hidden wares.

_Damn…! He's probably got the thing in his grimy hands…Well, this'll help, I hope._

Thief Flynn's crafty hands purloin more than one of the desk's contents to stash away in his pants' pockets.

_At least good old Sideburns didn't carve them to shreds like he did my poor shirt! Brrrrr…! It really cools down once the sun starts setting up here in the north!_

Rubbing his hands together, the shirtless man displays his chilled, yet buffed, muscular chest, deducted of his slit open tunic by his ingenious little wife's industrious ideas.

Flynn was by no means a seafaring man. But Flynnigan Rider, the valiant adventurer he once modeled his life after, had picked up more than a few pointers on traveling the world and reading the compass—even a nautical one—whose inner ring beneath the bowed out type ball lens operated much the same as a regular land compass. It rather worked off degrees gathered on the hatch marks on it that corresponded to different locations on the nautical map amply displayed across the pirate captain's desk.

After all, using a nautical compass was largely a math problem—subtracting or adding the magnetic north variations to the true north map readings to pinpoint the desired location.

And if nothing else, gold coin collecting Flynn Rider excelled at adding numbers together—especially when it came to adding his money.

Glancing at the nautical map rose's outer ring, Flynn quickly determines which direction was true north and, on swift inspect of the inner ring, it shows him where magnetic north was, on the map that was pinned to the desk with an oh-so-fitting pirate's knife stuck in it.

It was jutting out over the eerie skull and crossbones 'x' marking the approximate spot with the number on the direction variation targeted at that particular due location about 63 degrees latitude east and 10 degrees longitude north.

Flynn quickly multiplies the shift on the chart by the number of years on the map to determine the shift on the current year. His agile mind figures out the course on the map's degrees and hatches outlined on the nautical compass' declination in mere seconds, for the orientation's nearest cardinal direction.

"Okay, here's where the nutty pegleg's heading is, according to that Orb-ie map he drew up. Better write it down for Rapunzel to tell the authorities later, in case…I don't make it."

**_Gulp…_**

Eugene swallows hard as he scribbles down rough map arrows to landmarks as he copies the unfamiliar names of Norwegian towns foreign to his native tongue and sticks the paper downwards, expectantly sure, to which Pascal, who had been secreted in his boot cuff all the while, scurries up Flynn's long, muscular leg to retrieve the paper. With a two fingered salute up at the smirking male, the chameleon rushes back down to his boot cuff hiding place to stash the note before racing back up again.

"You ready then, frog?" The dark brown haired man glances out the corner of his eye to the lizard alighting on his shoulder as Pascal gives him a thumbs-up supportive reply. His bulgy eyes were slit in resolution, while his able tongue was ready and willing as he watches Rapunzel's wedded thief of a lover back his way out the cabin door and slink down the hall towards the main deck's looming darkness…

As Flynn slowly and stealthily creeps up the ramp to the forward deck, he produces from the shirt tied satchel of his 'arsenal' slung around his lower waist and hips—his favorite choice in weaponry. He steels himself in this one-man force, about to commandeer the pirate ship. Flynn recognized that the element of surprise was of the absolute, utmost importance if he alone was to overtake both lunking strongman of a first mate and his well-armed pirate Captain.

_And a little luck never hurt brave hearts or fair ladies…or some catch phrase like that._

But Flynn Rider did not usually possess that particular four letter word.

The shirt he had just stolen from the galley, which he now used as a thin fabric satchel he'd hurriedly tied together after stuffing it chock full of all the knives, forks and weaponable cutlery that he had procured from the kitchen before leaving the below decks for higher adventure above. Of course, it chooses this dislodged sneaky moment to develop a small tear from one of the pointier, steel knives, resulting in a decidedly loud—

**_Clink…chik…CLANG! BANG!_**

Of all the kitchen tableware to come clattering down, announcing poor, unlucky Flynn's attempt at covert arrival, it had to be that one.

"And vat might ye be zinking ye're doing wiz zat frying pan, ye dirty bilge rat?" The old pegleg that Flynn was stealthily trying to sneak up to and subdue with said frying pan, in the dusky darkness of sunset's end curve around the horizon, spins around from the forward helm of the ship's bridge.

"Ohh, yeah! This…! Just checkin' to see if you guys were up for an evening snack! Snack!" Flynn Rider's smooth-talking idea of a 'snack' was more of a 'smack' as he expertly wields his cast iron weapon of choice to trip the aged pirate's long wood leg until both collapsed unceremoniously to the deck plants.

His thieving hands cunningly zero in on precisely where the Orb was hidden in the smelly pirate's upper inside jacket pocket. Eugene ducks his head to the side, just in time, as Pascal lets out a mighty high-pitched squeal directly in his ear, to alert his 'partner' that the more formidable first mate had left his post at the ship's wheel to come barreling towards them, anger and violence to come evident on his dark face, along with a wicked right hook on his fist, that just misses connecting powerfully with Flynn's intended head by mere milliseconds.

"Watch the nose, Big Guy!"

**_Punch! Duck! Pound! Dodge! Punch! Weave!_**

After an intricate series of impressive bobbing and weaving techniques to hold off the mightier, bigger man, Flynn throws his trusty frying pan up with a forward thrust as Job's fist, with now profusely bleeding knuckles, holds back a wince.

"You should just see your fa—!"

The man evolves but never learns. His arrogant taunting mouth foretold his own downfall yet again, as Flynn Rider hears the deafening click of a revolver's hammer dropping so close to his ear that his terrified temple begins throbbing as wild, fearful eyes follow its source.

"Ye make another wrong move, Thief, and me unsteady trigger finger may just shake a wee bit too much for yer skull to stay intact." Captain Houtebeen had managed to get himself up to rejoin the fray. His yellow toothed mouth sneers evilly at a gulping Flynn, as he follows as motioned and lets go of his frying pan, as the pirate slaps it out of his hand.

"Who's moving?" Eugene squeakily taps into his feminine voice yet again. Houtebeen cackles at how yellow-bellied this tall, strapping lad could be in a crisis.

"Too bad. I smelled zere may be ze makings of a pirate in ye. Me haves zis lily-livered lad, Job. Ye get back to anchoring ze Pearl Lady at zat port up yonder."

"Aye, Cap'n." Job obeys, flexing his injured fist directly in front of Flynn's cringing face as the dark-skinned shipman passes by with a snide snicker on his features.

"Now, I'll be takin' back zat St. Olaf's Orb, zat rightfully be mine—since ye stole it fer me, fairly and squarely. Ye ain't p'raps considerin' goin' back on ze rest of ye word of helpin' a poor old seadog on one last adventure, are ye, Rider? Because if ye were recantin,' zen all bargains are off on me side, as well, zen. T'would be a pity for yer precious Prussian parents—I could be sendin' out word through me seabound connections and it'll all be over and done wit in two days' time."

Eugene's widened eyes at the pirate's deadly threat, close again in resigned compliance. Though they weren't his own blood, this orphan boy was taken in by the benevolence of King Friedrich IV of Prussia and his queen, Arianna, Rapunzel's good and kind parents. He couldn't dare put them in any danger if there was anything he could about it with his worthless thieving skills and false reputation.

After all, it was only through his beautiful Rapunzel and her wonderful family that the discarded youth, turned loner man, had found a place to be loved and belong.

_Was that—?_

The gun still trained to head, Eugene's dismayed gaze could've sworn he'd caught the glimmer of a pair of certain green-tinted moonbeams that he was all too familiar with. In restrained silence, they seem to reach out to him across the upper deck in the now pitch dark of night.

He squints, then shakes his head at the same time as he tries not to give away any notice to either pirate, as the ship steers close to the shore.

Keen Pascal's sudden squirreling down Flynn's leg to retrieve the hidden note in his boot cuff, as he leaves his side, signals to the highly anxious Eugene that some new twist to his already unlucky, foiled at commandeering the ship plan was underway, under the cover the moonless night's darkness.

Then, Pascal's big soulful eyes blink up at him twice before he scurries to the opposite end of the pirate ship's deck and disappears into the now super short-haired girl's hands.

Across the way, Rapunzel was about to run to Flynn who was busy giving her warning eyes. She frantically wanted to save him, but a taller, lean figure holds her back in the darkness.

"Does ze cat have ye tongue, boy?"

"Yes! I mean, no. I mean, yes, I will, absolutely help you." Flynn tries to stall for time and cover up the decided 'splash' sound at the aft of the vessel, confounding the confused pirate with his muddled words as he watches the statuesque shadow across the dark deck place a shushing finger to the smaller figure's lips, before physically lifting her form over the side rail and letting go.

"NOOO!" Though a loaded revolver was being held to his head, there was nothing more frightful to this loving husband than to be helpless in seeing his little wife being tossed over the edge of the ship like a sack of potatoes by a man he knew more and then less about each time he encountered him.

It all had to come down to trust and cohesion in the end, on both men's part, if this crazy scheme was ever going to succeed.

"Well, which is it, Flynn Rider? Make up ye mind before I blow it to kingdom come! Do ye join us willingly or not?" With the ultimatum, Captain Houtebeen gives one final click of the pistol's hammer. It was now totally at his finger's discretion if Eugene Fitzherbert was to live or die on this fateful night…

"Yes! I am one hundred percent READY!" With a deep, bellowing voice, in obvious signal, Flynn cries out so loudly, it disorients both pirate and first mate, who was listening in carefully at the helm.

It seemed Flynn had a partner in crime who, taking his cue, chooses this moment to dash his long legs across the Pearl Lady's deck in a record-setting wink, utilizing speed and momentum combined with innate quick thinking on his feet agility to simultaneously scoop up and hurl yesterday's discarded rutabaga, still on the deck floor, and launch it to directly connect with the back of Job's unaware head. The dark man sinks to the ground in an unceremonious heap, while at the same time, the shadowy figure grasps one of the sharp carving knives his honed years of kitchen skills made him master at wielding, to thrust with precise aim, the blade into the steering column—so exactly embedded in the wooden wheel, it could no longer move freely.

He then sets his gallant sights on the pair of sailing canvas. Hans then climbs up the mast and, with a fearless fluid flip through the air, slices his way down the sail to fully handicap the ship. The plummeting sail canvas deflates as he uses a sharpened grating tool to raze across their roped riggings. The loosened sails and slackened mast abruptly halt the vessel's progress to shore.

"Ha ha! Now the shoe's on the other foot!" As for Eugene, he does his part with flourish. Using the moment's chaotic sail and mast unraveling to yank his own head back to safety, he takes advantage of the pirate's momentary inattention to not only triumphantly use his thieving fingers to clasp around the Orb once again, but also kicks the old pegleg out from beneath the pirate. Houtebeen loses all balance as Flynn ingeniously employs the large piece of shredded sail that fell his way (_that guy sure loves to slice up fabric!) _to wrap around the old pirate like he was a strawberry pastry roll. His bright, flaming red hair stuck out one end with one furious eye just visible when Flynn was done 'mummifying' the dizzy man in the white textile.

"Hah! How's that for some good teamwork! Hey, you and me'll be pretty rich roaming the countryside together, good lookin'! After you take a few more lessons from the expert, you might turn out pretty darn good, kid!" Flynn bolsters himself.

With a salute and suave smirk back down at Eugene, a gracefully athletic Hans begins to descend. His long-legged muscular body comes down from his lofty high-wire act of climbing masts of cutting down the two canvas topsails that he had personally gaff-rigged, once upon a athwart time.

After all, Hans Westergaard's proud service in Denmark's Royal navy had taken up most of his earlier life's vocation, until Arendelle and now Queen Elsa appeared in his life—

**_B-B-BANG!_**

The stark, deafening noise in the crackling air, in the pitch darkness was ear-splitting from where Eugene stood on deck. His head snaps around to look down to the origin of that sound with horrified eyes to see the black hearted Captain Houtebeen had not been constrained thoroughly enough in his wrapping. Flynn had forgotten, in his proud haste, to secure the revolver that had been trained on his stupid noggin from the lying prone but facing upwards, elderly pirate's still loaded gun in his secreted beneath the sail hands.

Captain Houtebeen's one good eye had managed to pull off a perfect shot with deadly aim at Hans Westergaard's chest, hitting it accurately right on the mark where his heart would be, beneath all those black bandages.

Everything was in slow motion now for Eugene as he, frozen in shock, watched the lithe, mysterious young man that he had forged some sort of strange affinity for in their short time together and who had come to his aid and rescue just moments before, be struck down by the pirate's unforgiving bullet directly in his bandaged chest.

The man begins his plummet downward from the lofty height of the sail he had scaled from one of the double masts he had been perched upon in the dark of this darkest night…

…as Flynn Rider's hero.

"I'm sorry, kid. We would've been good together." Flynn dashes and dives to catch Hans' thin, though muscular, falling form from hitting the harsh deck.

But the younger man was no longer breathing by the time he had flopped into Flynn's arms. There was blood oozing freshly from his chest, right where his heart would be, beneath the already strapped black bandages around his previous back injuries.

"You patch eyed bas-!" Rocked with raw emotion he couldn't quite explain, Flynn yells out the foul curse, turning to stomp with vengeance on the downed, wrapped up Captain for killing the other man.

But Captain Houtebeen was no longer where Flynn had left him tied up. Neither was Job yet unconscious on the helm's planks, the victim of Hans' expertly hurled vegetable attack.

"Ye'd better do as yer told or the same fate'll befall ye, t'ief." They weren't there because they were standing directly behind him.

Flynn catches a glimpse of his own frying pan, as Job's strong arm wallops his skull mercilessly with it.

And Flynn sinks to his knees with Hans' lifeless body still clutched in his arms as the world goes dark and swirling about him.


	14. Chapter 13 - Adrift

We do not own "Frozen" nor any of its characters.

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act I**

**Chapter 13**

**"Adrift"**

The befreckled orange haired girl closes her eyes hard as she tries to soak in every last ray of sunlight of the waning sunset playing copper tones on her head over this northwest section of her home country of Norway.

She had never traveled this far north before. Heck! She had never traveled much further than Arendelle, save for that fateful journey to bring Elsa home and save their kingdom—their home—from the Eternal Winter of 1849.

And then there was the honeymoon.

Oh! Those glorious five days of wedded bliss, with just herself and Kristoff and Sven (Mostly Kristoff—Sven always wandered off at opportune moments.) that had taken Anna back along the route she and her new husband had first traveled and met and fell in love with one another upon that adventure two years ago—when she had nearly died to save her beloved sister.

And she would do every bit of it over again in a split second, without a single, solitary otherwise thought.

_Ookay, maybe minus the mistakenly falling for that smooth-talker, good looking Mr. Westergaard._

Anna wrinkles her cute little nose at the sour thought of that rotter ne'er do well roiling about in her head.

_What a jerk! Why did I think I liked him?! Why am I even wasting a thought on him now?! He's not a sweetie pie at all, like my big, cuddly bear, Kristoff._

Anna, despite being on her best, most serious behavior, still couldn't hold back a delirious drool for her rugged, muscle-bound fella, as she peeks one shut eye open over the back of his head where he sat in the sled's driver front seat.

_Sigh…Isn't even the back of his head so manly…? And butter-fully gorgeous...? Sigh…_

Princess Anna obviously didn't agree with the trolls here about him being an 'un-manly blonde'.

"Has it been ten minutes yet, Anna?" Elsa's high-pitched, anxious voice belied her impatience to return to her own new adventure that Anna was only made half-aware of the whole story along this day-long trip so far.

Elsa had carefully explained, in much detail, all the ins and outs of the secret mission's goings on — from Eugene's thievery of Arendelle's holy treasures to herself and Rapunzel's disguises as males to board Captain Rustung's Valborg craft, to locating the pirate ship and covertly boarding it — only to be unsanctimoniously thrown off into the ocean where some under the sea magic she couldn't explain saved her life. Every little detail of Rapunzel, Pascal, Olaf, and her own incredible, exciting and dangerous foray on the high seas she told them about as explicitly as she could recall.

Although Kristoff, who was all the while keenly listening from his quiet station as designated sled driver to Elsa's far flung, stimulating tale and a glued to the pulse pounding tale Anna's intrigued peppering of questions, had a sneaking suspicion at each of the queen's stories' exciting twist and turns that a vital piece of the puzzle was being left out.

And that causes him some concern, for as he had personally found out these past two years, living very close quarters to them and visiting every second of day practically, no pair of sisters could be more honest, open or closer with one another than Anna and Elsa of Arendelle.

_I wonder what she's holding back now. And why? I wonder if Anna noticed…_

"Whoa!"

_Guess not._

Kristoff exchanges a glance with quizzical Sven who obeys his driver's 'whoa' command and pauses his trotting ride when a closed eyed Anna out of nowhere, suddenly leaps up to maul a startled Kristoff from the backseat she and Elsa were sharing a lounge back to soak up the last of the sun's warmth for tonight after the thrilling storytime was over.

"Ummm…Nah, it hasn't been ten minutes yet, has it, Kristoff?" Anna had even less sense of time than she had decorum, as even the sinking sunset disagrees with her wacky inner clock.

"It's actually been _twenty_ minutes." Kristoff struggles through Anna's pawing arms around his be-crystaled troll necklace neck as he gives a glance to the watchpiece attached to it that some Swiss Archduke royal had given to he and Anna as a wedding present.

"Anna, I thought I felt the sun no longer on my face." A smirking reprimanding Elsa opens her voluminous eyes, their daily 'sunning' as Anna so dubbed the nutritional Vitamin D rich warmth, for both sisters' body and soul regiments, was long over.

"Oh, yeah. Oops! Sorry, Elsie, but we both needed a proper recharge." As boisterous baby sister Anna snaps open both her smiling eyes up at Kristoff's bemused turned face, she lands a smack lipped kiss on his cheek, causing him to blush deeper than the cranberry to crimson streaks tracing the dusky sky.

She honestly had no idea what her silly name game was doing to her elder sister's heart.

For the last person to call her that affectionate, albeit 'cowlike' diminutive could be in grave danger on that pirate ship, even as she and Anna were speaking frivolously right now.

And that frightening though upset her more greatly than she dared to imagine it would.

"Kristoff, how long until we arrive at the ship's dock?" Her tone all business, Elsa could look Kristoff in the eye now that she was wearing one of Anna's more modest dresses befitting a regal queen, though 'reindeer king' Kristoff had quite a lot to live down in his own disrobed early morning embarrassment.

Without even turning to face her, with pants securely pulled on, the big, burly blonde bashfully blushes before blowing breath between his lips in a low whistle.

"I'd say, at least another full day's travel to get to the far north port of Trondheim. It's almost 200 kilometers north of here. But the Kristiansund port that's not quite so…busy, is only a five hour trip for Sven—maybe even four hours or less if we take off some of the excess weight from the sled." Kristoff calmly states, his ice cutting vocation making it his business to know where the pertinent ports for travel and shipping goods and services along the Norwegian coastline.

"Great! Here you go, Sven." Headstrong Anna jumps up at her husband's words of wisdom, beginning to randomly chuck over the side of the sled some 'excess weight' in the form of wedding presents, clothes, and a great deal of—save for the last remnants of kransekake cake. of course—the remainder of their already dwindled food supplies without a second thought.

"What?! Anna, wait! Our clothes! Oh, not the food supplies, too!" Conservative Kristoff, in total frustration laments his gung-ho wife's thoughtlessness of essential future needs.

"It's all gotta go! Gotta make the sled lighter for Sven." She scoffs in Kristoff's face as he is only able to salvage one bag full of change of clothes.

_Thank goodness this one's got the clean underwear!_

And a day or two of immediate supply of food for now the three of them.

"Don't worry, I kept all of Sven's carrots. We've gotta keep him fully fueled so he can keep going, fast! Step on it, Sven!" Anna calls forward, as the obedient reindeer knew who was boss on this royal ice deliverer's sled by now, Day Five.

"Does this weigh much?" Anna pauses her tossing away anything unnecessary in her inexperienced eyes, chucking valuable ice and mountain climbing tools stored in the back hatch of the official 'Ice Harvester's' sled overboard with abandon, much to Kristoff's head-holding chagrin, to ask Elsa's opinion on his lute guitar.

Elsa was amused at her little sister's feisty personality that would jump recklessly headfirst into any dangerous situation if someone she loved asked her to.

And she loved no person more in this world than her sister—her hero, her forever friend.

Kristoff gives a relieved sigh as Queenly Elsa bestows her shaken head to halt his poor musical instrument's flagrant death sentence disposal out the sled door by the cavalierly heedless girl he now claimed as his headstrong—and at times, foolhardy—wife, who was always impetuously spontaneous in her love for others.

And that's why he loved her all the more.

"Okay, we're pretty emptied out back here, Sven. So move out, big fella. Port Kristiansund, ho!" Crawling over the front seat, and leaning over it like a madwoman with eyes wild, Anna sings out merrily, thoroughly enjoying the taste of adventure again—a bit too much in Kristoff's lovestricken eyes, as holding on for dear life, he gently reaches back to secure Elsa in her backseat with the ingenious new 'strap belt' he invented for Anna's reckless driving, to hold down any poor passengers or precious cargo when his girl was at the helm.

He then physically lifts his enthusiastic new partner who was squirming rebelliously, back over the sled divider she had clambered over, to strap her in the backseat as well at the sled's over 80 kilometers per hour high speed that most other 'delicate' females would cringe in fear at.

Elsa gives Kristoff a wan smile as he turns back to attend to Sven, for both knew that Anna was not one of those females.

For giggling Anna was the type of vibrant girl to embrace every moment—and sparkle in every second of its topsy-turvy path, to make everyone else's world around her shine a little brighter for the journey beside her pure energy as Sven picks up speed.

Elsa shares a grateful smile with her, glad she had finally come to the realization that she couldn't do this on her own. She needed her little sister/best friend more than the very air she breathed.

"Oh!" Losing all that breath, Elsa suddenly clutches at her chest. Her heart, her fingertips frost over at the extreme painful fear gripping her entire body. And it wasn't at all due to Sven's high speed trek.

"Elsa?! Are you all right?" Anna abandons her merry sled tossing overboard madness to, for once, sit down fully in the backseat beside her nearly convulsing sibling, after unstrapping herself. (Poor Kristoff bargained for a disobedient firebrand of a wife, it seemed.)

Anna wraps a protective arm around the paler girl, so struck with cold reverberating from inside her heart that there were puffs of icy smoke emanating from the ice queen's parted mouth, even on this warmest of summer nights.

"Elsa?! What's wrong?! It's okay—I'm here! I'm here! Feel the sun! Feel the sunshine!" Anna hugs her close, rocking Elsa back and forth with her own warmth until Elsa begins to calm down and her temperature begins to normalize.

"I don't know, Anna…but I'm scared. I don't know why. I'm so scared." She answers truthfully on Anna's compassion chest with icy tears forming in her eyes, as the older sibling gains strength and stability from her little sister's innate warmth against whatever cold fear just knocked on her heart's door. Anna hugs her all the tighter.

Glancing back at his rear view at the tender scene of sisterly love, Kristoff silently pulls Sven's reins in that certain way the intelligent reindeer understood to mean to race forward even faster than his already speeding 80 kmph towards their shoreline destination of Kristiansund and whatever chaos awaited them there…

* * *

"Helloooo? Helllooooo?! Hellllllloooooo?! Is anybody out there?" The voice emanating from within the metal aluminum canister bobbing up and down upon the sea's foaming waves was at first unsure and quiet, but it was growing even louder with every bellowed greeting hale from his frosty lips.

"Is anybody out there?! Oh no, no, no! I'm all alone! Boo hoo! 'Nobody loves me…' This is the end…'Nobody loves me at all…'" A crooning Olaf begins to feel claustrophobic in more ways than one as his gainingly full escape pod from his snow flurry was beginning to be less and less buoyant. The need for air was fortunately not an issue, so it was just the weight problem that Cousin Rapunzel did account for by someone having to be there to open the small pod's top hatch and scoop out the excess snow piling up about now.

"Ohh, somebody loves you, little one!" A sweet, melodic voice in her most maternal tone sings out the reply that Olaf had been dejectedly beginning to believe would never come to his frosty ears again. But the rocking waves beneath her small lifeboat that Hans had managed to lower earlier had caused an exhausted up all the anxious night before Rapunzel to be lulled into a sleep on the peaceful waves.

"I'm right here, Olaf. Shhhh! I'll pull you in." Rapunzel utilizes the fabric rope lead she and Olaf had been industriously braiding together for strength and had secured one end to his metal mini craft, while the other end had been tied around Rapunzel's waist as if it were the long braid of hair she had once upon a time ago, again.

She carefully tugs the handmade cord until Olaf's watertight floating device is close enough for her to lift out of the water and into the small lifeboat that Hans had placed her in, with assurances that the two members of the Pearl Lady would neither miss nor seek out the miniscule craft in the darkness.

Besides, he stated he had plans to 'incapacitate' the vessel so they wouldn't be able to give chase, even if it dawned on them to try.

Rapunzel had totally trusted the man with her life and with saving Eugene's life as well because she sensed that Elsa cared deeply for him still, the romanticist in Rapunzel believed. And caring on one side was worth giving a second chance on the other.

_Besides, he has pretty eyes…And a good chest…and a really, really tight backside…_

_Sorry, Eugene!…really…But I _am_ a girl and I couldn't help but notice while I was bandaging him up. I have to say Elsa's got excellent taste in men. I guess that runs in our family._

A dizzy Rapunzel tries to keep her thoughts light and fluffy, like her Eugene does, generally when he was distressed.

_Oh, Eugene! Please be safe! I hope I did the right thing sending Hans to help you. But it's always better to have a friend when you're in trouble, right? _

Her unsure uncertainty was trying to prove her earlier decision and the tall redheaded man's input on her and Olaf's ship departure timing—not to mention his knowledge of the small lifeboat she told him she knew how to row. After all she'd seen Eugene do it so many times at Corona's annual Magic Lantern festival. How hard could it be to row a little boat?

After opening up Olaf's escape pod's secret door—for she was the one who designed it—and his proud ice slurry cloud pops out, Rapunzel shoves her chilled hands in the overlay of snow packed tightly and unburies the little snowman. She lifts him up and up, piece by piece and puts him back together until Olaf was fully reassembled to stand in the lifeboat beside her.

"Okay, Olaf. There's the pirate ship we came from," Rapunzel begins to explain, pointing first to the wobbly masted and canvas shredded Pearl Lady, where they could just make out the two figures scurrying back and forth. Her wishful eyes hoped the rhythmically stumbling redhead was Hans pretending to have developed a limp and Eugene the tall, tall dark one, who seemed to be lifting a third body to toss overboard.

But deep inside, she knew it wasn't them.

_No matter how hard I wish it to be…_

* * *

"Job! It sickens me to look at him. Rid me ship of ze dead body weight of zat damnable double-crossing fool, who took insufferable advantage of Houtebeen's goodly nature one time too many! Me poor, poor Pearl! Did zat bad, naughty klootzak hurt you, me lady?" From the short distance she had managed to row from the disabled pirate ship, Rapunzel could just about make out the ruthless captain's harsh raspy words as they cut through the still, moonless dark of night, while he shouts multilingual curses too foul and course for a princess' shocked ears, even after five years living beside a not always so smooth-tongued Flynn Rider and the oft-visited roughhousing gang at the Snuggly Duckling, full of rugged men's language.

"Curses be upon ye dead rotting corpse, for ze betrayal, ye mangy cur! Davy Jones locker be too good for ye, insolent silk-wrapped swine! Throw him overboard and have done with ze scoundrel!" Houtebeen fiercely yells as he continues to stroke his beleaguered Pearl's handicapped mast and carved up sails.

For her part, Rapunzel, with wide eyes wild with dread, rows as rapidly as she could back towards the adrift vessel at breakneck speed.

"Aye, aye, Cap'n."

Continuing to row blindly towards the ship, Rapunzel watches the dark first mate lift the lifeless man's body over the deck's edge in preparation to toss the traitorous miscreant overboard as per his rapacious Captain's vicious orders.

In those few moments, Rapunzel could've sworn the large Caribbean native named Job directed his big, soulful eyes across the dark waters squarely to connect with hers below in the solitary flicker of the moonlight between the thick cloud cover. There was an inscrutable look of some small degree of—was that compassion?—on his normally foreboding big brute of a man swarthy features.

Rapunzel watches a surprisingly quick thinking Olaf, send his ice flurry cloud to frost coat the small boat's front bow and keel so as to let the wooden craft slice more fluidly through the choppy waters as they near the Pearl Lady's aft side. Job was just about to intentionally drop the young man's still non-moving form not too many nautical yards from where Rapunzel and Olaf were quickly rowing with all synchronized speed.

_**SPLASH!**_

"What of this one?" Job's low baritone could be heard bellowing above, where he prods an unconscious Eugene's gut with the toe of his black leather boot.

"Houtebeen not be done wiz zis bilgeous blackguard yet. Prepare to disembark ze Pearl Lady, Job. Me knows another route to our final destination wizout her, poor lass." Sensitive ears attempt to listen in to the quieter conversation taking place on the ship's main deck, directly above her small craft, as Rapunzel and her snowman partner silently try not to be noticed when they pull the lifeboat alongside the floating facedown body, just tossed from above.

With a tearful, entreated prayer, the brown-haired girl reaches over the boat's edge to flip over the faceless man who was floating on the dark waters surface…

"Oh!" She breathes a tiny sigh of relief when familiar fingers and blurry strained eyes, even in the pitch darkness, sensed and felt it was not her beloved Eugene's body lying there, lifelessly within her shaky grip, as she and Olaf, with Pascal's help, pull him in with the aid of the lasso rope they had disattached from her waist ro go round him.

But her newfound relief was mixed with some anxiety. She hoped her own fanciful scheme worked concerning this other brave man—for all their sakes.

_Please, God, let it have worked! _

Rapunzel literally goes down on her knees and prays, as she'd never prayed before, in the dark of night in this small dinghy craft. Her eyes tightly clamp shut as preparations on the other side of the Pearl Lady were noisily underway.

She and Olaf and Pascal, who had secured the knot around his underarms, with the braided rope, use all of their collective strength to pull in the fortunately slender, lean body of the man onto the bobbing craft.

Rapunzel holds her baited breath for all those terrifying seconds before she could let it out as she places a happy hand over her exuberant lips, so as not to yell out with joy.

"It worked! Oh, Elsa! It worked…! You're gonna be fine!" She whispers gleefully to her invisibly, non present cousin, as Olaf and Pascal exchange 'high threes' and hugs. Rapunzel unwraps Hans Westergaard's tightly tied black bandages to reveal the thick cast iron boiler door hatch that was still strapped firmly to his thin, muscular chest. His athletic build was so lean no one would be the wiser that the man was wearing a 'bullet safe' frontal vest.

The small amount of blood that had been spilt was from the impact of the pirate's revolver discharge on the iron's sharp edges striking Hans' upper chest. But the bullet was so far at a distance, that the velocity traversed was enough to only break the first few epidermal layers of his already beaten and battered torso upon impact.

But it rendered him unconscious from the shock—yet still alive... Rapunzel rubs his bare chest tenderly for circulation and warmth.

"We have to get him back to Elsa. I heard the pirates say they need still need Eugene, so we'll just have to catch up with them later, somehow, I hope."

Right on cue, Pascal produces the quick map that Eugene had drawn up for her.

"Good! We know where they're going. I just have to trust Eugene will be fine on his own."

_You've taught me so much about being strong and independent, Eugene. I have to try hard to be tough and brave...like you always are..._

"Now, I have to focus on our new mission!" She gathers up the oar with a determined look on her face as she peeks around the Pearl Lady's stern to see Job loading the ship's larger 'away' crew boat with supplies and an unconscious Eugene as well.

"The pirates are abandoning their ship and are headed to the shore, so we can't go that way…" Doing everything she can not to scream out his name and race to help him, Rapunzel pulls herself together and away from her own tormented thoughts.

Olaf was luckily able to hang onto her every sparse word without guile or impatience, as he copies her example of petting and dabbing at Hans' unconscious bloody body with his cool numbing touch.

"Olaf, which way did Elsa go? Hans thinks you know." She asks hopefully, biting her lip that that man's instinct about Elsa was right—that Olaf would know which way his queen and friend and creator vanished to.

"Ummm…" Squinting his eyes, Olaf glances around in each compass direction and towards the shore before answering. He puts a licked finger up to the wind and closes his eyes before speaking.

"That way." His eyes sparkle snowflakes as his hands branch out wide towards the southeastern Norwegian sea and a port beyond the horizon as a cool breeze blows that way.

"All right! Then that's the direction we go." Rapunzel smiles at Pascal, trusting the snowman, as Olaf scurries to take the other oar, and skips right over Hans' poor beat-up injured chest that Rapunzel had laid her head scarf over for some small protection against the cool night air and to dissuade the bleeding.

The eternally happy snowman then promptly begins to row and hum a happy tune.

"To sea we go! To sea we go!"

As with a heavy heart, Princess Rapunzel watches with teary eyes the two small boats - one containing herself, Pascal, Olaf, and now Prince Hans, the other holding her Eugene under the thumb of those wicked pirates - within the cover of darkness pull away from one another in entirely different directions towards the unknown future of the murky Northern seas she prayed they'd meet up again beyond its clouded horizon…


	15. Chapter 14 - Row, Row, Row Your Boat

We do not own "Frozen" nor any of its characters.

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act I**

**Chapter 14**

**"Row, Row, Row Your Boat"**

Kilometers and kilometers later, Sven finally gets a well deserved chance to catch his breath some three and half hours of nearly running nonstop, with only a few brief pit stops in between. (For water and carrot refueling stops and woodland tinkling for the sled driver that we did not need to hear about.)

His three passengers in varied stages of anxiety, apprehension and adventure, finally arrive at the deserted seaport of Grip at Kristiansund, located in the country's big northwestern section.

The port there was largely a fishing village, due to the fact that most of the municipality existed on a sprawling group of islands and an archipelago called 'Grip.' For hundreds of years, the population of fishermen of this backwater area had been treated as vassals who were forced to sell their ocean catch to inland merchants at fixed prices decided by the higher authorities.

But after the Great Storm Surges of 1635 had knocked out most of the small fishing community's housing and already beleaguered population, even that hard worked way of life on the cold ice fishing archipelago and nearby islands dropped, indeed, to practically nil.

In fact, after the Great Storm, one of the only buildings left standing in the scattered island village, beyond the red and white painted lighthouse towering over the port edge seabound entrance, was the Grip Stave Kirke—Grip's Stave Church, built on the island's highest peak.

Perhaps that was Providential intercedence that it would survive, for, with its single nave that stood only twenty feet high, this Church of Norway's modest Grip Chapel was one of the country's smallest shrines, and proved the Lord God Above smiles equally on the small as well as the large.

But with the sparse population that never returned after the seaside storm's devastation, not even a cemetery could be placed on the sacred church yard. The barren nature of the cold fishing center island nearly below sea level made anything underground, including farming or proper Christian burial of their deceased, impossible.

The dilapidated and weather worn Holy place was still in use in the summer season when every third Sunday, a visiting priest would arrive in the nearly deserted town to still hold Mass and pay his respects to the Lord at the Triptych altar, with its impressive sculptures of the Virgin Mary, Saint Olaf and Saint Maget. They had been gifts to the church from the Netherlands in 1520 after the Archbishop Valkandorf escorted Princess Isabella of Austria in the islands' bad weather to traverse it safely on her to her wedding with Danish King Christian II.

The Grip stave church also contained a small altar cup that dated back to Christianity's earliest days in Norway, placed at the altar near one of the two votive strips of candles. The other candles would sit directly in front of the altar where the three holy statues resided.

It was there, within the rough hewn wooden walls of the storm battered tiny church, under its one worn and leaking steeple, with a devout bowed head in reverence to any of God's holy shrines, Queen Elsa could be found lighting a candle as she humbly kneels to fervently pray for Divine assistance on their journey, as if this stave church were the greatest, most ornate altar in her kingdom.

For in her pure heart, at this moment, it was.

_The Lord said it was the least among us who would inherit the earth and that the smallest mustard seed could move mountains. And if the smallest seed can move mountains, this little church will lift my prayer to Heaven, just as well as any cathedral back home._

"Dear Lord Jesus, may you hold Cousin Rapunzel and Cousin Eugene safe and sound—and Prince Hans, as well. Please keep him in the palm of Your hand." Elsa murmurs her soulful plea with eyes closed tightly in deep deferential worship at the votive candle setting beneath the statues of St. Olaf and the Virgin Mary.

"Elsa? Did I just hear you say…'Han…'?" A confused Anna chooses that inopportune moment to pop up at her praying sister's side.

"…keep them safe in the palm of Your HAND…" Elsa, in all truth, repeats the final sentence of her prayer, making sure that 'hand' sounded like 'Hans'. Her eyes glisten up at Anna, not wanting to cause her little sister any undue concern just yet. Especially none involving a certain auburn red-headed prince who broke her heart, once upon a fairytale ago. Besides, Elsa herself didn't quite know where to place Mr. Westergaard in her own convoluted heart at the moment.

"Oh, okay." All doubts quelled, trusting Anna hugs the back of her kneeling big sister's head to her chest, and plants a sweet kiss atop Elsa's platinum mane.

"Anna, we're in church." Elsa said with a smile. She wasn't as embarrassed as she was teasing of her sister's indomitable spirit and open affection.

"Yup, and God is love! I love you so much, Elsa! I'm really glad you came looking for me when you needed help. We can do anything if we stick together. We'll find Rapunzel and Eugene—I KNOW we will!" Anna boisterously proclaims in rather irreverent tones. In her boundless, reckless energy, she knocks down a row of the votive candles that Elsa had already lighted.

Anna rashes picks one up by the wick end. "Ouchie!" and in spontaneous overreaction, she even whacks poor St Maget's statue on her sainted nose.

"Oops! …Sorry…!" Anna apologizes to the statue as she backs away, clumsily crashing into a few unsuspecting pews that rock unstably between the small kirke's shabby rough hewn walls.

"Can this poor, beat up old church take up much more of my wife before the whole building comes crashing down?" Kristoff Bjorgman's mellow voice seemed to enjoy saying 'my wife' by now, as he enters the somewhat dilapidated and weather worn holy shrine.

"Oh, wow! Looky at this ship! Ohh! And there's another one over there!" But Anna was Anna. She found joy in the little things as well as the big—the simple joys that most people were too jaded to marvel at anymore, much past the resplendent age of eight years old.

"Whoa, there, feisty pants!" Kristoff dashes long strides across the small church's interior to reach his girl when—not 'if'—_when_ she came tumbling down from the rocking pews she was dangerously teetering upon to reach the wooden ship.

"Wouldn't Papa have loved this one?" Anna smiles brightly, though Kristoff could see the emotion for her lost parent's favorite hobby building up behind her moistening eyes.

And it was that same look reflected in Elsa's eyes, as the tall, stately Queen comes over, after resetting the lit candles in the votive strip at the altar (so as not to burn the old church down) to join them.

"Yes, it is a magnificent depiction of a galleon class schooner. Look how detailed its three masts and roped riggings are displayed." Elsa had spent far too many hours in her sheltered youth, alongside a naval father, with an innate love for the sea, for it not to have rubbed off more than a bit of nautical knowledge and ocean traveling fondness on herself.

After all, her sweet papa was made the Admiral of the entire Norwegian fleet the moment he was crowned king, but there was no place nor rank for a woman in the navy, circa 1851 — not even a royal Queen.

_Oh, Papa, I do miss you so!_

Reaching a whimsical, intangible hand towards the model ship hanging from the church's stave cornered low ceiling, Elsa allows her tussled mind this one regretful luxury. She recalls with vivid detail how her always calm, cool and collected patriarch would use his model ship building hobby to help her learn to appease her fears of emerging ice powers. They spent hours of focus on the placid task at hand instead.

She even grew to enjoy setting the rudders and keels and assembling the many layered topsails to their delicate wooden masts—a job that took precision that he entrusted her with. For Elsa and her dear Papa had become closer to one another in the usual way of father and son bonding in the intricate ship building hobby, than had the king of Arendelle had a boy/son.

"Waahhhh!"

As predicted, Anna loses her balance just about now. Kristoff indeed had to flex his ample muscles yet again as he comes to his new bride's pitching forward rescue.

"I gotcha." He proudly proclaims, caressing back her mussed bangs as he cradles Anna's body in the safety of his big bicep arms.

"So, did you find any pirate ship at the dock that's holding Cousin Eugene captive?" Anna, like always, handsprings right back out of her klutzy adventure as she now directs her untamed enthusiasm up at her good looking hubby.

"No, I—"

"Did you go onboard to make sure?"

"No, I just—"

"Did you even ASK anyone if they saw a pirate ship go by here?"

"No, Anna, let me get a word in edgewise, please?" Stoic, even tempered Kristoff tries to hedge his feisty spoken gal off at the pass as he sets her down to the ground and gives her bobbing head a halting pat.

"Oooh." But in Anna's besmitten eyes, the intimate touch—that to Kristoff and the rest of the known world meant 'stop'—to her insatiable love, it meant 'go' as she wraps both arms around his neck, looking up expectantly.

The mountain man smiles at her need to be loved as he lets out a resigned sigh before rewarding her sweet, upturned face with a light kiss, and she giggles.

"Look, there's practically nobody out there at the dock to ask. The whole village is practically deserted, except for a couple of elderly folks up here for the fishing cod season at the main harbor. They say that since the storms hundreds of years back that literally wiped out the town only a few fishermen come up here to the cliffs for drying the cod they catch."

"Oh, poopy! –Sorry, Lord!" Anna apologizes to the double sided painting near the pulpit, showing Jesus and His disciples praying.

"So, where do we go from here?" Elsa calmly asks, though feeling restless inside as she was listening intently to the blonde man's words.

"Well, there's no moon tonight, so it's gotten real dark out there. With all the wolves and other predators out, I figure Sven needs a full rest anyway from that practically nonstop journey he just made. That old couple of the fisherman and his wife I was telling you about offered to put the three of us up for tonight. We can start again along the coast towards the next port further north at Trondheim tomorrow morning, okay?" Responsible Kristoff knew time was of the essence but so was the well-being of his exhausted, hard-working reindeer and the two worried and wearied female travelers he had taken under his wing as well.

"I understand." Elsa concedes graciously her own longing to run and fly as fast as the wind could take her back to that pirate vessel where Rapunzel and Eugene, their friend Pascal and our own Olaf—not to mention Prince Hans of the Southern Isles - were all in need of rescue.

Next time she would not hold her ice back.

"Worrywart!" All newly-wedded still despite the dire circumstances, Anna pops Kristoff's chest with her tiny fists in playful defiance of his protectiveness, to which Kristoff encompasses both fists within just one of his big knuckled ones, along with a pair of patronizing eyes.

"Behave, Flutterbudget." Acting all paternal, he upbraids each of her two orangey pigtail braids with a tender tug each. He pushes her down to sit on one of the church's front pews like a good little girl.

"I trust your judgement, Kristoff." Elsa gives the responsible man a nod.

_I just pray it won't be too late._

Standing at the old style clerestory window overlooking the sea that was in much need of repair that the cool sea air seeps through and Elsa whispers almost inaudibly to the crashing waves surrounding the Grip stave church. Her anxious wandering mind had absolutely no idea how close the hand of the Lord was drawing near to her prayer within that corner posted church that had, through hundreds of years of being storm tossed, torn and battered, survived to stand as a beacon of light much like the Grip lighthouse not too far in Kristiansund port on the cold Norwegian sea…

* * *

As dawn begins to break over the sea line in its brilliant multi-colored shades of burnt siennas, umbers, terra cotta and sinopia hues overtaking the royal purples, violets and indigo blues of night, Rapunzel gives pause for the first time all night to her oar-wielding expedition.

It had been countless hours since she'd been rowing the small boat across the thankfully placid ocean waves once the coming storm that had been threatening her all evening had decided to veer to a more westerly course.

So it left the now clear skies and calm sea below it for clear sailing—or rowing, whichever might apply to your craft.

In anxious haste and blistered hand doggedness, their little boat had made good time in moving some ten to twelve kilometers per hour across the Norwegian Sea.

Rapunzel had no idea how much strain on one's arms, painful hands, and upper body it required to move even a tiny vessel such as this lifeboat through ocean waters towards your destination. She had been following Olaf's internal 'map' so far and fortunately only had to make a few course corrections as they traversed.

The eager snowman's frosted front bow did make for easier maneuvering and his incessant chatter and singing filled the otherwise foreboding darkness, out in the middle of nowhere, with no land to be seen for miles, surrounding the bobbing up and down boat, bearable.

And though, anxious visions of her Eugene's whereabouts and well-being still gnawed at the back of Rapunzel's tensed mind, it also helped to know she wasn't on her own on this crazy mission.

Besides a morale pumping Olaf and an always supportive Pascal to wipe her sweaty brow and wrap her hurt hands on her oar-rowing exertion every now and then, the young woman was grateful for the fourth unexpected passenger on board.

After being tended to and cared for at her word of healing knowledge by able-fingered Pascal, he was about to be awakened by the first glistening rays of sunlight penetrating the dawn's welcome arrival.

_**Cough Cough Cough**_

Hans Westergaard begins to revive from the unconscious state he was put in by first the mutinous battle on the Pearl Lady that resulted in him being shot, to fall from a thirty plus foot height, then tossed overboard another twenty-five feet to the cold ocean below.

All that added misery to his already battered and whipped body from a day or so before certainly gave this heroic young man reason to stay unconscious.

But his heart's drive to seek out the singular point of shining light called 'Queen Elsa' causes his beaten body to strive to find awareness again—even if all seemed grim.

"It's okay! It's okay! I've got you!" Rapunzel pulls her oars in, before carefully maneuvering herself around to kneel at the prone man's choking head, lifting it to her lap.

"Madam, you are too kind." He says, once his coughing quiets.

She smiles down at the classy man's still polite moniker for her, petting his worried brow as he bestows back up upon her one of his dazzling smiles.

"Where are we?"

Smelling the salt of the sea, Hans lifts his upper body up. The unconscious status he had been in seemed to do his recuperating, beaten torso some good as he stretches it in the small craft, as he sits up fully, to look around.

"I have no idea…but Olaf says we're going in the right direction." She bites her lip, though surprises herself at how naturally easy it was to talk to this male virtual stranger with his chest bared, as if she'd known him for a long time.

They both look at Olaf who waves one hand of his three fingers back beneath a goofy, open-mouthed smile.

"Hiya, Prince Hans. Olaf here." From behind Hans' back the snowman reintroduces himself to the man seated in the middle of the boat.

"Please, it's just 'Hans,' Olaf." Hans shows he had learned humility enough to bow his once proud, royal head to the menial snowman, whose black coal eyes were burning a hole in the back of his head.

"All right, JustHans." Olaf's frozen brain suddenly blurts out the question he'd been meaning to ask 'ThisHans' for years. "So why didn't you kiss Anna?"

"Olaf?! Such a question!" A slack-jawed Rapunzel berates the frosty rudeness of her ill-mannered fellow oarsman, then gives an embarrassed toothy grin to Hans to try to mend things.

Silence envelops the now uncomfortable foursome crew of the tiny boat until the man smiles a sad smile, turning to face Olaf.

"I didn't love her, because I was too much in love with myself to know what true love even was." Hans answers honestly with a regretful look on his handsome features.

"Do you know it now?" After a few reflective moments, Rapunzel musters the courage to ask. She sensed a spark between he and Elsa long before she was aware of any previous relationship he may have had with her little sister.

"Yes, I think I do, but I'll never deserve to have that love returned. You have no idea what unforgivable things I've done to that Kingdom." Hans was smiling at her but his olive green eyes were telling another story of painful betrayal and deceit on his part.

"Hey, I think kingdoms don't matter anymore when it comes to hearts forgiving one another — if the love you feel is real this time. Even a criminal can exchange what's false in his heart with the power of love's truth. Maybe he just has to prove that love is really all he's after." Rapunzel calls upon her own romance to speak directly from soulful experience with her adored Eugene, who was willing to sacrifice his own chance to live to gain the freedom of the girl he loved.

"You are a wise woman for your youthful age, Princess Rapunzel." Hans says after he absorbs her deep meaningful words and squeezes her hand gently.

"Thanks." Rapunzel blushes under his pretty eyed kind compliment. Something about those eyes when he lowered his eyelids reminded her of someone precious to her own palpitating heart.

"But these hands have been worked too hard." He surprises her by turning over both of her palms to examine the wrapped blisters from the oars' constant movement on her hands, and the wrists on her lower arms were bulging from strained, overworked veins.

"Oh, well…We have to quickly get help to rescue Eugene…so we kept rowing all night. They're only a bit sore." She bashfully pulls in her thin, exposed vein popping arms and bandaged hands to move back to the oar station at the boat's end to get going again after this brief break.

"Allow me, Madam." Hans halts her in backing up mid-motion, as he stands in the small boat with perfect balance. Being a naval seaman was in his nautical blood he deftly climbs past Rapunzel even as he maneuvers the stunned girl to the middle seat, taking her place as the forward oarsman.

"Are you ready, midshipman Olaf?" Breathing in deeply the fresh salt sea air to fill his lungs, Lieutenant Hans Westergaard takes command of the seafaring craft, with roster of one petite woman, one scrawny lizard (_That is a chameleon, is it not, on her shoulder…?),_ and one three foot tall snowman, and himself as the rowing crew.

Why wouldn't this be the ship the lifelong naval officer would be assigned as his first command?

'_You cannot mock the justice of God, for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.'_

Galations 6:7's New Testament text replays in Hans' once proud, sardonic mind at this humbling commission of the smallest, just barely seaworthy vessel he claims his first command of. Instead now, he just smiles in submission.

"Oooh, I always wanted to be a midshipman! Don't you love the sound of it—Mid-ship-man! I'm a midshipman! It gives me goosepimples—if I had skin, that is! I'd love to think I could be a midshipman covered in goosepimples. Ships ahoy! Ships ahoy! Row, row, row, your boat!" Olaf's jaunty singing starts up again as he quickly picks up the pace when a smiling Hans lifts the pair of oars in Rapunzel's place and begins rowing with his lean, sinewy arms like a seasoned pro.

Her eyes had adjusted now to the emerging sunrise and Rapunzel's hazy gaze believed that the shirtless Hans looked rather dashing rowing the boat with such vigor in the rising sun.

"You were right—Olaf knows where Elsa is...Kind of like a homing beacon… _Yawn!_ Oh! Excuse me! I guess you know Elsa pretty well to have known that_…Big yawn!_ Oh, pardon me!" Rapunzel rubs her cloudy eyes as her sleepy head bobs up and down. She was not as embarrassed as she thought she would be to have rudely and openly yawned in front of this high-class man.

"No need to apologize—you've been up all night rowing hard. You get some rest, your highness. I'll take over now, don't you worry." He assures her in his soft, melodic voice that instills trust in the young woman.

"We'll be following Olaf's southwesterly direction." Hans glances up to the rising sun in the sky to determine its position as to their heading, as any experienced seaman could tell. "Olaf and I will row as swiftly as we can and we'll wake you when we arrive."

"Wow! You're just as smart as you are handsome! Oh! How's that cut on your chest feeling? I had Pascal dab some of that homemade ointment on it that we brought. We wrapped it up to stop the bleeding—I'm so sorry the iron plate still had some sharp edges. I tried my best to file them off, but I guess I missed one." Rapunzel groggily remembers the kind-eyed man's injury she and her chameleon had tended to when he first was pulled aboard.

"I'm fine. Thank you for your ingenious idea. I owe my life to you." It was so cute the way the grown man would shyly look down and blush at her plainspoken flattery.

"I haven't thanked YOU properly for doing what you did back there on the pirate ship for me and Eugene. Thank you, Hans. You probably saved Eugene's life by risking your own." Giving him a smile, Rapunzel sighs dreamily, trying to muster happy thoughts of her cocky, smirking with his trademark stubble in place, good looking husband.

She and Pascal huddle together in a pile in the middle of the lifeboat, using the fabric rope they'd crafted as pillow for her short cropped head that yards and yards of magical hair were no longer present to cushion. She almost immediately drifts into an uneasy sleep against the rolling ocean waves.

* * *

"Eugene…" Rapunzel wakes up with a start some hours later from a perfectly wonderful dream having her strong mate's muscular arms wrapped around her chilled little body.

But he wasn't there and the warmth was only to be attributed to the hot summer sun beating down on her suntanned forehead and freckled nose.

The brown haired princess blinks away her sleepers and sits up to face the young man, who by now, was sweating quite hard from all his exertion of traversing nautical miles ceaselessly.

"I must look a sight." Hans, a dapper man who once prided himself on his agreeable countenance, i.e. sideburns and well coiffed hairstyle, saw reflected in Rapunzel's large eyes, his state of unkemptness. He knew his hair must be askew and his ruddy red face sweaty.

"No, you look fine. Just perspiring from all the hard work. Here, let me…" Rapunzel crawls over to where Prince Hans was still industrious at his rowing with the aid of a tireless Olaf who was entertaining him with endless ocean going ditties.

She wipes the manly sweat dripping from Hans' sunbeaten forehead into his uncomplainingly, blinking back stinging eyes, right down to his sharp, celestial nose. Looking at his extremely comely face, she inexplicably begins to compare his features to her own gorgeous Eugene's, wishing he was here, like he was in the gondola in her dream.

"_Eugene._ You said his name so many times in your sleep. He must be quite a guy to be loved so well by such a lovely lady." Hans says with a little teasing grin and raised eyebrow.

"He's the most wonderful, most amazing, most caring man I've ever met. I love him to bits!" Rapunzel answers, holding back the tears of her heart on her sleeve.

"Then he was lucky, after all. May I tell you a story I've just figured out the end of myself?" Hans continues to row at an impressively steady, nineteen kilometers per hour. His agility and strength increased their voyage's speed by several nautical kilometers than if small girl Rapunzel had still been at the oar.

"Please, do." Rapunzel leans forward in her middle seat, putting her elbows up so her chin could rest while she listened to the man's tale.

"There was once a crown Prince who in his youth had a romantic dalliance with a woman beneath his status, who came from around your neck of the woods—in Prussia. She was said to be a beautiful young woman, a Gypsy dancer with dark striking features and a sense of humor and wit that was just as attractive as her long unruly black hair. Unfortunately, his secret visits to her across the Baltic Sea were not halted by his arranged marriage to a princess of Scottish ancestry, with bright red hair as vivid as the shine of her pure heart—that would've been broken had she known her worldly new husband was still keeping this mistress, and was father to her child. The woman had died when the baby was just two years old. The hardened man had sent that illegitimate boy away to an orphanage to be raised by unknown strangers rather than his father's castle, and the growing number of strapping boys his loving Scotswoman of a Queen filled their home with. One day she discovered a letter from the long passed Gypsy mistress, pleading with the king to take in her son that was half his royal blood, for she was dying. The brave Queen was so utterly good and kind that even on her own deathbed from having one unlucky child too many, she made each of her twelve elder sons promise to one day seek out this poor, discarded lad and treat him like the royal prince and brother he was."

"Oookay…that's a really…nice story." Rapunzel, who was just as much listening to the melodic sound of his voice as to the somewhat sordid tale, and didn't quite put two and two together, until Hans has to plainly reveal the name he would garner her reaction better.

"That missing Prince the king had sent to the orphanage when he was two, some twenty-nine years ago - so that would make him about thirty-one years old today - I think you might know him. His name was Eugene Fitzherbert."

"Eugene?! Wait! This is…crazy! Are you saying Eugene is—!?" Rapunzel suddenly jumps up, to clumsily land back down on all fours on the now wobbly boat.

"I believe your husband is my older half-brother. I felt some affinity with him when we first met, but didn't suspect anything until you said his name was originally 'Eugene' and then everything fell into place. It is 'Eugene _Fitzherbert_' you married, isn't it?" Hans' laser like mind connects all the dots and then some that he'd picked up from bits and pieces in conversation with Eugene himself during their continual sparring along the voyage. "After all, since ancient times, the 'Fitzherbert' surname was one that was generally attached to an illegitimate child of royal lineage, and the name 'Eugene' itself was to be of a man 'high-born'." Hans explains the ins and outs of royal code to the girl whose sad eyes were now sparkling with new wonder.

"So, Eugene is kind of a royal prince of Denmark? How many brothers was that again?" Rapunzel's mind was blown by now. Hans chuckles at the fantastic luck to have met together after all these years, under these incredible circumstances.

"After a fashion…I guess there's fourteen of us now. I'm glad not to be the unlucky number thirteen anymore." Hans answers and his chortle increases when Rapunzel jumps up to glomp him, as he tries to hold tight to his oars from dropping into the sea.

"I can't wait to tell Eugene! I can't wait to meet everyone! Eugene's brothers! That means you're my brother-in-law! I knew you were both too gorgeous not to be related!" She once again makes this man blush with her blatant honesty.

"We've got a big family now! Yes! I love family! You've got to invite them all over to stay with us in Corona, so we can all get acquainted when this is all over!" Rapunzel sings out, deliriously overwhelmed as the hot sun bakes her addled brain a bit.

"Absolutely…" Truly wanting to mean it this time (though, through personal experience, knowing the rest of his brothers would not be very warm to the idea of a fourteenth illegitimate addition to the clan) and not wanting to break her illusion, Hans is quite reminded of another exuberant princess who hungered for a love he couldn't give her.

_Now if her sister on the other hand wanted it…  
But how could she?! I am dust to her diamonds!_

His pleasant smile begins to fade at his dim prospects.

"Move aside, Olaf! Time for you to take a break!"

"Oh, good, my branches were about to snap in two!" The snowman holds out his wooden arms to display their wilting weariness.

"I've got energy to burn now! Eugene is gonna be so excited…I think…" Rapunzel was so enthusiastic for her orphan boy having a real, actual brother-ful family that she didn't have time to think how he'd actually react to the news.

"But we have to save my husband AND your brother first. WOW! We're family! This is so great! Let's go find Elsa asap, then get Eugene back!" Her astonishing speeded up and deliberate rowing impresses Hans as _he_ has to work to keep up with _her_ now.

The pair of oar bearers cut the small boat through the sun reflective waters at an even more quickened, livened pace, inspired by the new revelation of familial bonding that takes the excitedly chattering craft towards their southwesterly goal…


	16. Chapter 15 - Close Encounters

We do not own "Frozen" nor any of its characters.

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act I**

**Chapter 15**

**"Close Encounters"**

Another dawn ushers in all the sun's bright vivid colors to contrast the hazy mists lingering over the shoals of the small inlet fishing village of Grip.

Princess Anna of Arendelle is shocked awake by the rhythmic sounds of some unknown thumping bangs just beyond the bedroom window. This morning, curiosity gets the better of her sleepiness as she rubs the sleepers from her eyes to be rewarded with quite a pleasing early morn sight of her fine looking new husband helping the old fisherman, whose home the three travelers were welcomed in last night, chop up some firewood for kindling outside her front row view of the elderly couple's backyard through their cracked smoky windowpane.

Anna was entranced for a few moments to watch her strong strapping blonde flex his rolled up sleeve revealed bicep and tricep muscles in all his axe-wielding glory. She leans on propped up elbows into the window she was adding her drool to with a droopy eyed smile pasted across her delirious face.

"Isn't Kristoff so..._capable_… even in the morning?" Not a morning person herself, though her hardworking guy was generally up with the dawn. Anna murmurs in her incoherent awakening way as her single track mind marvels to find the right term's drawled out meaning to describe the man of her dreams. Babbling, the orangey head unceremoniously plops back down to the small creaky bed of the long vacant children's room the elderly fishing couple furnished herself and Elsa to share, whilst Kristoff had to manly brave a chilly cot on the floor in the outer living space where he offered to tend the waning fire for all this wet island humidity in the small spartan shanty.

"Elsa?" As she peeks one eye open in expectation of a response, Anna felt like that tiny little child again who called her sister's name – only to find her stretching arms reaching for an affectionate 'good morning' greeting hug and snuggle yet again left empty.

"When did you go?" After spending the night like they were little girls again, hugging and giggling and joking to try to cheer her somewhat preoccupied sister who seemed to be disturbed by some undisclosed inner demon she was hiding from her little sis, Anna begins to panic.

Since she came to them two days ago, Elsa was holding something back. _I know it!_ Something heavy on her heart.

_But why? I thought we were past that, Elsa!_

After waiting an impatient few seconds for her big sister to return to the bed (had there merely been a necessity), her sisterly instincts kick in, despite the early morn, as she jumps up to her frozen cold feet to patter about and hurriedly shimmy into her outer clothing strewn on a chair with worry written all over her pretty face as the pounding sounds of the axe continue their foreboding rise and fall outside.

* * *

With a contented smile on his face, Kristoff Bjorgman pauses to wipe the honest sweat from his brow. Sure, it was the middle of Norway's all too short summer, but it was still fairly chilly in this windy and wet archipelago port located some 500 plus km north of Arendelle. The hot moisture trickling down his sweating neck turns instantly chilly with the cold breeze blowing in with the sea tide.

But more than accustomed to both stark cold and hard work, this Ice Harvester was feeling his oats again this morning. He was proud he was able bodied enough to accomplish this little service easily for the sonless elderly couple he had stumbled upon meeting that had kindly taken the three of them in for the night.

Making their hard fought living off the small crop of the fish of the sea, this old couple lived just on the outskirts of the town of Grip, none too far from the stave church where Anna, Elsa, he and Sven had previously visited. When he first encountered them on the road, the crusty old fisherman and his sweet yet overbearing wife kind of reminded Kristoff of Cliff and Bulda in a strange sort of familiar way in how they opened their home up to strangers.

The industrious responsible young man wanted to show his appreciation for putting them up in bed and barn. So when observant eyes saw the nearly depleted woodshed and single log fireplace bin, even an arctic blast could not stop him from doing what the good-hearted lad was raised to know what was right.

_**CHOP! SWING! CHOP!**_

"Whoa there, laddie! Ye've been at it all morning, going foraging in the woodland to garner what few sticks of timber be available. Now don't overwork yeself starting so early in the AM before the sun up, rustling some firewood for me and the Missus. I've been a-meaning to get to it, but me old back argued the point. Thank ye kindly, sir. Ye are a good young fellow, though I would've thought ye'd sleep in with that lovely lil' frisky thing for a new wife ye've got." The raspy, but kind voice of the thin, weatherworn old fisherman cracks out as he brings Kristoff a steaming cup of broth his goodly wife had insisted he deliver to the hardworking boy at thus early 6AM hour.

"Yeah, well…" Kristoff was sweet enough and new enough to the idea of a 'frisky wife' to still blush. "I was seeing to Sven, and noticed your woodbox was empty, so…" Despite being a tough seasoned mountain man, Kristoff yet was timid to be so openly praised.

"Ye sure love yer reindeer, eh, young fella? Anyone can see ye've got a special touch when it comes to the animal-kind. There's almost something magical-like about yer perception of a creature's needs." The old man comments as he surveys his own meager work mule and his wife's old dairy cow fed and their stalls cleaned and tended to with fresh laid hay by this big hearted generous stranger.

"I guess I just could always tell when they're hungry or thirsty or need attention of some kind. It's like I can hear them tell me sometimes." Kristoff answers as his one hand reaches into the milking cow's stall and scratches behind her ears where a fierce itch she couldn't have satisfied with cloven hooves is relieved. He pats her gratified neck as the mournful eyed Betsie gives Kristoff a smile he seemed to instinctively pick up on.

"Yep, ye've got the magic touch." The fisherman notes as he follows his now well-fed and gnarled beard trimmed goat into the barn to be dazzled at whole well organized barn. The farm animals were cooing in their new hay beds and neatly stacked wood piles beside the fresh water drawn buckets, full and ready for at least a week's worth of feedings and washings.

"Magic? Hmph…" Kristoff chortles to himself under his breath at the superstitious old geezer, as he lifts his axe high in the air and turns to go back to work splitting the wood asunder–

That's when a recklessly rash pair of arms abruptly wrap around his thick neck as if he were not holding a deadly sharp weapon directly above both their heads in swift preparation to swing and chop –

"Anna! I could have hurt you!" In a rare moment of raising his normally soft voice to her, Kristoff scolds his real little fluff of magic. As, after safely placing the heavy axe down to the ground, he looks his wife in the eye with a thankful crooked smirk, knowing her penchant for luckily just sidestepping out of dangerous situations, though usually at his expense.

But one look on her worried features and lack of her buoyant '_But you didn't_!' response that generally followed many of his safety reprimands, and the big burly man is immediately alarmed.

"You okay?" He grabs both her shoulders in his large hands.

"Elsa's gone!" Her eyes wild with panic, Anna nearly sobs into his chest as he tugs her stumbling form close for comfort.

"Anna—"

"Maybe she was kidnapped in the night! I know I sleep light, but somehow, someone must've snuck past!" The frantic girl jumps to conclusions, even as she overstates her sleepy disposition.

"Anna, she's fine." Kristoff fights to get a word in edgewise.

"That evil pirate must've tracked her down here! Kristoff, we have to call in the Royal Navy! Or the palace guards, but we're way too far away from Arendelle! Elsa, I'm coming!" Fooling herself that she was, by any means, a light sleeper, Anna's wild imagination, spurred on by Elsa's thrilling tales of piracy on the high seas, begins to get the better of her as each nightmarish thought snowballs and snowballs until she was practically frantic for her beloved sister's well-being.

"Anna, calm down." Kristoff, in his placid stoic way, attempts to quell her building fears as he physically holds his struggling girl from wriggling away to race blindly through the foreign tranquil sleepy village in search of her missing royal sibling.

"Anna! Stop it! Listen to me!" After kneeling to the ground to replace her two mixed up left and right shoes on her messy rush to dress feet, the big blonde man must resort to shouting and utilizing his own brute strength to keep hold of his slippery wife with the proclivity to jump to rash conclusions.

"Elsa is fine! She's with Sven. I just took her down to the church to pray, okay? You can see the church from here, see? She's safe and sound. There's no one else there, I checked it out." Kristoff reassures.

"Oh, okay. Why didn't you say so in the first place?" Anna pauses to ask sincerely.

"Argh!" An incredulous Kristoff sighs in frustration of how little his Anna paid attention to his words.

"Church, big fella! I could feel like praying this fine morning, too." He turns around to see her fearlessly mount the fisherman's mule (who was fortunately in a good mood for a full tummy) and take off towards the mahogany red small holy building's direction.

"Good morning to you, too, Feisty-pants." Kristoff mumbles under his breath her teased nickname, already aware that Elsa's well-being had a prominent spot in their lives together. And he was fine with that. After all, it was Anna's great love for her sister that brought them to know one another in the first place.

"Oh! Good morning, Husband!" Anna, dangling over the confused mule's neck, manages to get him to do a 180 degree hairpin turn, to come thundering back to land a rather sloppy greeting kiss on Kristoff's unsuspecting mid-motion amused nose.

"You." Kristoff, never competitive with sisterly love to be the afterthought, chuckles as he rubs his bumped and slobbered on facial feature with the back of his hand as he watches his bubbly gal race towards the shoreline astride the wobbly mule.

"Crazy kids in love." The old fisherman's wife had trailed Anna who had tornado-ed through her peaceful abode, both she and her husband in the barn now laughing at the newly-wedded bliss that gave quite an exciting stir to their backwater mundane lives.

* * *

But as the gangly mule's legs trot into the single steeple Grip stave church's front yard, Anna's sharp eyes spy a small unmistakable figure slowly pacing along the beachfront just to the right of the chapel, close on the archipelago where a singular half painted red and half painted white lighthouse stood starkly against the rising sun's craggly shoreline.

"Elsa!" Letting out a big sigh of pent-up relief, Anna was exuberant to catch sight of her sister, as Kristoff said (_See! I was listening!)_ 'Safe and sound' praying _outside_ the church grounds.

Though this weird sense of something thrilling about to happen grips her heart as Anna urges the mule to speed up to meet with the aimlessly wandering on the shore elegant elder sister who seemed to be silently wringing her hands as eyes were gazing out towards the misty sea's horizon as if in longing anticipation.

"Anna! You're here!" The pale blonde appeared both relieved and anxious to see her younger sibling approach on the unsure-footed mule.

The beautiful queen, whose hair was iridescent in the forming sunlight beginning to penetrate the mists to glisten off the ocean waters, was an introvert by nature. And it was very hard to unlearn long years of trying to hide one's feelings.

_Conceal, don't feel._

But these two past wonderful years of living openly alongside Anna, loving alongside Anna, learning alongside Anna—the most warmhearted genuine girl this world has ever known—have taught Elsa of Arendelle to want to at least try to be as open and honest and truthful as well.

She had been wrestling all night with herself for, at first, unintentionally deceiving her little sister—_in a sacred church setting, no less. Forgive me, Lord_—of what—and more importantly—of **whom**—she's been in the intimate company of, and she knew it would disturb Anna to find out about him

"Elsa, what's wrong? Since we've found you, you seem so sad and…distant…and lonely. I thought we were beyond keeping secrets from one another. Can't you tell me?" Anna dismounts the mule when she arrives at the beachfront and skips through the pebbly sand to confront her older sister with her concerns, her eyes pleading, her hands offered.

Elsa pauses before speaking as she allows the ascending sunlight to cascade upon her forehead when she asks the Bringer of the Light for special wisdom and strength to explain the inexplicable to the girl it would hurt the most, the girl she loved the best, wanting always to be honest and true in her words **and** thoughts to her Anna.

Elsa takes a deep breath.

"Anna, what if I told you, while you and Kristoff were away and cousin Rapunzel and I went on this incredible adventure I was telling you about—" Elsa begins bravely, her blue blue eyes trying to steel themselves under Anna's inquisitive melting gaze.

"—that I met someone." She finishes by squeezing Anna's proffered hands in her no longer wringing ones.

"A…man?" Anna's yet innocent (in one sense) eyes bulge out. She was instantly excited for her quiet, sober, reserved sister's first step into romance's beautiful mystery, a quirky smile crossing her lips.

"Yes, Anna. An extraordinary, amazing, good man who heroically rescued me from those wicked pirates." Though she was trying to keep her voice even, the pride in Elsa's high strains seeps through. She was not completely sure herself of her own palpitating heart's footing to admit any budding relationship with Prince Hans, of all men, but Elsa was certain of his gallantry their time together on the pirate ship proved.

She swallows hard, as Anna's big blue-green eyes start to glow with an effervescent enthusiasm for her lonesome sibling. But Elsa had a biting feeling this heartened emotion would soon transform into another, once it was revealed precisely to _whom _the queen's blossoming attentions belonged to.

"Oh! Wow! A shipboard romance, like in a storybook! And here I was worried about you being an old maid queen! What's he like? How old is he? Is he handsome? Does he know you're Queen? When do I meet him?!" In a split second decision to be happy for her Elsie, the spirited young girl starts prattling off curious questions at a million miles an hour rate. Elsa was quite unprepared for this barrage as Anna nearly yanks her arms from their sockets, doing a happy jig around her once believed solitary sibling's new love prospects.

"Anna! Please listen!" Elsa cries out, quite dizzied by now from being swung around the beachfront like a ragdoll in boisterous Anna's jubilant dance.

"I am listening! Oh! What's his name? I bet he's a looker, knowing your good taste!" Anna sings, so glad that her sister's quiet inward mood yesterday was attributed to this pleasant new aspect of their lives. She gives the exasperated older girl a quick hug before Anna catches a glimpse of a family of crabs rushing across the rocks she was happy to share this news with, totally unaware of how uncomfortable she was making this soulful confession for Elsa.

"Anna. I have to explain to you about_ him_." Elsa bites her lip, having no idea it would be this hard – _yes, I did _– her resolve on the verge of waning at reciting the name of the known reviled man who once broke Anna's heart. But somehow her dreams of destiny had a funny way of leading Elsa to believe the same man might be the one to penetrate the frozen cold of her own heart…

She closes her eyes and lets the warm sunlight embolden her courage to say his name aloud.

"Oh, goody! I want to hear everything about him! And how you two met! It must've been so romantic!" Toying giddily with her own imaginary sandcastles, Anna's girlish notions of a romantic first meeting actually paled in comparison to what passionate memories were soaring through Elsa's harrowing thoughts of her shipbound encounters with Hans Westergaard.

And yet…Elsa's beating heart was racing in ways she never thought it could at each dreamt of vision of a heroic handsome kind-eyed Prince who made his presence on board that vessel—from the prisoner's brig, to the kitchen galley, to the windblown deck, to their shared bedchamber—so very_ real_ to her every one of her five senses…

The color rising to her cheeks almost achieves the brilliance of the embers of the resplendent golden sunlight as her lips part to speak…

"Oh, Elsa! I've never seen you glow like this! I'm really so happy for you! Maybe you've found your 'Kristoff' on your own adventure, like I did on mine! This is so great! Huh? What's that on the water? A little boat? Someone's waving to us on it!" Never giving Elsa a chance to spit it out, Anna's lively bliss over this new imagined perfect romance is interrupted when she spots out of the corner of her eye the said 'little boat' that was briskly being rowed towards the Grip Lighthouse's welcoming shore.

Elsa, who had been quietly basking in the fresh sunlight's warmth as Anna continued to rattle on, envisions the last time she glimpsed him. Her heroic figure was svelte and straight and tall with his open shirt blowing in the sunsetting winds, when her languid eyes suddenly snap open, and she instantly knows—_feels_—that this wasn't any ordinary little boat.

This was the boat that was coming **for her** with that very same man in her fantasies upon it.

**He** was searching _for her_! And she would be reflected inside his beautiful stunning green eyes again… The thought of that forbidden possibility made Queen Elsa feel an emotion she had never imagined she could be capable of before…

Lightly tread feet carry her intangibly moving body as if a hypnotic trance towards the furthest edge of the shoreline. Her involuntary ice prowess allows her to walk over the splinters of the archipelago as on a silvery white bridge to where the incoming small craft would find first harbor. Each step she took, the nearer the distance between them closed, Elsa's every nerve ending tingled with the fantasy that he cared enough to come looking for her…

"_Hans_!" Elsa's mouth barely dares to breathe as hands fly to her constricting throat.

_He's hurt! _Her strained eyes first focus upon the rear view of the red-haired head and familiar bare back of the man in the boat that now appeared scarred with the stripes of a whip's harsh lash. After a short of gasp at the unexpected breathtaking sight of the sunlit sweat dazzled bare-skinned perfect shape of each traced and retraced line of his lean back in her guilty mind as Hans doggedly rows, with his finely muscle toned triceps flexing the oars of the lifeboat into the island shore's last few meters, Elsa could clearly make out the deep red streaked cut grooves crisscrossing his now deeply sliced, previously flawless and unblemished well-formed traps, scap and shoulder delts.

As she watches Elsa fly without abandon to the boat's edge as if in a dream, Anna follows her created ice trail, skipping and sliding as she waves furiously at an exhausted yet somewhat relieved looking Rapunzel. The brown haired Prussian princess was facing the girls as she finishes rowing towards the shore with a joyously bouncing up and down, smug that he was right on the mark, Olaf.

"Elsa! You're alive!" Rapunzel shrieks out simultaneously with the giddy snowman with much happiness as they pull ashore at seeing their missing friend after Elsa had been cruelly tossed overboard into the churning depths of the sea.

Seeing the plain relief and joy on his little rowing crew's faces, Hans smiles, despite his exhaustion and torn ligament pain. The Dane spins around, eager to feast his hungry hopeful eyes upon the beautiful lady he had tortured himself for days in the pirate's brig in believing this delicate woman placed in his care had passed from this world—and it was all his own narcissistic ego that endangered her, and lost her magical beauty to him forever…

"Snowflake… How I prayed for this moment." The sweet diminutive from his dreams slips out of Prince Han's enraptured, stamina-worn mind. His fatigued, already injured body- that had gone above and beyond the call of rowing duty this night to quickly find her with the aid of tenacious Rapunzel and tireless Olaf as able first mate and midshipman at the oars of their happy little craft—was about ready to collapse.

Hans fully turns in heartening optimism of glimpsing the true glowing beauty of the morning, who was Queen Elsa of Arendelle, alive and well…

As he stands, perfectly balanced in the boat to revolve around in one fluid motion, Elsa's pure inspiring look of demure grace amidst the rising sunlight rewards his greedy eyes for just a second or two before—

_**PUNCH!**_

Smack right in his shapely dizzy and dazed, yet pleasantly smiling face, the same right hook pounding punched fist that had bested his poor bloody lip once before, connects with his already punished head again.

Princess Anna, upon seeing the despised and despicable _Prince of the Southern Isles_ stand up in the boat where he obviously was in league with the pirates in kidnapping cousin Rapunzel and Olaf in his evil devious schemes again, reacts swiftly..

"No! Hans!"

Too disturbed to revel _much_ in the intimate proximity of clinging to his bare chest and feeling his raw back muscles tingle under her fingertips, Elsa lunges forward to catch the upper section of redheaded man who was just blindsided by the girl's quick attack.

Rapunzel, still in the boat, grabs hold of his lower legs (_Nice tight calves! Ooh, sorry, Eugene!)_ to steady poor Hans from tumbling overboard into the waters.

"Let me at 'im!" Sweet little Anna could be quite vicious in her enthusiasm for a fight. The vivacious girl coarsely pushes Elsa aside to let go of him and then roughly shoves Hans' now shaky shoulders with both her incensed hands until he tips to the side and Rapunzel can't hold on any longer to his flailing long legs. As he drops over the boat's edge into the shallow drink, Hans' head bashes against the sharp craggly rocks.

"There, I did it! Olaf! Come on, girls! Run!" A triumphant Anna, feeling rather justified and powerful to vanquish her fiercest enemy singlehandedly (_I got this skinny toffee-nosed git covered, Kristoff!) _calls for the victim rescuees she had just freed from the wicked man's clutches.

Only to find the lot of them rallying around to retrieve the fallen villain from the water and fawn over his now bloodied head from the sharp rocks it smacked hard into.

"He—llo! This is Hans we're talking about here! You remember—liar, cheater, kingdom usuper, attempted murderer, nasty heartbreaker _Prince_ Hans of the Southern…Isles? "

"Guys? Do you even hear what I'm saying?" The shoe uncommonly on the other foot, Anna is quite astounded to be so ignored by her own loving relatives who were more interested in the welfare of **that** guy.

She wonders as both Elsa and Rapunzel, along with faithful Pascal (who had narrowly missed taking a similar swan dive atop Hans' shoulder) and even Olaf—_Traitor!_—all seemed to be doting to help the dazed, already tired man recover from the pretty harsh blow to his spinning skull in the shallows as the trio drag him towards the beachfront.

"Elsa! What is going on here?!" A shaking fisted red-faced and angry Anna demands, unable to believe her eyes as she witnesses her reserved and shy sister (especially with men) yank off from her shoulders her own borrowed (from Anna's bag Gerda had packed that had not been tossed, only thanks to conservative Kristoff) Arendelle cloak to wrap around the pounded dizzy man's trembling with cold and weariness, spent body.

"What?!" Anna sees the way Elsa's caring, once afraid to touch _anybody_ hands impulsively caress the fist injuries to Hans' lower lip and jawbone. Anna watches in utter shock as Elsa softly dabs at his injured countenance with a produced handkerchief with as much tenderness as would befit a…

_Lover._

"Elsa. Tell me _**he**_ isn't the '_extraordinary_, _amazing_, _good_ man who_ heroically_ rescued you from the pirates' you were talking about. Elsa! Please tell me it isn't **him**!" With tears in her furious eyes, Anna demands loudly, not caring one wit if "Prince" Hans overheard or not.

"Anna. Please. Not now." An embarrassed and ashamed Elsa, afraid of her growing fears, begins to feel cold ice enshroud her perplexed torn heart even in the broad sunlight due to the emotional upheaval between herself and her sister—her rock, her perpetual sunlight— clouding over in this angst-ridden argument.

"Anna! Stop! I don't know what he did before, but Hans is a good guy now. He's my friend who saved Eugene's life. He's the whole reason Olaf and I even made it here!" Rapunzel rushes back from dragging their little long-suffering lifeboat onto the shoals before it gets washed back to sea unattended.

"Yeah, JustHans is a good bad guy. Or is that a bad good guy? Hmph, I always get mixed up there on the adjectival order of things. Can I get back to you later once I decide?" A chortling Olaf looks up to the pair of girls toothily as he chuckles to himself, all goofy in the consideration.

With a smile at the ditzy snowperson, the brown haired compassionate young woman wraps an understanding forbearing arm around the bewildered Anna. The two females with curious eyes look upon the poignant scene taking place on the wet rocky beachfront.

"Queen Elsa. I've come all this distance to ensure that you were alive and safe and well. Please grant me a smile. I think I deserve that for all my troubles, at least." An emboldened Hans regains a bit of his cheeky senses enough to tease in a whisper the fearful eyed woman on whose lap his wounded head was being cradled.

And Elsa beams her most gorgeous smile down at him in absolute reward.

At witnessing this, a shocked Anna doesn't know what to do as she is filled with overwhelming concern, wild-eyed craziness and total confusion. Fortunately, the one who generally calmed her troublesome three C's arrives to take some of the burden off her tensed shoulders.

"So, look what the tide's washed in. How does that new saying go about 'bad pennies'?" Kristoff must've heard the noisy ruckus as his brain quickly images his spontaneously explosive wife's reaction to re-meeting her abhorred ex-fiance in the flesh.

Literally. Princely Hans may have had a scarred up back, (_Wonder who did the honors_? _Remind me to shake his hand_.) but he still seemed to possess a charm for the ladies, two out of three of the 'weaker sex' (_Yeah, sure! Anna is a little toughie!) _mooning over the bare-chested purportedly good-looking scrawny fool.

Kristoff gulps as he surveys the usually dignified Queen Elsa rather presumptively readjust the cloak he saw her wearing herself this morning around the otherwise fairly shirtless man (quite a scandalous thing for 1850s upper crust royal sensibilities that Kristoff was glad to only be mildly acquainted with himself) as she dries his dripping wet skin and dark red slicked back hair and moist sideburns with the remainder of her clothing—sleeves, skirt, even her long blonde tresses.

"Okay, I'm not even going to ask how he got in this state." A smirking Kristoff gives Anna a raised brow, yet approving look that softens her rigid stance a bit already.

"Let's get them up to drier ground, up in that lighthouse." Level-headed Kristoff easily hefts the too weak to protest underweight disowned Prince's slim body over his firm shoulder (if only to get him away from the fawning queen, for man of the world Kristoff instinctively already knew Anna's view on the _touchy_ subject) as Anna ushers a drawn-eyed Rapunzel to alight on Sven's comforting back. An eager Olaf (after Sven just mildly misses nabbing his carrot nose in their trademark greeting) happily hops on board the reindeer as well as Anna and Elsa, calling a truce with a sisterly all forgiven hug, both clamor onto the poor fisherman mule's complaining hemming and hawing back.

Once the tired group traverses the hill from the shore front up to the Grip Lighthouse, Hans begins to come to and Kristoff puts him down to the ground on his two unsteady feet so that Elsa boldly drapes his arm over her own pale shoulder for the support and winning smile up at him that Hans is grateful for.

"So, I understand chivalry and ladies in distress and all—but, there must be another reason **you're **here." Kristoff tries to make sense of this most undesirable man's strange reappearance in their lives right now as he quietly addresses him.

"'_The Lord establishes our steps_.' '_And His purposes are always right_.'" A reverent Hans quotes the Good Book before directing his next query up to the taller blonde man. "If I may be so bold?" Hans asks and Kristoff cocks his head with a shrugged acquiescent nod.

Hans then surprises everyone, Anna most of all, as he goes down to his knees, heedless of the sharp rocks, to Anna's shocked feet. Belittling himself as he did with Elsa before, in all humbleness, he takes Anna's at first unwilling hands until she looks from a nodding Kristoff to a hopeful Elsa, as Hans presses his bloodied lips to her palms.

"In these past two years since we last met, I have reflected deeply and have learned the insincere error of my misbegotten ways and fallacious behavior, especially concerning you personally, Anna. I have heartily asked God to forgive my ignoble betrayal of your goodness of innocence and trust in my past contemptuous misuse of your purity of genuine emotion for me. Is it even feasible for me to hope for you to search your gracious soul for some small amount of mercy, Anna?"

Anna's jaw drops at all the big important sounding words of the speech spoken for her as she simply stares down at the once unscrupulous underhanded man whose large green puppy dog eyes up at her were all vulnerable and hopeful, with not a trace of the artful calculating craftiness she knew him to be capable of that she was suspiciously looking for.

But Hans' eyes were only full of redemptive sorrow and apologetic sincerity. Anna's own wide eyes, not wanting to be tricked again, go from Hans to Kristoff to Rapunzel and then back to Hans, after a long stare at Elsa's emotive eyes.

"I…guess I can try." Anna finally relents to everyone's relieved sigh.

"But mainly because I'm a good Christian girl. In the Lord's Prayer, Jesus himself told us '_to forgive others who have sinned against us_'. So that means jerks like you, but only if you're **REALLY SORRY** for what you've done to us." Anna stresses the words in bold.

"You remember your prayers, Anna." Elsa proudly whispers, she always having to drill the memorization part of their faith into her forgetful little sister's head when they were tiny, though she needn't have worried for the true lessons ingrained on Anna's sweet soul.

"And that's **Princess** Anna to you, Mister." Turning back with the sore point to face him, the 'sweet' little girl puts the man who had wronged her in the past, no matter how contrite he may be now, in his rightful place. Mercy or no, _Princess_ Anna no longer wished to be on first name familiar terms with that loser.

"No funny business! I heard you did some great things but I haven't seen anything myself yet. So, you're on trial from now on! I'll be watching you with eyes in the back of my head. You'd better be that '_amazing, heroic,_ _good man'_ to Elsa or so help me, I'll—I'll have my Kristoff wipe the floor with your sorry behind!"

Giving Hans a withering look in warning, Anna threatens, trying to sound like the tough guy she was pretending to portray. Her truly good heart wanted to forgive more than her stubborn unyielding mind would permit right at the moment as she pokes the kneeling to the ground Hans' forehead with a harshly pointed finger boring into his skull.

"You heard the lady, pal." Kristoff reiterates his tiny wife's threat, his own pounded fist into the other hand visually displayed an alternative less palatable fate, for Kristoff was just as uncertain of this new entrant to their little rescue party as Anna of the man's true ulterior motives concerning Elsa.

He wouldn't admit it, but it _was_ a comfort to Kristoff to have another man involved in this dangerous secret mission with him as they were about to enter some treacherous hungry wolf, wandering bandit and other unsavory wild animal laden roads amidst all these vulnerable females.

Although, the experienced mountain man wished it could've been anyone else than his former rival, as he signals Anna to get them into the shelter of the Grip lighthouse.

"Here, let me get the door for you, Hans." With not many hard feelings _really_, Anna 'accidentally' (or was it on purpose?) throws the lighthouse door open a bit too wide, it knocking into Han's already bruised chin and jaw, to gain a pained grunt from him.

"Oof!"

"Anna!" Elsa couldn't believe after all that soul searching she still had to reprimand her wayward little sis on the morals of forgiveness.

"Oh, sorry. I suppose I'm not that good at _opening doors_ for you anymore." Anna pointedly gets one last jab in of their big romantic song and dance once upon a time right in his face as she gets to vent her retreating vengeance in little ways.

"Ladies first." She smiles saucily and huffily saunters past him into the lighthouse.

"Forgive her?" Elsa apologetically smiles up at him, getting that warm feeling just to be present at his affable side again that quite disturbs her reserved heart—in a good way.

"Without a second thought. I deserved it. And you need never say such words to me, of all people. After all, it is I who requires _her_ forgiveness. A woman's wrath is never quickly dissuaded. And rightly so. I am the one to take it on the chin, so to speak." Hans rubs his bashed in long noble chin with a droll air of resignation, causing Elsa to indeed grant him that special smile he's been waiting all his life for…

* * *

…"I believe it is always wise to listen carefully to what the fairer sex has to say." As Rapunzel delivers to him a steaming cup of hot coffee, an intuitive Hans senses her deep worry for her husband and his brother. And he gives his rowing partner Rapunzel an encouraging grateful smile, to which she tries to return, meeting his kind eyes before going back.

As he and Kristoff seriously discuss their next stratagem and traveling route logistics of entering some rugged unchartered territory by the open land, Hans seemed to reclaim some of his more characteristic well-bred bravado when conversing with another male. He stands up straight and tall to stretch the gorgeous yet aching arch of his stiff back from all those long hours of sitting in the small boat under the strenuous rowing conditions, mostly on his shoulders.

But even the cuts, bruises, muscle pulls and scarred pains he'd endured these past few days were a welcome blessing to be able to feel alive in a world _she_ was in too. Hans' eager eyes gaze across the small lighthouse cove to where the three lovely ladies sat around the table they managed between the three of them to fill with nourishing food and drink. They were being entertained by Olaf's vivid retelling of his own recent heroic endeavors on naval frigates, dark mysterious ports, and pirate ships alike. The snowman didn't leave out much detail of their 200 km seabound journey's conversational revelations either, Olaf proving to be a grand gossip with a good auditory memory of every word he overheard.

"Whoa-whoa-whoa! Back up there, Olaf! If Eugene is Hans' half brother, and Eugene's our cousin because you've gone and married him, Rapunzel—then that means **HANS WESTERGAARD IS PART OF OUR FAMILY**, too?! You mean he can come to Christmas dinner?! No way! That's so wrong!" Anna nearly spits up the hot chocolate she had been guzzling that Elsa had rustled up for the group from the lighthouse's well-stocked stores ready to welcome any weary ocean travelers stopping by.

"Yep! Isn't discovering your family roots a fun thing! Maybe **I'll** find out that big 'ole Marshmallow is my long lost great uncle twice removed. Isn't it a small, small world where we laugh and play?" Olaf starts singing as he rattles off in his happy nonsense concerning family trees, much to Anna's disdain, Rapunzel's anxiety, and Elsa's keen interest that, as he collects his own coffee, Kristoff notices the way the queen's eyes gloss over as they float towards this new red-headed companion who was drying off the back of his soaked trousers, still on him, near the fire stove.

Returning to the stove, the two like-aged men share a companionable silence, though Hans' stare often sneaks to similarly land his gaze upon lovely Elsa in much the same way as she was looking across at her ideal man.

"A-hem." Hans suddenly notices a smug Kristoff noticing him noticing Elsa as Hans clears his throat in covered up embarrassment.

"How quickly can we travel to Trondheim by land did you say, sir?" His cunning mind was still tenacious in his resolve to, first and foremost, save brother Eugene from the pirate's clutches, thwart the evil pirate's plan, whatever it may be, in doing so whilst still retrieving Arendelle's holy treasures from being used for the pirate's wicked unknown purposes, if it took everything he had to do it.

"About a full 2 days' worth of travel, maybe a little more with so many more passengers for Sven alone. Maybe I can pick up a bigger sled and another reindeer for a two team sleigh…There's seven of us now, right?"

"Actually, eight. Although, my invaluable little friend here doesn't weigh much. Do you, Pascal?" The man's gallant chivalrous manner appealed to the chameleon. Pascal was usually accustomed to the less _congenial_ company of Flynn Rider, who still called him a 'frog' to flick off the shoulder as Rapunzel's little companion listens in on the men's serious conversation planning to rescue the thieving rascal. The chameleon honestly missed the jaunty joking attitude of Flynn, as Pascal turns a proud shade of brown on Hans' forearm.

Hans was beginning to enjoy having little companionable friends like Pascal and Olaf around. He missed his noble steed Sitron these past two years more than his well bred, supposed-to be-detached-and-stoic sanity wished to admit.

_But who needs sanity anymore? _Hans runs his hands through his damp sideburns as eyes travel across the lighthouse to where the uncanny Olaf was still comically entertaining a giggling despite herself Anna, to connect with Elsa's eyes. Then both fix their mingled worried gazes upon the young woman pensively silent in the corner as she pretends to sleep on the bench.

But both knew she was weeping inside for the quiet hidden tears running endlessly down her scrunched up face in anxiety for the love of her life in some obscured danger beyond her reach…

"We will get him back alive. I promised we'd bring him home to her. And a gentleman's word-" The noble born man begins to vow Eugene's successful rescue for the tears of a loving woman in low tones aloud.

"—is his bond." Kristoff's innate goodness, not to mention Bulda and Cliff and growing up with his Troll family taught him every bit as well of honor and valor as any higher education military academy offered.

With a shared nod, Hans' passionate resolve on Eugene's behalf for Rapunzel's sake touches family man Kristoff. That little bit of empathic compassion pushes most of Kristoff's doubts aside as he decides to cautiously share Elsa's trust of this reformed villain.

So that only left Anna's trust to win.

Or lose, along this unpredictable fateful journey where life and death and destiny itself hangs in the balance of alliances forged...


	17. Chapter 16-In a One Reindeer Open Sleigh

We do not own "Frozen" nor any of its characters.

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act I**

**Chapter 16**

**"In a One Reindeer Open Sleigh"**

With Prince Hans' logical input on the matter considered, it was decided that having two modes of transportation would be 'more advantageous' as the lofty-worded naval officer had described. Knowing these trade routes like the back of his mittened hands from his ice-harvesting business expertise, Kristoff and an overworked Sven pull into a workman's trading post just a few kilometers beyond Grip's closest archipelago jump to Kristiansund port.

"Okay, we're here. I'll go see if Torvik has a reindeer ready sleigh available. Everybody stay with Sven." Cool Kristoff surveys from the corner of his eye how…cozy…some of the cramped passengers seemed to have been enjoying the ride thus far. It was obvious from the way his little wife's silently bristling face was scrunched up in disdain at how her sweet, innocent formerly standoffish-to-men sister, Elsa, had somehow discreetly made her way in the sleigh's backseat to nearly _**sit **_on the lap of one uncomplaining Prince Hans, who appeared rather comfortable with the arrangement from the smug look on his pleased mug.

A quiet cousin Rapunzel was seated next to Elsa back there, with a squirming Pascal and bouncing Olaf on her knee. The simple snowman was excited to see the new sights, with his mouth rattling off at practically every bump and turn of poor Sven's overfilled sled.

Anna pounds a protesting fist yet again on the unsuspecting luggage that just _**had**_ to be piled between her and Kristoff in the front sled seat row. It was so high she could barely see over it's mound of supplies and baskets of food that the old fisherman and his wife, though they had little, gave much, as the Bible instructs us all of generosity's reward in Heaven someday.

But right now, Princess Anna surely didn't feel rewarded. All through the mid-afternoon ride, she had been constantly arching her aching neck over the parcels to see exactly what was going on with the backseat's occupants. It was a little too quiet (beyond Olaf's endless wagging tongue) for her protective taste, and now with Kristoff gone from the driver's seat, a grumbling Anna is able to topple over a few of the supply and food baskets so she could garner a better view.

And it was just in time to watch Hans, rather at liberty, tenderly lift Elsa's perched body from her comfortable leaning resting place on his shoulder and chest, to alight from the vehicle.

"I'll be back, my Sleeping Beauty." He boldly whispers the fairy tale alluded tease directly in the queen's groggily slumbering ear so only she could hear.

"Oh! Did I fall asleep? Please excuse me." An embarrassed awakening Elsa didn't sleep much the previous night, for worry, and somehow had felt safe and warm here in Sven's swaying back and forth sled ride enough to doze off.

But she had no idea Prince Hans' welcome chest would be her headrest pillow! _How did my head get **there** and how **long** was I there?_ The demure shy Queen blushes intensely at the shameful thought as she sits up, straightening her rumpled dress to regain some level of sensible decorum.

"Hey! Kristoff said to—Oh, never mind! You can get out and stay out for all I care!" Anna inhospitably yells out after the tall, thin man departs once he lifts his long legs over the sled's edge to disappear around the corner where Kristoff had gone reindeer hunting in the rear of the outpost sled yard.

"Anna! I thought you said you were going to forgive Hans." A chastising Rapunzel, her rowing mate's finest advocate, defends the dashing red-headed figure as he moves just out of earshot.

"I said I was gonna '**_try._**' That's different from actually doing it." Anna retorts. Just watching that guy wear their signature grey Arendelle cloak coat again maddened her to some degree. She turns to her sister.

"Elsa? I don't want you to be so darn chummy with him. Didn't I split you two up on opposite sides of the sleigh? What happened to that, Rapunzel? Huh?! You were supposed to sit between them!" A seething, whispered Anna questions her elder cousin.

"We~ll…I felt rather ill a while back, and needed to…you know…over the side. I think I'll be needing to do that a lot if the roads are this bumpy." The green-around-the-gills, rather red in the face with her stomach turned young woman answers Anna's inquisition with all honest innocence as she places a halting hand over her mouth once again with a gag.

"Don't worry! I didn't get hit! See, still _Snow White_, heigh ho! I always wanted to say that, hee hee." Olaf sings in his happy way, branch hands displaying his pristine whiteness proudly.

"Oh." Was Anna's only response as her anger is deflated at her inexplicably sickly ill relation. With a frustrated sigh, Anna turns back in her seat with a pout and rolls her eyes.

_Well, this is all stupid Cousin Eugene's fault! And now Hans is his brother?! Those jerks are two of a kind! …Anyway, I hope we find him safe for Rapunzel's sake._

Anna's spinning, addled brain burns the non-present former thief for being at the root of this unsavory road trip, (Among other queasy, sickening problems for Rapunzel that he could be rightfully blamed for.) that facilitated his new little brother, one Hans Westergaard, to climb aboard their once happy and contented ride through life. A silently steaming and thoroughly exasperated Anna throws her hands up in the air in the front seat.

* * *

"So, Torvik, is this sorry yearling the only reindeer ya got on you?" After taking a quick look around the trading outpost's back barn offerings, the reindeer expert in Kristoff Bjorgman was not at all impressed.

Beside the singular, knobbly-legged young reindeer cross-eyed buck that was not yet harness broken in, the remainder of the stalls that were usually brimming full of active and robust large antlered reindeer were literally vacant.

"Yah, many pardons, my young friend. But the ice herders already cleared Old Torvik out this season, a few weeks' back. The price of feed and the economy has been hard on reindeer sales this year. Sooo, big-hearted man I am, I gave them a bulk-rate deal that they snapped up to get ready for the early winter that's predicted to be a doozy! Yoo-whoo!" The wide, large-bodied, aging trader whacks the cud-chewing, knock-kneed reindeer on the rump with his playful call. The poor beastie leapt into the air to nearly fall back down on his collapsing, weak knees.

"All except this derpy, wee fellow, that is. But you can have him at a very good price. He's a happy thing." The middle Norwegian inlet bay peasant pulls the beleaguered creature's mouth into a toothy smile to match his own. The thick-accented shopkeeper's ever-present smile isn't fazed at all by Kristoff's big frown as his sale's pitch to this rare customer continues on.

"But if you're not interested in him, we also have a wide variety of sleds available, as you can see, out in the yard. Vis-à-vis, cutters, those newfangled bobsleds—if I can direct your eyes over to some modern models that are really nice, well-made, and only slightly upgraded by myself. Whoo-hee! Just look at how large and luxurious that hard top brougham closed carriage model and it's spoke wheels, I imported all the way from Oslo! Oh! And here is a nifty one! Totally enclosed! I obtained it from some comrade, claiming to be Siberian, brought all the way from Russia! I gave him a super deal on a matched team of Fjord draught horses in trade." Trader Torvik pauses before a large wooden box on thick, heavy duty runners that was completely enclosed, save for holes in front for the reins to pass through.

The sturdy frame that must've been built to withstand heavy snows in the deep, more Arctic northerly regions was like a little cabin room with several small tiny windows and even a small furnace inside this Vozok dark, protected interior.

"Wow. This could come in handy for a private honeymoon trip…Ah, ahem…" Kristoff's young male hormones seem to have an imagination all their own as he peers from the lifted top down into the cozy living quarters hidden within this rather intriguing new Vozok sleigh that his expert eyes had never glimpsed before.

"…No, Torvik, I'm only interested in a reasonably priced, plain shaft and yoke double runner sled." Kristoff recovers his all-business, conservative with hard-earned money persona as he slams the inviting lid back down.

"Whoo-hoo! Greetings to you over there, young man! Torvik vill be right there!" But old Torvik's selling attention focuses away from an uncooperative Kristoff over to the tall, stately man who appears in the horse stables, inspecting each of the horses' teeth and hooves, as if he was an equestrian expert.

_And he looks to be high-class and rich one, at that! Skillings, skillings, skillings! Speciedalers coming my way!_

Torvik could already hear the sound of silver and bronze clinking into his grubby hands.

"We have a wide variety of fine, well-bred steeds here at Touring Torvik's Trading Post! Woo-hoo!" He drops well known 'cheapskate' Bjorgman like a sack of furry moldy potatoes for this Providential newcomer's potention likelihood and sale possibility.

"Hey! I was talking to you first." Kristoff complains, having an itchy feeling this oozing charm affluent guy could mean trouble for his wheeling and dealing wallet.

"Ah, yes, hello, sir. I've been admiring the muscular builds and willing temperaments of these competent horses. I can clearly see these Norwegian Dolahest and Friesians are both quite strong and elegant, though their coats would all benefit from a fresh grooming as well as a good rubbing down."

"Certainly! Of course! Torvik does all the grooming personally, like clockwork, every morning! I just missed today, on account of a little cold. Ah-choo."

"Yes, the attention would be much appreciated, wouldn't it, my dear…Iriserende?" From the way Hans was stroking the just traded in, grateful eyed, much ignored pure white mare's neck where a name tag hung, one could see how much the equine-loving horseman missed pampering his own steed.

"I think you'll have to wake up a bit earlier then, Torvik. This strong little fellow says he hasn't been fed in two days. And didn't I tell you to stay in the sled, mister?" Kristoff moves his address from Torvik to Hans as enters the trader's barn as he sticks his own large hands through the wooden stall bars to scrub and pat the whinnying Dolahest draft horse's back, after scooping a handful of oats from a pail up to the creature's drooling muzzle.

Ignoring his own reprimand, Hans' green eyes turn to narrow on Kristoff in new curiosity.

"And that snowy lady you've got there needs a tender scratch behind her ears." Kristoff advises, and a bewildered Hans immediately does as instructed. The sleek, alabaster coated mare's highly gratified whinny, under his touch, mystifies Hans.

"You know your beasts." He smiles at Kristoff with a raised eyebrow, to which the taller man only offers a self-satisfied shrug.

"Now look, Torvik. We don't want **any** horses. They're too high upkeep. Is there anyone in Kristiansund willing to sell their own reindeer if I buy a sled off you?"

"But your friend here has his eye on this special rare one-of-a-kind pure white albino beauty, just come in from the far north." After launching his best sales pitch to an intrigued wide-eyed Hans and an unimpressed scoffing Kristoff, who folds his annoyed arms, the outpost trader gives the pair an insinuating look.

"Aren't you two gentlemen traveling together?" A confused Torvik asks the unlikely companions, having received completely mixed signals on what they were looking to buy.

"Yes, sir, we are." Hans answers honestly, civil to a fault.

"No, we are _**not!"**_ However, Kristoff gets the big man's implied debauched drift at the pair's bantering raillery and how normally rational Kristoff spoke quixotically of a 'honeymoon' earlier. "No, wait! My new wife's waiting in the sled!" Wanting to produce Anna as proof positive, Kristoff cries out, his face a deep red in mortification.

"Oh, good! Even better! On a honeymoon with friends! Two sleds are always better than one, Torvik says!" The man bounces back, laughing at his own joke. "And if you take two of these fine horses, I will give you a super-duper, just married, half-off deal on that large Russian Vozak you were admiring earlier."

"Nah, too heavy." Though tempting for all its safety features, the big brute of the Russian wooden box posed its own weighty problems that would slow their urgent mission down.

"I vill throw in a Pulka, directly from the Lapland mountains. Just right size to stash the little wife!"

"Too small." An arms-crossed, no-nonsense, practical and prudent Kristoff quickly dismisses the traditional Lap sled, called an Ahkio, that was generally utilized for small mountain rescues. He had been familiar with the sleds, since living beside the ice harvesters who had close ties to the Sami mountain reindeer herdsman in his youth.

"You are a hard fellow to please, Mister Bjorgman!" The aged, adept salesman throws his hands up in frustration at this big, blonde tough customer, who had visited his shop every year since he was a vee little chap.

And still he was an Ort pinching tightwad.

The two stare each other down with furrowed, price-challenging eyes.

"Please, excuse me. But if we purchase this sleigh with the modified canvas roof cover and smooth-sliding longitudinal skate runners at full price—" Prince Hans suddenly interrupts the hardcore bartering and trading action going on between Kristoff and the trader, with a slick deal all of his own making.

"—will you allow us to merely borrow two of your fine handsome steeds with a gentleman's promise to return the pair in healthy condition, or double their cost, upon our return in a fortnight?"

"Hmmm…" Torvik always did like a bit of a gamble. "Double my money, you say? Cash on the barrel for this special, hand built, first-rate sleigh—modelled after the newest elegant, roomy French style six passenger vis-à-vis bobsleigh?"

"—In other words, 'refurbished and used.'" Pragmatic Kristoff points out.

"Used? Used gently, very gently." Torvik relents when his normal sour mood at nightmare customers like Kristoff is soon beguiled by the blonde's statesman-like companion's pervasive winning smile.

"Still, anyone can see it is a magnificent craft, personally cared for by an expert who knows what he's doing with fine, sleighing vehicles." Hans bolsters the puffed up trader and his sleigh with a calm winsome smile.

_One catches more flies with honey…_

"But, it's just a—" Kristoff lumbers over to check out the covered sleigh that Hans had picked out, to proverbially and physically 'kick its runners'.

"I realize you are far more an expert in the field of winter vehicles than I, and I bow to your sagacity. However, I do believe it's an exclusive deal that we may be wise to take into consideration, Mr. Bjorgman. Especially consider this kind gentleman's gracious gesture in bestowing upon you and Princess Anna a wedding discount."

Just then, as if on cue, while still (mildly) obeying her husband, Anna had driven a sneaky Sven around the trading outpost corner, so she could get a better view of watching that Westergaard with eyes in the back of her head. She didn't trust the devious man alone with her sweet Kristoff.

A squinting Anna blinks in the sunlight at the three men, irratated to watch Hans give Elsa a smooth little wave and cocky smile that elicits a crimson cheeked blush and lowered eyes still at her earlier shame, much to his pleasure.

"Oh, my! Your good lady's the Princess? Half off the sleigh in celebration of the happy event! Just two hundred speciedalers, along with Torvik's best blessings on your successful marriage, my children!" A patriotic, and heart-happy Torvik even lowers the price, despite his 'better' nature, upon the honor of glimpsing the princess and…C_ould that be the—?_ Full of Norwegian pride, all thoughts of inflated money-making fall to the wayside upon seeing his majestic Queen.

"Then, perhaps, you'll allow our lovely ladies to give their personal approval on which of these fine horses we will accept on loan from your stables, Mr. Torvik. We must be departing soon—time is of the essence."

"You must admire a young man who is able to outfox me with such a good deal, and still have fire in his belly, eh, ladies?" The shop owner gives Elsa, Rapunzel and Anna, still in their sled, a wink at good-looking Hans' wily business sense, causing Anna to feel now like she could 'upchuck' as well at the overwhelming praise of that 'too wonderful' dirty rotten scoundrel.

"Yes! Let us get this exciting show on the road for your new bride, by all means! Beautiful Highnesses, Your Majesty, welcome to Touring Torvik's humble trading post stables, and massage therapy lounge, on the side. Please, take your choice of my finest steeds. I give them on loan as a favor to Your gracious Majesty. And I vill even throw in a free session for the blushing bride and her lady friends in my massage lounge." The portly man bows to the three shocked yet smiling females, who were wondering how all this came about in the few short minutes that the pair of men had left them.

Hans, playing the perfect gentleman to a tee, waves off the amatuer masseuse's offer politely, much to the women's teeth-clenched relief. Hans then immediately strides over to the silvery mare he had already made proper acquaintance of in admiring the Friesian's sleek and powerful good bone structure, as well as her great presence, as the satin horse carries herself with innate elegance under his expert hand.

He leads the white marble coated mare out to Sven's sleigh to canter before Elsa's eyes for the Queen's approved consent of his personal favorite choice.

"Her name is Iriserende—I believe it's rather fitting for this iridescent platinum beauty, don't you?" Hans praises the white horse's high steeping gait, well-chiseled beauty, pearlized sloping shoulders and feather-like, long silky alabaster hair left untrimmed deliberately on her lower legs for effect.

A reserved Elsa gives a slight nod into his beaming eyes and he brings the snowy statuesque, yet gentle and docile pale mare closer the sleigh for Elsa to softly pat the silvery tuft of hair on Iriserende's natural white forehead that signaled a purebred.

"She's marvelous." Elsa whispers as queen and mare's large feminine eyes meld in warm understanding to land expectantly full of anticipation up at the distinguished prince, who had been unabashedly fawning over them both.

"Okay, Torvik, since you don't have _**ANY**_ other reindeer…sorry, Sven. I guess we'll take on this little guy here." After having a walk around the stables, Kristoff decides on a Dolahest draft horse he had spoken up for earlier.

'Guddy' might not have been as big nor blustery as some of the other drafts in the trader's barn, standing at only fourteen or less hands high, but the Norwegian dole was known for good pulling power and agility. Kristoff opens the latch of his stall to untether Guddy and bring the well-muscled, short legged yet sturdy draft horse to meet first Sven. He snorts in shrugged authorization and Kristoff smiles enigmatically in response.

"Sven, this is Guddy. Guddy, Sven." He introduces the animals as if they were sentient, well-mannered people, and they acknowledge one another in their sniffing quadruped way.

A ungraceful Anna crawls out of the sled to sit directly on the new horse's surprised yet permissive back in her impetuous way.

"Anna. What on earth do you think you're doing?" Kristoff chuckles at his vivacious wife's lively spontaneity at fearlessly bareback riding their new gelding friend.

"Taking the horse you 'borrowed' for a test drive, of course. Papa always said that you should never purchase a horse without taking it for a run to see that it doesn't drop dead. Giddyap, Guddy!"

Though her father did not _exactly_ say all of that, Anna needed this little bit of liberating emotional escape as she gives Elsa and Hans a backward hostile glare right about now.

"S'pose that's a 'we'll probably take him' from my little wife. Okay, Torvik, let's get this milk-fed horse hitched up to that sleigh my friend-and I say the word 'friend' loosely-chose fir us." The way Kristoff distastefully said the word 'horse' too, (he preferred reindeer every time) was almost funny.

And he knew Prince Hans just got his own way before their journey was even starting already, and that awareness left a bad taste in his gullet too.

_Not gonna let **that **happen too often on this trip, pal. But with a covered sleigh for the girls in who knows what weather, I guess it worked out okay._

The good guy in Kristoff couldn't help but honestly afford the ivory horse a kind, consenting smile which Elsa proudly shares when dab-hand equine connoisseur Hans actually takes the reins (both metaphorically and physically speaking) and, unexpectedly, not afraid to get his royal hands dirty, rather as a trained groomsman would, goes down to his knees to lean and stretch his regal red-head beneath the new covered sleigh.

With swift purposeful actions, Hans attaches the bow and shaft top with the neck yoke and horse pull for hook up like a seasoned pro. He then agilely swings back up to his feet, balancing his weight to hang around the horse's pale neck and flash an awestruck Elsa a triumphant smile. For in this equestrian world, Prince Hans was truly in his favorite element now.

After a quick rub down and grooming with a wire horse brush that he had gallantly taken from the bucket of cold, soapy water, as if he's given many steeds a hands on curry all his life, Prince Hans of the Southern Isles expertly and deftly attaches the horse collar harness around the sedate beast's proud neck. He reemerges from behind the fully attached vehicle with a proud air.

An impressed, wide-eyed Kristoff gives Hans a '_hmphing' _nod. He had watched carefully that each yoke strap piece of tackle had been correctly positioned and the horse's reins weren't too slack. After the larger man concluded the spoiled prince'd done it all right, Kristoff slaps both horse and Prince on the back and Hans does all he can not to wince in pain at the friendly blow.

"Oh, sorry…forgot the back wound. I'll just go and fetch my little firecracker before she tires out old Guddy." Before he goes, Kristoff gives Hans a conciliatory cringing smile when he realizes his pain-causing error.

But he gets recompensed in a way, when Torvik intercepts him with an impatient palm extended in wait of an already discounted payment. Conservative Kristoff was always loathe to part with his hard-earned cash, but he had to give some regard to Hans for somehow managing to strike a pretty good deal with the money wise old trader. The rich boy surprised the young entrepreneur with his business savvy.

_What other tricks do you got up your sleeve?_

"Anna! Stop running around in circles! You're gonna wear him out before we even start!" Kristoff races around to halt the rash girl as she recklessly gallops the new borrowed steed around the small corral until Kristoff himself was dizzy to watch.

"Are you okay?" A sympathetic Rapunzel asks Hans as he comes up to them, feeling his stiffened back hurt in her compassionate eyes.

"I've been worse." Hans answers, sucking in a breath between his teeth as he shakes his smiling head to her concern.

"Oh! Come here!…please…" Calling out of nowhere, Elsa suddenly grows timid after she had reached out a delicate hand in almost royal command, for a pleasantly awed Hans to obey. His recovery from the blow was now complete in his astonishment.

"Your wish is my…" He begins with his newfound, reinstated flirtatious bravado, but when Elsa's pale thin hand can't help itself from reaching out to smooth back Hans' mussed hair from the industry of his hand at assembling the horse to be harnessed to the new sleigh, he finishes the cocky phrase with less tease and more breathlessness passing between their eyes.

"…command…"

The tentatively doe-eyed Queen Elsa had been thoroughly impressed with not only his able physical activity, but also Hans' diplomatic genius in negotiating on his feet by wrapping the businessman around his wily finger, and maybe a little bit more of her once frozen heart, too.

But their little tete-a-tete doesn't go unnoticed by Anna as she and Guddy, the 'Gudsbrandsdale' horse, come galloping back at fullspeed, almost running a thankfully quick stepping (_for him_) Hans down as she and horse rush right between the man and the sled.

"Yeah, he's a good boy." Grateful Guddy did exactly as directed, Anna whacks the sturdy shoulders of the palomino colored gelding with one hand and another on her huffing for breath when he finally catches up from chasing her around the yard, Kristoff's broad shoulder.

"Shall I do the honors again, Mr. Bjorgman?" Yet formal spoken, Princely Hans kindly offers to hitch the maize colored horse to the large sleigh as responsible, husband-like Kristoff reaches up to help his wife down from her sandy ride. But he has to scramble to grasp the nearly tumbling down Anna, as she, in her recklessness, almost clobbers him silly on the way down.

"Yeah, if you would…I've got my hands full…" Trusting the man's competency in this area, Kristoff chokes out in a high-registered voice, bending over as he fights for air again after little Anna's kicking feet knocked against him in certain, unmentionable places.

Oblivious Anna didn't realize her wild glomping had this effect, as Kristoff puts her squarely down on the ground and she skitters away from her temporarily disabled, doubled over guy.

"Okay, gang! Everybody outta Sven's sleigh!" Her head cleared by the brisk, afternoon ride and with a new plan of action in mind, plotting against that despicable redhead, a bossy Anna slaps her hands together to get the group's attention.

"Yay! I love new sleigh smell! This is so exciting! Oops, oh no! My precious carrot! Not another one to watch out for!" Olaf, in his own hapless way, bounces from Sven's sleigh with a spill. All three of his snow mound parts go flying in different directions though his head unfortunately lands right where a hungry Guddy can take a chew, to which Sven himself shockingly comes to the rescue. He purloins the forever-fresh orange veggie into his furry reindeer large wet mouth instead.

One amused glance and subsequent hug from Rapunzel and a pointy accusing finger from Pascal, the naughty, amused reindeer spits out the carrot to deposit Olaf's 'nose' back in place on his face, just as the rest of him is reassembled by a nonplussed Hans, who had discovered the magic snowman's midsection rolling beside him on the ground under the sleigh's tight bend horse pull he was industriously attaching together.

Walking across the way, Hans plunks the frosty friend's three parts back together with a bemused smirk.

"Thank you for that…Prince Hans." Swallowing her slumbered humiliation now melted in his warm eyes, Elsa says appreciatively, as yet again, her hands push back his one messy lock of misbehaving slicked back red hair. She had gathered enough courage to speak his name to his face at last.

"It's 'Just Hans,' Elsa!" Olaf calls out giddly as he hobbles past the dazed, staring at one another pair. Hans gentlemanly offers Elsa his warm hand to aid her graceful form as she descends from the sled.

"Oh, Olaf." Elsa giggles in shame of the tactless snowman, as Anna quickly scurries between them to whisk Elsa off to the new sleigh.

"He's right, you know. It is just 'Hans' from now on, if you please…Elsa." He was growing increasingly bolder from all their intimate exchanges as he gives her a meaningful look. It causes her heart to skip an extra beat at the mere sound of his velvety voice speaking her first name in such familiarity, without any title.

"I do please…_**Hans…"**_ Her breathy whisper carries on the wind back to him, over Anna's disapproving shoulder, as muttering some rude expletives at the oily slimy snake charmer_ no good blank-blank_, the younger princess pulls her sister away from the red foxy devil into the new covered horse-drawn sleigh.

All the afternoon's invigorating exercise, plus her lips uttering his name alone, added some extra testosterone to this never depleted male, as he relieves some of it by lovingly stroking Iriserende's feathery mane he had brushed out earlier when he too approaches the new sleigh.

All the while, Hans' bewitched eyes never cease to follow the Arendelle sovereign's trail into the vis-à-vis sleigh.

And Elsa's icy pale hair glimmers in the noon overhead sun as she peers out to steal a shy glance at him, starkly opposed to Anna's suspicious glare…


	18. Chapter 17 - Road Trip

We do not own "Frozen" nor any of its characters.

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act I**

**Chapter 17**

**"Road Trip"**

"So, Anna, how is your honeymoon going? I don't want to seem whiny after we had at least those first few thrilling days in Troll Valley and then at that dumb Oaken's barn…" After displaying a goofy smile at the vivid not-too-distant memories of being with his little new wife, Kristoff Bjorgman pauses here for a gulp of cold air to calm his stirring senses. "…But this second half part of our honeymoon has been a real let down for me, I'll tell ya that. How are you holding up?"

Some forty kilometers from Touring Torvik's Trading Post later, the big boned blonde turns from his mumbled mouthed meanderings as he's driving his sleigh to gaze upon his adorable life's chosen partner seated in her spot beside him on their "Royal Ice Harvester and Deliverer" vehicle's front bench—

—to have nothing but the cool, crisp, later afternoon's early dusk cold biting winds answer him back.

If he knew her train of thought well, his sweet little 'firecracker,' Princess Anna of Arendelle herself, was surely set ablaze with her inner powder keg of fiery combustion within the horse-drawn enclosed sleigh following close behind the experienced ice traveler and his trusty reindeer's sled.

And from the way Anna's cute face looked to be glowering at that double horse drawn sleigh's driver, Kristoff did know his Anna pretty darn well.

Especially after that rude way, there was no other word for it, she had bossed Elsa, Rapunzel, Pascal, Olaf and himself included, whilst the designated driver of the other sleigh, Hans Westergaard, received a literal cold shoulder, when some baskets filled with cold gherkins 'accidentally' spilled out onto the injured man's lap as Anna mightily hefted them onboard, refusing Hans' offers of aid to carry the luggage aboard for his new passengers.

Anna had arranged the seating on the new Vis-à-vis carriage after a few terse arguments from her queasy-stomached cousin who preferred the covered sleigh's more comfortable interior and dual-horse team smoother ride over a snorting, insulted Sven's open sleigh.

And when an acquiescing Elsa had too heartily agreed for an unhappy Anna's taste, especially when the shocked and offended youngest girl was informed that she wouldn't be the one to Captain the new sleigh that she and Kristoff had just purchased, it was just too much for our sweet firebrand.

Though Anna **_DID_** have some 'moderate' experience in driving his sled with Sven, Kristoff was not at all convinced in the wisdom of allowing his 'still in training', reckless little gal to be at the helm of the new, untested craft—not to mention an unmatched pair of yet unpredictable horses in Sven's sturdy, compensating for her driver's error place.

This new sleigh required someone more competent at equines to take the reins. He may not have liked the man, and he was nowhere close to trusting the former treasonous criminal, but fair and honest Kristoff had to rationalize the greater judiciousness of letting horse-proficient Prince Hans handle the craft rather than his accident-prone, haphazard, klutzy wife.

After all, though Kristoff was no chauvinist by any means, when it came down to it, to be able to master a brand new mismatched team of horses, harnessed together to a hopefully not rickety, modified trade-in sleigh, a man's firm hand **was **necessary.

By either luck or curse, this redheaded guy was all Kristoff had to rely on, at hand.

"Isn't having me sit here next to you almost the same as having Anna? I'd have loved to have been with you guys to visit the trolls and the valley. I love your troll family, Kristoff. And, oh, oh! I wish I was there! Oaken's barn sounded like fun, too, even if he is dumb." Olaf chants until Kristoff rolls his eyes at his snowy front seat passenger. The blonde was in frustration at Anna's decision to stick by her sister like glue, especially where that guy was concerned.

"I'm glad you weren't…" Kristoff mumbles under his breath, recalling with a pleased smile some intimate honeymoon affairs between himself and his energetic Anna that one curious snowman was not invited to witness.

"Well, Anna said you wouldn't be lonely if I stayed with you and Sven to keep you company, while the three girls and Pascal would rather be up there with JustHans on his sleigh. So here I am! What do you want to chat about next, Kristoff? Elsa's been training me to be a good listener as well as a humorous conversationalist. But I can sing if you like! I love to sing, especially 'In Summer!'" His dark charcoal eyes gaze about the falling dusk as he composes his new song to an old familiar tune.

"I feel the warm summer breeze,  
See bunnies and hares hop dandelion leaves  
White throated dippers fly past the birds and the bees  
In summer!" _Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba!_

The tactless Olaf begins to warble out rather too loudly for Kristoff's now earshattered taste.

Carried on the wind from ahead, to hear the raised volume of the happy snowman's new summer serenade to the moving landscape all around him, the two females—one older and one younger, onboard the Vis-à-vis sleigh who knew their share of the 'birds and the bees' look to the third young woman, aged between the formerly mentioned experienced married women, who did not.

Elsa was now seated across from Anna and Rapunzel in this state-of-the-art vehicle with the comfortable plush interior, in wide roomy three passenger benches that faced one another.

The unlikely driver was raised higher at his outdoor post at the helm in the forward section of the sleigh, keeping his eyes on the road most of the time during the uncomfortable silent kilometers. Every now and then, though, Hans Westergaard's glance would steal back to gaze upon the back of the head of the platinum blonde almost longingly.

Confronted before with the perplexing reality of keeping her sweet, innocent, elder sister at a safe arm's distance away from that devious scoundrel, 'take charge' Anna conceded to both men's judgement that Elsa and Rapunzel—the two less outdoorsy types than herself—would be better off in the smoother riding, covered from the elements sleigh.

After Kristoff had agreed it _was_ for the best, Anna had given in to the perspicacity of their argument. **_She_** would just have to personally join them in the new sleigh, as 'watcher on the wall' per se, to satisfy her own suspicion as to Mr. Westergaard's questionable honor and dependability.

So once a few food baskets and immediate necessities were distributed out to the new sleigh's ample roominess, Anna abandoned her new husband to unexpectedly jump onboard the new sleigh, just the moment before Hans, after an earnest conversation with Kristoff on travel length and route choices, had climbed back up to his driver's seat.

Upon swiveling around with a coy smile to welcome the two lovely young ladies and Pascal, who would be his new 'shipmates' on this landlocked journey, Hans disappointed grin was instead greeted by the twisted lip smirk of the unscheduled third female passenger, whose opinion of him, was, by far, less favorable.

_And understandably so. Perhaps this journey is the opportunity for me to make amends with Princess Anna and maybe, also get a chance to prove myself unpretentious in her sister's eyes…_

Hans' eyes smile as he envisions the pretty face of Queen Elsa in his head, glowing her indescribable shine back at him, bringing a verse to his repentant mind.

_'But if we walk in the light as He is the light, when we have fellowship with one another, the blood of Jesus Christ, the Son, cleanses us from all sin.'_

Though a dubious Anna's stern standoffish warning to 'back off' turns his expression to a doleful resigned smile, he comforts himself with the prayer of hope springing eternal nonetheless.

"'Knock and the door shall be opened unto you'?" Hans whispers aloud to the horses ahead as he gently, yet firmly, holds the unbalanced reins as would a true, professional driver. He instinctively acknowledged each of the two vastly different horses at his command. Albino Fresian Iriserende's sleek elegant trot required a loose rein in his left hand, while he had to hold tautly Guddy (_fine name for a creature of this **noble** line_), the draft horse Dolahest gelding who was more accustomed to utilizing his shorter body's muscular pulling power as a pack horse for agriculture purposes.

But Prince Hans had a deft hand for manipulating any horse, even more than he did for humans. Soon, the mismatched equestrian pair were well under control after a few kilometers under the enthusiast horseman's able hands.

Losing the Bibical quote's inner meaning with a snide sneering: "What's with this guy and **doors** anyway?! Does he have a thing with doors?" Anna mockingly murmurs just loudly enough for Hans to hear up front. Her pent up ire rises with each kilometer of watching Elsa blush under each of Hans' stolen glances back at her.

That was the foremost reason why Anna had switched Rapunzel and her sister's seats. Anna believed that Elsa's back to the front would garner less unwanted eye contact.

"Olaf is correct to extol the splendors of your beautiful country's summer season." Leaning down to speak with the compliment meant chiefly for Elsa's ears, Hans gazes around the fast-paced sleigh with enlarged, clear eyes. The Danish prince had been in studied awe of the Norwegian stunning sunset cast over the glimmering waters of the fjord peppered lands to the west, the lush green fields to the south, and the rolling snow capped mountains looming in the north and east—where they were headed, en route to Trondheim.

"I'd been on that ship so long, I had almost forgotten how magnificent a countryside vista could be." A few quiet kilometers later, Hans calls back, once again trying to break the ice.

"Why, thank you. I believe it is splendid countryside." Elsa comes out of her shell to cordially respond, as a ruler proud of her nation. A protective Anna subsequently kicks her sister's feet with her own, with a conspicuous shaking head and look of reprimand to _'not speak to him'_ back at her.

"That's right! This beautiful place is a far cry from that stuffy galley you had to be crammed in—working your poor fingers to the bone, cooking and cleaning that ship and help rig it, too! All for that mean old patch-eyed pirate." An observant Rapunzel saves the conversation from that uncomfortable pace as she projects her voice forward so Hans could hear up in the driver's seat. The exchange with her new brother-in-law was a welcome change to take her mind off her worries for a bit.

"If accomplished with an uncomplaining heart, there is pleasure to be found in even the most mundane, unsavory tasks if we keep His presence close in times of trouble." Hans answers Rapunzel's kind eyes with a pair of his own.

"And it sure helps, too, if you find the right companion to share it beside you. I still can't imagine, you, of all people, doing the washing up and chopping up vegetables and peeling potatoes like a scullery maid in that dark little kitchen, Elsa!" With an intimating smile and nudging elbow to her rib, Rapunzel tries to add to their chat her prim and proper cousin. "I wish I could've been there to see you do it all." She squeezes Elsa's hands.

"Yes, she was quite invaluable and amazing in the galley. I never did get the chance to tell you how impressed I was at how quickly you picked up scalloping and sautéing techniques." Hans not only verbally praises Elsa's skills with his gracious words, but he also reaches an ambidextrous arm back to lightly touch her long length of braided silken hair with pride.

After allowing herself a close-eyed split second reverie of pure bliss at his tender touch, reserved and timid Elsa suddenly remembers herself and that they had an audience. She stiffens in her seat, with her back to his sweetly yearning hand. She becomes rigidly straight and tense, before peeking up to look very, very guiltily into Anna's boiling, fuming eyes, after the younger more experienced in these matters girl puts what she thinks is two and two together.

Elsa tries to imagine how incriminating Rapunzel's teasing words from before must've sounded to her sister's suspicious ear.

"**HEY! HANDS OFF THE BRAID, FANCY MAN!"** Anna jumps up from her laid back position, in her previous attempt to appear civilly disinterested in anything **_that_** man had to say about the weather and landscapes and such.

But when her eyes catch sight of this obvious display in the corner of her peripheral vision, (which nearly counted as the back of her head as previously warned) the feisty girl reacts by instantly slapping his forearm away from so familiarly touching Elsa's tresses, as Hans pulls back in contrite self-reproach.

"Anna! Don't freak out!" Rapunzel berates the youngest member of their team with a fierce whisper.

"And where were you, Cousin, when that louse was being all 'impressed and amazed' with Elsa! **ALONE** in that dark galley with him—all those days?! And nights, too, I suppose!" Spitting nickels, in her own pointed whisper at Rapunzel, with fury in her accusing eyes that were growing smaller and more irritated with each quickly passing kilometer the sleigh was traveling.

"Anna! Such a thing! Please stop being so rude!" A distressed Elsa tries to quietly quell her sister's anger and pulls both their heads closer to the center of the sleigh for more privacy. She begs her offensive sibling to lower her lashing out, unctuous tone, directed at the gentleman above them.

"Who's being rude?!" A _hmphing_, self-righteous Anna shrugs in defiance as she wraps a fiercely possessive, shielding arm around Elsa's unsettled head.

"Uhh…you are. Hans probably heard everything you said." Rapunzel retorts close into Anna's red ear in a reprimanding whisper like an older sibling, knowing Hans' own ears must be burning from all the slander.

The compassionate female felt the need to defend her lifeboat mate, who just happened to also be Eugene's little brother.

_No, I can't think about __Eugene__ right now…_

Rapunzel's tummy gets nauseated again from all the upset, despite the more stable ride. She sits back in her seat, breathing hard as she can't halt the flood of her husband's many handsome faces flowing through her brain.

"Well, **I don't care** if he—" In full blown combustion, a twisted lip faced Anna begins to shout out in a noisy spout of rebellious defiance, upon finding out that her as pure as snow big sister _may_ have been tainted by that feigning to be a gentleman cad on that blasted boat ride.

But Rapunzel snaps out of her unbalanced, bilious state enough to throw a quick palm to the gutsy girl's fire-breathing mouth.

"Anna! Hush!" The cautioning brunette shakes her bristling cousin's trembling with rage shoulders. "Why do you keep trying to split them apart now that they've found each other again?" She hisses in a whisper soft enough so that Elsa couldn't overhear.

"Anna, please try to understand! He's been so kind to us!" Elsa finally finds her voice enough to plead, her customary high strains at a low rumble as she tries to contain her own surging confused emotions puzzling over this perhaps ill-fated relationship with the man Anna still obviously despised.

_So how could I ever entertain the thought of…even considering that I might be… in love with him?_

_What do I even know of love? I know nothing of its mysteries beyond the fact that my sister's love means more to me than any…perchance ephemeral…passing pounding of my fool heart?_

Queen Elsa of Arendelle's self tormented childhood, despite having the advantage of loving, caring parents who only wished to help their daughter, was spent in such fear and doubt that she could ever live a normal happy life. It made her never certain of the emotions she always kept her distance from to ever thaw her frozen heart fully, until recently.

These past two years with her dearest friend—the other half of her soul—her beloved sister, Anna, gave Elsa the certainty that if her heart was to continue to beat, it would be only with the encouragement of Anna's warmth right at her side.

The Lord God above blessed her with a gift—that little sister who had chosen to sacrifice her own life, to save another she loved far more.

_Me._

_Oh, Anna, what do I do now? Allowing myself emotions is so new to me. I'm not even certain what I feel. I only know I don't want to lose what we've got now—help me, please!_

To look into her sister's usually happy eyes, now glaring back at her, Elsa agonizes the emotional options within her spinning mind.

Silently calling out for Anna to rescue her again, every confused upset thought begins to form ice crystals across Elsa's entire body, right down to her trembling fingers. She squeezes them tightly together, wringing her hands, trying to stop the dangerous frosted outcome from unfurling.

But right now, with a crazed-eyed Anna turning her back to Elsa stubbornly, perturbed that she could fall for this…this…_charmer'_s sly tricks as well, despite being warned off, the sun sinks low beneath the horizon and the cool night's moon emerges with its empty, vacuumed absence of warmth.

A clammy and cold Elsa couldn't find her way out of the ice storm spiraling around her petrified heart as the icy thought solidifies of losing the love of her adored sister in exchange for the dream of a forbidden love with…

Someone she knew she could never have.

"Amazing grace, how sweet the sound  
That saved a wretch like me…"

The beautiful ethereal voice of a man who was once a high ranged tenor choir boy in his youth chooses this serendipitous moment to bridge the tense, argumentative gap between sisters in the best way he knew how to reach out and calm a disturbed heart with the soulful lyrics written by a fellow seaman named John Newton who had found his way through the darkness to the Light, some hundred years ago, that touched Hans' own broken spirit in the moment he needed it in more ways than the lonely little rich prince could've imagined.

"…I once was lost and now I'm found  
'Twas blind, but now I see."

Each crystal clear word was glorified by his soft, yet strong velvety timbre in perfect pitch that breaks through the cooling down dusky darkness over the silent, empty road as it also pierces into the pounding cold heart of the pale frightened woman seated only a few feet behind him. His songful golden strains warmed her irresolute heart until the fearful chill inside her passes.

But the effect of his intended soothing voice also succeeded in calming Anna, as both anxious girls listen to the holy song's sweet lyrics, and Anna's face pauses in its anger to turn back around and gaze up towards them.

"'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear  
And grace my fears relieved  
How precious did that grace appear  
That hour I first believed."

Gently finishing the perfectly performed melody, so close to his own heart, Prince Hans had no idea how Providential his chosen hymn was for bringing peace between the two siblings when he glances back from the helm of the Vis-à-vis he was driving, to be gratified to see the now tearful sisters in a fervently hugged embrace.

Tears of regret for their silly argument, once again caused by this same blighted man—though now in reverse—was streaming down both their cheeks.

"Please forgive me…" and "I'm so sorry!" are simultaneously spoken in each sister's weeping eyes now merging into smiles as they give each other another hug and sisterly kiss.

Within a precious melody, all was forgiven between these closest of sisters.

"Wow…there really is magic in a song." Sensing the healing power of the touching tune distinctly, Rapunzel comments lowly with a relieved exhale.

She, an only child locked away in a tower all her young sheltered life, had read about them, but never had experienced a sibling fight up close before. The multi-coloring Pascal finally settles down amidst the tense covered sleigh's passenger car to a relaxed, contented medium cadet blue, after the pair had witnessed this truly tenderly heartwarming scene of renewed sisterly affection.

Just then, the quickly timed, trotting horse-drawn sleigh comes to a slowed halt.

"Whoa, Iriserend. Whoa, Guddy." Hans' melodious voice once again soothes the abruptly stopped horses until they come to a standstill. "Is everyone back there all right?" He calls into the covered sleigh, meeting four pairs of nodding, curious eyes with his compassionate ones before he gallantly leaps down from the sleigh's driver's seat to meet up with Kristoff, who was ambling towards him partway.

The girls watch the two handsome men converse in the dark night, their silhouettes illuminated only by the parted clouds over the full moon.

"You really think he's changed, Elsa?" After a few moments of silently observing, whilst the two sisters were still holding each others' hands, Anna sucks in a deep breath of air before she ventures to ask the soul searching question.

All eyes that were fixed upon the serious discussion between the tall men, who appeared to be assessing the area as they pointed hands and arms in one direction or another, now turn to look at Elsa for her thoughtfully considered answer.

"On this journey—I know the words sound crazy—but I feel I've glimpsed his soul, Anna. I…trust him." Elsa replies honestly, recalling each one of the genuine soulful encounters she had had thus far with the earnestly reformed Prince. She looks at her sister with her open heart on her sleeve.

"His…soul? I didn't know he even had one." In a grumbling, still somewhat cagey way, Anna murmurs under her breath. But the truce struck between them still carried water within Elsa's wells of pleading eyes for understanding. That was reason enough now for her singularly concerned and caring Anna to relent the majority of her anger with a tender smile, trying to see things from her dearest friend's point of view.

"Well, I trust **_you,_** Elsa. And…I'll really try this time. For you, Elsie." Anna embraces her big sis in an even bigger bear hug, squeezing her tight. "But I'll still be watching with eyes in the back of my head! And if he ever hurts you—if he ever even just looks at you wrong, I won't promise not to snap his skinny butt in half like a twig!" Anna reaches a hand out the sleigh to reach a bowing down low tree branch, which she cracks in two between her spirited fingers demonstrative easily.

"He **is** too skinny." Rapunzel chuckles to lighten the mood as audience to the now turned lively exchange between the girls.

"Rapunzel!" Elsa is surprised at this gossipy verbal attack that was uncalled for upon the royal prince.

"Worse than a little girl!" Anna chortles wickedly at her archenemy's slight, bony physicality on parade for all the world to see this morning, as compared to her big, beefy, manly brute of a Kristoff.

"Anna! He is not!" Elsa strangely feels secure enough to defend him with her own knowledge of Hans Westergaard's _very_ in-shape body.

"Well, I wouldn't go that far—from what I've seen close up!" Rapunzel chides Anna's release valve of ridicule of the understandably somewhat emaciated to all sinew and bone young man who had been worked for years as a slave on that wicked pirate ship. "Although, he _could_ use some fattening up to be more manly." Her eyes were more used to feasting on a certain man's more well-endowed upper body muscle structure. _My __Eugene__ has got **some** **gorgeous** ripped pecs, not to mention his **divine **picturesque obliques…Sigh..._

"No! He's absolutely perfectly masculine!" A mortified Elsa cries out shrilly, disbelieving, after their near emotional breakdown earlier, that her two female companions were so debasing such a perfect specimen of a man in this crude and appalling manner, who was due some decent respect as a member of royalty, when—

"I am glad to see you three ladies in a more jovial, equable mood. It does a man a world of good to be greeted by such lovely, glowing faces full of mirth." Hans innocently comments as he returns by agilely slinging his long, thin legs and extremely tight behind down seamlessly to sit on his perch at the covered sleigh's helm before them.

This causes two of the three 'lovely' ladies to break out in titters of giggles.

Hans gives a quizzical look as he turns around to the females whose eyes were all on him.

"And who, might I ask, Queen Elsa, if I may be so bold, is '_perfectly masculine?_' That is, if I may be privy to highly sensitive, feminine conversation details." Hans can't help himself from inquiring, with a sneaking suspicion, as to who they were speaking of. He gives a side glance directly at Elsa's deer-in-the-headlights, guilty doe-eyes as he idly watches Kristoff's sleigh veer Sven off the well-beaten gravelly road, to turn down a side path. A wildly waving back at them Olaf nearly tumbles off the front seat when able-bodied Kristoff's quick reflexes catch the plummeting snowman from danger.

Elsa's habit of wringing hands while she quickly thought up a suitable response was unnecessary, for Anna found her pipes first.

"Guddy!" The orange haired girl was almost hysterical with giddy laughter at her own inside joke. The other two girls soon join in the laughter of her fibbing boldness, as she recklessly scurries up to the sleigh's front beside a surprised Hans to lean over and pat the chestnut Dole's rump playfully.

The action of which causes the shocked, plodding draft horse to oddly throw his befuddled head back, making the skittish ivory mare next to him panic and back up, to rear on her hind legs. Iriserende breaks into a mad gallop while the Dolahest gelding strapped to her side as a team, does his best to keep up or be trampled by the well-chiseled, muscular Fresian breed.

"Whoa, girl! Slow down! Please! Iriserend! Whoa!"

"Princess Anna, would you-?" An anxious though ever-polite Prince Hans turns to the stunned, wide-eyed Anna, whose own rump had been plunked down on the driver's seat next to him with the thrust back action versus reaction of the bolting horses after she had startled Guddy, and subsequently, Iriserende.

With a non-judgmental, sweet, trusting smile, Hans hands Anna the reins. He then utilizes all of his_ 'too thin'_ muscles in fluid movements to courageously balance and climb out upon the disoriented ebony horse's back, even as the horse was frantically galloping at a wild pounding hooved pace.

In vastly differing degrees of delight, respect and awe, the three wide-eyed girls watch how Hans valiantly leans his entire limber frame down to embrace the panting mare's pallid neck as if she were a frightened lady in need of a tender embrace.

Soon, the normally gentle and docile horse finds her center within the brave man's steady heartbeat and gentle whispers against her ear. Iriserende slows down to match Guddy's powerful, yet stabilized sturdy pace again.

When the out of control double horse-drawn sleigh finally comes to a complete stop, Anna needed all the restraint of her promise to Elsa not to use the reins at her disposal to whip Hans Westergaard's taut backside in punishment.

But somehow, after all his heroics, she didn't quite have the heart to do it anymore.

_Not quite._

Principally perhaps, because as they stop near a knoll with a stream, Anna was close enough to be able to just about hear the former villain still clinging to the now tranquil mare's neck, humming low an age-old Scottish tune intended to calm and soothe any feminine frayed nerves.

"Greensleeves was my heart of gold and who but my lady Greensleeves…" Hans looked just like a princely knight in shining armor serenading his lady love.

**_Shake shake shake_**

"Oooh! Why does that guy still have to be such a show-off?!" Her head shakes in full denial. Anna's only semi-impressed thoughts turn sour upon watching an obviously awestruck Elsa immediately dash out of the stopped sleigh to rush to both heroic man and mare. The terrified young queen needed to see that both finely well-muscled creatures were both in one piece yet.

And Elsa is prayerfully grateful to be granted his small smile peeking up as she pets Iriserende's heaving chest in comfort.

"**What the hell are you playing at, pal**?!" Just then, Kristoff, looking the panicked pungent reindeer king he was, practically standing, riding high upon the sleigh pulled by a full speed Sven's huffing and puffing over-raced back, comes bounding and thundering around the tree-lined glen's knoll like a wild raging bear.

The by now hot blooded blonde leaps down from his own sleigh to vehemently stomp towards the other thought gone rogue sleigh where a recovering Hans was just about to alight from the sanguine horse's back. The slim gentleman lands directly on his two able feet as he dismounts before more than a few admiring eyes to stand mere inches before a seething and angry Kristoff.

"Believe me when I say, sir, I was **not** playing. It was quite…inexplicable as to what frightened the horses. However, there were more than a few mysteriously snapped branches in the darkness that could have set Iriserende off on her first day's outing." Hans particularly gives a red-faced Anna, with the reins still clutched tightly in her tensed hands onboard the sleigh's driver's seat, a hardly noticeable raised brow. He naturally assumed the guilty girl would not wish to be called out to look so foolish as to have caused this unnecessary bout with danger before her worried husband's anxious eyes.

Anna's big blue-green eyes just stare back down at him. Her gaze then vacillates between the two mens' faceoff that she knew herself to be catalyst of.

"Like these?" Hopping up and down on his sleigh, a readily descriptive Olaf shakes about his two own arms in physical demonstration of said 'branches'.

"Twigs? How skittish is that pretty pony you chose?" Putting his fists away, Kristoff scoffs at the mere thought of the silly prancing horse being too touchy out on the open road as he supposed.

He gives a too agreeably smiling Hans an incredulous look, doubting the man's vaulted horsemanship for the first time.

"I _imagine_ I saw something dark and furry run across the path in between her hooves just moments before. Didn't you, Elsa? I thought I heard you say so." Rapunzel, her years of living close beside a natural born fibber of a thief for a husband, gives her stiff cousin an 'in' to help Hans out, hoping to mildly add some credibility to the poor, heroic man's cover story to save Anna's face before her guy.

"What was it?! What was it?! What was it?! A bunny? A dwarf? Or maybe a smew? Don't you love saying that word, 'smew?' He must be a cute, widdle ducky-wucky."

"Well, I…" Ignoring Olaf's inane ranting of ducks crossing the road, Elsa's voluminous eyes lock with Iriserende's similarly large ones as both were recipients of that man's soothing song this night to calm their ungovernable souls, before she clears her throat to come to her little sister's aid as well. "I did think I saw…a fox out there. Yes, it certainly was, a **red** fox." Elsa is carefully sure to speak the truth that would always _set one free_, according to the Good Book, although she was certain that the Ten Commandments were creaking on their stone tablets at her slightly stretched truth and mischievous glint in her eye.

However, from her honest and awestruck point of view, there was a boldly daring and dauntless red 'fox' of sorts out there in the dusky darkness playing with the horses. Elsa's big blues now lock with Hans' willing, comprehending greens with meaning. From the bemused smirk on his lips and questioning quirk of his noble brow upon her, Hans caught her drift entirely.

"Well, I guess that would do it to any beast—even ones familiar with these dark paths. Those wily foxes spring out of nowhere sometimes, as if they're possessed. Good thing you managed to calm the horse before she injured herself or Guddy, or even worse, crashed the sleigh. Good teamwork there, Anna. I'm proud of you. Looks like your sleigh driving training **has **paid off." Kristoff notes how his little wife was still doggedly clinging with tight fists to the reins clenched in her astonished fingers. Her mind was stunned at how Hans' little manipulative tale, meant to chivalrously cover a lady for honor's sake, snowballed until she came out smelling like a rose—and looking like a hero, rather than a witless troublemaker.

"Yeah! Teamwork! My driving skills and Hans' fearless horse…play…make a great combination." Her intriguing choice of combined terms makes the red-haired man, busy at work unhitching his horse, bring a similarly colored toned blush to his cheeks. Hans lets out a little embarrassed cough to match his abashed grin, which a shy-eyed Elsa yet again finds so alluring in this so-called worldly prince.

Anna herself couldn't believe the congratulatory words complimenting that guy were actually coming from her **own** mouth! But all the heroic daring-do and excitement was wearing at her resolve to hate Hans Westergaard forever as his gentle, trustworthy smile replays in her dizzy head.

_Is that the same one you gave Elsa that made her trust you so much?_

_ Maybe he's for real this time…I don't know!_

Anna deliriously ponders in some far reaches of her spinning mind as she half dives, half stumbles off the end of the secondary sleigh's driver's helm right into Kristoff's timely, strong arms.

"I gotcha, Baby." He croons in her ear as he scoops up his crazy trust exercising, overwrought with excitement wife to drape her compliant limp body in his amply muscular arms over Sven's welcome and sturdy back.

As Kristoff finishes unhitching Sven from the sleigh, his quick, experienced outdoorsman scan told him this would be a pretty good spot to set up camp, after all.

"Boy, Kristoff, being heroic, doing harrowing death defying sleigh riding stunts sure makes a girl sleepy." Anna yawns and mumbles. After a long day on the open road, starting with the early morning's seaside discoveries, and feeling it her sisterly duty to stand guard as sentinel over poor, delusional Elsa all the day long—she was plain tired.

"I know. You just take a little nap on Sven while he's enjoying a long drink at that stream over there. I'll fix everything here up. Go on, old buddy." Slapping Sven's grey rump affectionately, Kristoff doesn't even have to finish his final thought of "_make sure Anna doesn't slide off_." He already knew that trusty Sven understood his mind completely, as he watches his big, best friend reindeer and little best wife woman—both equally exhausted, amble over to the quiet stream's edge.

"Let's get these sleighs fixed up to bed the women." The male in Kristoff was now grateful for the choice of the covered sleigh as he looks up with a frown at the iffy cloud cover crossing the full moon that might yield a summer night rain shower on their traveling 'circus.'

But he wasn't too worried now that the two skinny little gals and the snowman would be able to safely stretch out under the sleigh's canvas roof, should the droplets choose to fall. So he tosses a few blankets and the female clothing bag into the emptied out Vis-à-vis to be ready for the females to all bunk out together for the night.

"You up for first or second shift?" Kristoff, after seeing to a tired out Sven with feed and deciding on a tree covered spot for his bedding, presumptively asks the older than he young man, almost ready to accept Hans now as a partner into this dangerous jaunt into the unknown, after a full day's travel proved that the 'spoiled' prince's true horse sense was unfeigned and worthy of note.

"There's too much excitement to be found out here in your glorious countryside for me to retire just yet. I'll gladly take the first shift, if it so pleases you, Mr. Bjorgman." Prince Hans gracious upperclass aristocratic tone still applied, even as he was kneeling at the muddy stream bank. He asserted himself to lower and scoop up two full large pails of water to carry back to their double sleigh camp area beneath that large birch tree they had both parked under.

"And where are you going with those? Never mind—I don't need to know. We'll start out again at daybreak. Come wake me up in four hours." Only half interested, a tuckered out Kristoff smirks as he lies out on the green grass to lean against an already slumbering Sven's furry body that Anna was still snoring loudly upon the back of the comfortable reindeer.

Kristoff wouldn't say that he'd had a tougher day than he was generally accustomed to. But from tending animals and chopping wood in the wee hours of the morning before dawn, then planning wracked brain best routes and setting out on the open road with this chaotic adventure full of snowmen, lizards and females—not to mention, criminals—the hardworking ice harvester was pretty drained.

But everything was all right, because Anna was right there with him—right at his arm's reach.

"…Yup, it pleases me."

Before Hans could avert his eyes when he discreetly finishes making sure Iriserende and Guddy were satisfied in drinking their fill of water, Kristoff's hungry arms do indeed reach out and capture his slumbering beauty, with his large yet tight muscled body totally covering hers like a cuddly bear—making any other blanket over Anna unnecessary.

An embarrassed and red-faced Hans makes his courteous exit as he graciously leaves the pair to their own open air evening's amusements.

He begins to make his quiet rounds through the clouded moon's dark night, back to the double sleigh camp where he brings one pail of water he had drawn from the clear stream to sit beside the covered sleigh, for the women, should they require any feminine ablutions before morning.

He purposely makes soft, clanging noises with the pail's dipper, so as not to frighten the pair of young women inside whom the young man outside could vividly imagine were getting ready for sleep. One would lay across each plush bench amidst the bevy of blanketing to ward off any cool chill, even on a summer night such as this was.

"I bid you 'good evening', ladies. Here is some fresh water for you. If you require anything else, please don't hesitate to call on me. I will be close by all night, so have no fear, and sleep securely." Hans announces to the thin air without glancing into the coach, for propriety's sake.

"Hey! Wait, Hans! Here's a blanket for you, if it gets too cold out there." Rapunzel sticks her neck out of the sleigh to offer the extra woolen covering to their dutiful guard.

"No, thank you, my lady. I'll be fine. Caring for the horses should help warm me up. Besides, the cold never bothered me anyway." He says with a tad of conceit of his own well regulated heat factor.

"Oo-kay…well, good night, Hans." Rapunzel says kindly, pulling the blanket back in with a smile.

"Good night, Princess." He responds smoothly.

Hans thinks to himself of all those cold early spring and late autumn adventures upon his beloved steed, Sitron's firm, tan blonde back, glinting gold in the moonlight. He had loved to pet, and curry and brush, until every horse hair on Sitron's muscular hide gleamed.

But another blonde mane, glimmering of gold in the scarce moonlight, peers her head from the sleigh, and captures his attention, mesmerizing him.

Hans pauses in mid-stride to bow his head to her respectfully.

The bare-shouldered queen bestows upon him a timid little approving nod and shy smile 'goodnight' all her own, which sends his uncertain-of-her-true-emotion-for-him heart soaring as high as the whooper swan that crosses the clearing moonscape sky towards the Vinje Fjorden's mouth it lived upon, not so far away.

Humming a contented tune now that Elsa had acknowledged him, Hans turns to go back to work for his team of unhitched horses, asking the serene moon if second chances were even possible for a man like him.

"He~ey! Wait up, Just Hans!" A strangely uncanny voice breaks through the still of the night, over to Hans. "I'm not sleepy at all. Can I help you groom the horses? I bet I'll be good at it, if you teach me how. Then, I'll be as good as you—good at sword fighting and singing, and dancing, and saving damsels in distress from out-of-control sleighs." After hopping down from the Vis-à-vis, a wide-eyed, sweetly pleading Olaf waddles alongside the long-limbed man who was genuinely trying to focus in all sanity to listen to the babbling snow creature.

But Hans was becoming more thoroughly ensconced in all things magical created at Queen Elsa's delicate, exquisite hands.

"I can imagine you will be, Olaf." Hans was not as condescending as he was bemused.

"Well, maybe not the sword fighting. I don't think I'd be too good at that. Mostly because I'm a peace loving snowman who abhors violence of any kind. Besides, splattered blood doesn't go well with my white snow. So I wouldn't like running somebody through with my sword at all. Woo! Ick! Bloody snow! Ooh! Bad!"

Olaf was quite animated in his explanation as he and Hans arrive where the horses were tethered to a thick trunked oak tree and Hans immediately begins to curry Iriserende.

"Uhn, uhn, uhn, ladies first, Guddy! Wait your turn, please!" Olaf chides the Dole Gudbrandsdal as the shorter ruddy brown steed nudges Hans' natural-born horseman's elbow for attention.

Hans fondly finishes both horses' currying, giving a keen Olaf some pointer tips as he feeds and cares for the steeds as if they were cherished friends, rather than new acquaintances, leaving Olaf chuckling with glee at each brush stroke.

"Stop it, Guddy." Olaf berates as the chestnut horse tries to take the obligatory nibble at his carrot nose.

"Would you like to try to brush out the plumes on Iriserende's lower legs? The effect is lovely when long and silky, but after a long day's drive, her silvery feathery fetlocks do tend to tangle. Besides, they're more at your comfort level." Hans kneels down to assess the strands of hair beneath the pale horse's knees and hocks. "They're called 'fetlocks' and they require a proper steadfast currying. Do you think you're 'snowman' enough to do it, Olaf?" Hans affably quips, he quite warming up to the cool little fellow.

"Are you kidding?!" Olaf was proudly in seventh heaven as he is trusted to do some **real** work at last. "Aye, aye, Admiral!" Olaf salutes in all seriousness at his learned lifeboat commander. For JustHans was patient and good enough to impart the knowledge most other men would not waste upon a snowman.

"Admiral? I'm afraid to disappoint you, my good snowman. But this sorry excuse for a prince never made it beyond the rank of First Lieutenant." With a regretful smile etched on his pretty features, and though Hans was an excellent officer in the Danish navy, as thirteenth in line, every one of his older brothers demanded to be of higher rank. So no promotions were ever to be in his future there—no matter how accomplished or heroic Master Hans Westergaard rose to be. "I'll never be worthy enough to be in the navy again." He says wistfully, full of regret that his unseemly crimes against this beautiful country made him be disowned in his own, too.

And that meant his officer's rank in the Royal Navy was stripped as well. _I deserved that, too…_

"Well, I think you would make a grand Admiral, Just Hans!"

"Why, thank you, my little friend. You probably are the only one to ever think so." Hans responds with an amused and slightly embarrassed smile.

"From what you were telling Cousin Rapunzel when we were in the lifeboat—of your sea voyages, and how good you are at cartography, navigation, geography and other skills, you sure sound sea worthy! After all, you got us across the sea to find Elsa! So, you'll have my vote. That is, if I was classed as a citizen and allowed to vote. Hey! You wanna sing a song about being an Admiral at sea instead? I know a real zinger!" Olaf starts humming to the horses whose tails were swaying in time with his happy tune.

Using this auspicious moment to take a walk around the perimeter, Hans' keen, sharp senses were never far from overlooking the pair of parked sleighs underneath the birch tree, where the emerging moon seemed to favor shining its brightest rays upon the little solitary group of travelers.

Hans turns his watchful eye until it rests upon a dutifully alert Pascal, who was at his post perched upon the canvas roof in midnight blue colored shades.

Though the coast was clear, both the chameleon and the tactician in Hans Westergaard were inexplicably uneasy tonight.

Hans instinctively felt something was amiss in the all too still atmosphere as the vigilant guard deftly produces a hidden dagger from its secreted place in the side of his tall black boot, as swift as the wind. He adeptly holds the weapon in a defensive stance, with the all too familiar glance of cold steel reflecting his determined eyes in its blade.

For in quiet surveillance of the five human, plus five animal (and/or snowman) friend adventurers who were currently at rest in this primarily unpopulated dark Midwest Norwegian plain, in the still of the moonlight, three mysterious figures silently move in the ominous shadows with something eerily dangerous shimmering within their darkened concealed grip…


	19. Chapter 18 - A Horse by Any Other Name

We do not own "Frozen" nor any of its characters.

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act I**

**Chapter 18**

**"A Horse By Any Other Name"**

But the dawn's morning sun begins to rise nonetheless after the moon relinquishes its watch over the uninterrupted night.

Dagger yet in hand as it had remained the entire restless night, Prince Hans stirs from his concealed vantage point close beside the parked Vis-à-vis sleigh, once an eagle-eyed scan of the tree-lined open plain is satisfied.

Was it tensed nerves on this clouded moonlit night? Or was it a biting conscience pricking its icy fingers into his heart again?

Hans could not tell all through this constantly guarded blackness where every one of his keen senses were wide awake and prepared for any incoming enigmatic danger - that never came.

_'He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.' (Psalm 91:4) _

_Praise be to the Lord, my God._

With that early, early morning prayer spoken on silent lips, Hans gazes beyond the sky whose deep purple Heavens have now turned lighter azure blue. After one more reassuring swift trek around the camp's perimeter to the quiet tree line, the tireless man sets about a new duty. God's blessed sunlight had lifted away any imaginary shadows from the fields, if not from his heart. as Hans Westergaard greets the coming sunrise of the day.

* * *

_And she's taking me back to the skies…Ah..Ahh…_

_**Chirp chirp chirp! **_More than songbirds were singing faintly from somewhere in this breaking dawn.

_Sniff, sniff, sniff! _"Mmmmhmm…that smells yummy, Kristoff! …Like bacon…you're such a yummy husband to cook bacon for me in the morning…" Princess Anna, in her slumbering non-morning person delirium, turns over on her comfortable pillow. Her cute little nose was aroused by the pleasantly pervading aroma coming from the camp nearby. She was so exhausted after yesterday's harrowing and unexpected events that she had slept like a baby—straight through, despite the nippy and cool summer night's open air 'canopy.' After all, Princess Anna had been upon her favorite and invitingly firm mattress, which just happened to be her big hubby's warm chest and compliant arms that had enveloped her small body in his equally exhausted embrace.

"Bacon? Morning? What time is it?" But her fuzzy bear Kristoff (whose shirt had somehow been unbuttoned to display his warm pecs and abs for his tiny little misses' benefit in the chilled night) awakens with claws bared as well. "Why didn't that fool wake me?!"

After his groggy eyes snap open, Kristoff unceremoniously jumps up, thusly plopping a squeaking Anna back down on a rudely awakened Sven's snorting back. Kristoff stands, adjusting his eyesight range in the new dawn's light to thankfully see both sleighs yet parked where he had left them. Both horses were still tethered to that same tree and that redheaded twit was kneeling down and singing some happy, soaring tune at the roaring campfire.

To boot, there was a certain helpful blonde sous chef already at his side, it appeared.

_Hmph. He's still here. Unfortunately._

Kristoff shakes off that queasy fear that had gripped his distrusting heart for a few disoriented moments, changing into a smirk of conversely relief and frustration as he stomps towards the pitched camp.

"Why the hell didn't you wake me up for my shift last night, pal?!" Kristoff tosses in the mild cuss word for effect as his limber body stalks up behind the pair of heads bent close together over the open flame.

"Ah, good morning, Mr. Bjorgman. I trust you slept well." Hans chooses to ignore the man's angry query and instead merely politely answer, as his hands deftly flip the thinly sliced ham and fatback intermingled in the pan over the roaring fire that it was nearly the bacon Anna's hungry nose had sensed earlier. "I wasn't tired, and felt alert enough to keep watch over the camp as yet. I also didn't want to disturb your lady wife in her slumber." Hans smiles in the direction of the stream. "I only wished for you to be fully rested for the next leg of our journey, sir. Please, forgive any distress I may have caused you."

Hans Westergaard was far too good at quickly fabricating deceitful excuses to admit to a fuming Kristoff in front of the pale blonde skittish lady's ears that he had detected prowlers about in the dark still of night.

"Prince Hans was **very** alert and vigilant in keeping watch for us all night. I can attest to that, Kristoff." Gazing up from the toasting bread station where she was kneeling, Elsa was doing her best to avert her delicate sensibilities from staring at Kristoff's muscular frame. Arendelle's Queen, who had emerged very early from her covered sleigh's cozy shared 'bedroom' with Rapunzel, after listening to the quiet sound of Hans' steady breathing from where he had leaned to perch just outside her section of the Vis-à-vis nearly all night, gives testimony to Mr. Westergaard's exemplary guard duty of their campsite.

"Doesn't anyone _**ever**_ listen to me when I talk? We _**have **_to take shifts at night to stay fully sharp-eyed of any danger—not go all 'gung ho' solo like some hero." Kristoff vents, waving his animated arms about until he remembers his open-chested shirt and bashfully buttons it up in the presence of the queen.

"Well, you follow orders next time, okay?" Kristoff's body that was indeed more fully rested than he might have been otherwise, causes the well-built blonde to be more forgiving. Upon hearing the queen's words that all seemed well and in order in the camp Kristoff's honesty couldn't deny the man's kindness and consideration.

But someone else's tiny pitchers of ears didn't look on Hans' selfless actions so kindly.

"And just _**how long**_ have you been out here, too, Elsa? Hmmm?" Anna, her unkempt dress in a state of mess, her braids all askew, comes charging up to the campfire scene where Elsa and Hans were rather too cozily leaning over the flames together, cooking the breakfast meal.

Well, that's all Anna hoped the pair had been 'cooking' last night after she had trusted them enough to fall soundly asleep on Kristoff's chest that served for her own bed.

"I…had another one of my bouts with insomnia, as you know well, Anna. I merely heard Prince Hans tending to the horses nearby with Olaf, from time to time. Good morning to you, too, little sister. Here, Anna, let me." Elsa calmly explains to her accusatory little 'marm' chaperone, ending it with a loving smile and big sister invite to fix up her baby sibling's messy braids of hair, as Elsa was wont to do each morning at the castle.

"Good morning, Elsa." Anna turns into a little girl again as she always gurgles whenever Elsa's delicate artful sculptor's hands take great pains to gently caress and straighten her frazzled orangey locks with a quickly produced comb from her grey Arendellian shawl's pocket folds.

Queen Elsa had a talent for hairstyling. Her own flawless blonde tresses still appeared picturesque even when loosed artfully, as her own long braid was this morning. The ever present golden comb was a necessity to the young woman who owned just a minute touch of vanity—enough to want to look presentable, no matter how early in the morning, for any audience, as any refined female of the day possessed.

Especially one of the 'red fox' variety who was sure to greet her first with his lonely eyes.

"Hey! Olaf and I got the horses all fed and watered and cleaned up to be ready to go soon, like you asked, Hans. Oh! You're finally awake, sleepyheads! Guess I can't blame you two, just a few days off your honeymoon…" In her insinuating mumbling way, knowing the joys of honeymooning well, Rapunzel, with Pascal on her shoulder and a hay sprig chewing Olaf waddling to catch up behind her, comes trotting back to the campfire.

"Morning, guys. Wow! You two! That smells incredible!" The older girl tries her best to be bubbly as she used to be every morning in her comically inventive ways to get Eugene's lazy bum out of bed during more happy days of marital bliss before all this started. Rapunzel bravely feigns a smile as she sniffs the air's savory scents.

"Howdy, pardners! Just been a-seeing to the horsies. What fixins' are you rustling up in that there pan?" Olaf was putting on a strange, foreign accent to match his straw chewing out of the side of his mouth and waddle-saunter as he and his private flurry join the group around the blazing fire.

"Oooh, look at that—so this is a 'campfire'!" An amazed Olaf reverts back to his naivete soon upon arrival. His entranced big black curious eyes can't help but reflect the glow of orangey reds and yellows as his two adventurous branch hands long to reach out and—

"Olaf." Although monitoring the frying ham in fatback on one side of the pan, as well as the large egg omelette cooking on the other end of the ingeniously built stone-pile level plateau for the wide pan to rest upon for proper frying temperatures, Hans still maintains an observant gaze, along with the quiet command to offer the snowman a warning glance.

"Aye, aye, Admiral JustHans!" With a seafaring salute, Olaf continues their friendly nautical themed banter, causing Hans to blush violently at the innocent, playful words of the simple snowman that he knew might cause a stir with—

"Don't call him that, Olaf! 'Admiral?' What silly Navy would recruit a **criminal** like **you **for their highest ranking position! Hah! As if!" Anna scoffs as Rapunzel directs her anger to help set the makeshift 'table' they had made from baskets in the sleigh they'd put side by side together to act as a low breakfasting counter.

A zipping up his mouth action Olaf shrugs up at the crimson-faced chef who gives him a rebuking raised eyebrow back. Just then, Elsa suddenly gasps after burning her distracted fingers upon checking the ice pick she was using to toast the bread on.

"Elsa! Are you all right?" Hans immediately drops his own cooking utensil to grasp the girl's injured fingers within his, even as the ice already forming at her lightly burned fingertips is transferred onto his warm ones. But Hans doesn't even flinch.

"I'm…fine." Elsa breathes in pleasant surprise when a fearless Hans instinctively raises her singed three middle fingers to his lips and kisses them, causing her involuntary cryogenics to reduce intensity at his soothing touch.

All thoughts of her own scorched digits disappear in his kind eyes and tender lips, still at her fingertips, amidst this rising dawn's light.

"She _**said **_she was fine! You really don't listen, do you, pretty boy?!" Anna's eyes flash at him as she none too delicately, in neither word nor touch, grabs Elsa's slightly charred, but ice cooled hand in hers. She hauls her sister off with her to the makeshift table and forces them both down to sit. "I'm hungry. When do we eat?" Anna demands, pounding both fork and knife on the table to vent her anger.

"Anna! Manners, please!" Elsa chides, as her throbbing heart finally stops racing enough to look up at Hans from where she and her little sister were first to be seated at the basket counter. Both girls were kneeling on the grass for their seats at this outdoor buffet.

Kristoff returns just then from seeing to Sven to add the thirsty reindeer to the two horses already drinking at the stream's edge where Rapunzel and Olaf had left them.

"What did I miss?" Kristoff hunkers down at his glowering wife's side. Elsa's arm was still firmly linked with hers possessively. His imagination didn't need to go much to see that there had been some sort of emotional fracas before he had arrived.

"You missed the hidden culinary talents of Queen Elsa's deft hand—that is, before she seared those poor delicate fingers, Alas!—whipping up this excellent Aeggepandekage for us to be thankful for." The head chef gives his lissome assistant an obliged gently smiled nod.

"And thank you, Lord, for all You've provided we earthly travelers on our journey. Amen." Hans bows his head with this short morning meal devotional before their gathered table, to which a pleased Elsa, an extra mumbled behest added Rapunzel, a bemused Kristoff watching his Anna go from fuming to reverent in 10 seconds of recited prayer flat, and even a sanctified looking Olaf and pastel pink Pascal join in.

"Breakfast is served. Everyone, please do be careful, the pan is rather hot. But we seem to be at a loss for fine porcelain dishware at this auspicious al fresco repast of ours." Hans then lays on the charm thick as he, with a helpful Rapunzel, who had taken up Elsa's task by saving the only slightly blackened toast from being totally swallowed by the flames when they fell in earlier, carefully serve the whole pan of 'bacon' adorned herb encrusted omelette with the fancy Danish name to sit upon the little low table.

"Whoa…that is one big omelette. Did you use up **every one** of the eggs that the old fisherman's wife had packed in that basket?" Kristoff didn't mean to complain, for his growling stomach was grateful. But the conscientious man knew a thing or two about scarce supply conservation on the open road that he doubted this rich prince did.

"Well, upon inspecting our 'larder', so to speak, Olaf and I discovered that probably due to last evening's unfortunately bolting circumstance, the satchel filled with the eggs did not fare so well." Hans begins to explain his actions of forced culinary resource.

"They were all cracked up and gooey and yellow dripping everywhere on the white cloth of the basket they were wrapped in! Ewww! Icky! Yuck! White and yellow do _**NOT**_ go together." Olaf shivers at the splattered ochre thought as his eager-to-spill lips come unzipped suddenly.

"So how did you guys salvage enough to make this? It's really tasty! You have to give me the recipe. I know Eugene will…love it." Imagining her dearest boy was nearby, a sad Rapunzel takes another mouthful with one of the golden spoons that were blessedly saved in the cake box that had not been chucked overboard by an overzealous Anna. "How did you manage it?" She recovers quickly.

"JustHans is not just good with swords, and singing, and dancing—and horses and cooking. He's good at straining broken eggs with a cheesecloth, too! And he taught me how, so now I can rescue every egg you smash up dancing in the kitchen when you steal a brand new crumb cake in the kitchen when Gerda isn't looking."

"That only happened once! Okay, twice." Anna cries out, guiltily remembering after she gulps down another forkful of the delicious egg, cream and herb concoction that Elsa (and Hans) had created.

Elsa had briskly stirred the retrieved eggs whilst Hans, after slicing up the ham and fatback for a bacon facsimile, expertly identified some forest herbage to select for the cookery spicing that a nimble fingered Pascal gleaned.

"He~ey…" Though she was busy stuffing her face, the word 'cake' abruptly reminded Anna of something special. "Wasn't this the metal platter that Gerda served our kransekake on?" Anna's suspicious wide-eyes wildly examine the once totally flat, fancy embossed metal plate that somehow must've been bent and fashioned to work as a dumb old frying pan instead of her all-important cake platter.

"Uh-oh…" Putting his only utensil butter knife on the table, Kristoff was glad he had just finished choking down his breakfast. He had had a feeling there wasn't going to be any peace at this table for much longer, if he knew where his little firecracker was going with this.

_**Ba-Boom!**_

"WHAT DID YOU DO WITH THE REST OF MY KRANSEKAKE WEDDING CAKE, HANS WESTERGAARD!?" Like a raging tempest, Anna explodes, jumping to her feet with an accusing finger pointed at the wide-eyed and innocent looking man, who swallows the remainder of the small piece of 'bacon' on his omelette nearly whole.

"Y-your wedding cake? Oh…Do forgive us." A gulping Hans swallows hard, feeling rather small and inadequate as Anna storms over the baskets to glare down at him.

Mere inches away from his scared face, her hands ball into fists before being stuck firmly on each of her jutting out hips. "Why do **you** always want to ruin **everything **for me?!" She demands with a weeping whine, looking more like a thundering dark cloud about to storm than a pigtail braided sweet girl.

"Well, it was all cracked and smashed up and really unsalvageable to even recognize. So I tasted how sweet and saccharinely sugary it was." Olaf 's blissfully smiling mouth smacks lips together at the early morning mouthwatering recollection. "And then we fed the rest to Guddy. Iriserende turned her nose up at it—I guess because no lady would want a broken up, crumbly mess of—" Dropping the other shoe, Olaf coolly informs the fate of Anna's precious prediction wielding of children to come superstitious wedding cake tradition.

"You **fed** Guddy **my** wedding cake...? Guddy **ate** the rest of my kransekake cake…?" Anna's steaming anger turns into a wobbly-kneed whining of dreams dashed. Kristoff's long legged leap over the low table showed he had already anticipated this break down result, just in time to steady his lively wife's whimsical overacting. "Now we'll never have those six babies, Kristoff!" Anna's inexplicably plaintive shrieked words causes her to collapse into an exasperated and embarrassed to no-end Kristoff's understanding chest. These hysterics quite perplex Hans with the hysterical disconnect.

The furrowed brow man reaches a hand across the table to zip up Olaf's troublemaking mouth again and it surprisingly shuts—tightly this time, as Elsa and Rapunzel both appear to be suppressing giggles at their littlest 'sister's' sweet, yet saucy, endearing personality that never ceased to entertain.

"I am truly sorry—I didn't realize the crumbs of that cake meant so much to her. Now she'll probably hate me even more, if that's possible." Pouring the remainder of the water buckets onto the campfire to put out every ember, Hans whispers to the two remaining females in attendance, as Kristoff picks up an almost despondently weeping Anna to load her onto Sven's sleigh. He then hitches the fed and rested sorrowful eyed at Anna Sven up to get a move on in the wee early morning hours of daybreak.

"Anna's Anna. She wears all her hopes and dreams on her sleeve. But that's why we love her." Rapunzel answers as she, Olaf and Pascal help Elsa clear up the now scattered table to have Hans lift the heavy baskets neatly onto the Vis-à-vis sleigh. That's when Elsa touches his arm lightly.

"Anna's heart is too good and pure inside to ever 'hate' anyone for long." Elsa says softly with her own set of hopes and dreams riding on a sleeve never to be seen in the light of day.

"Thank you for that, as well as the wonderful meal you permitted me to help you create." After a moment spent absorbing her words, Hans rebounds with a tease, once his own heartfelt gratitude is conveyed for her indulgent generosity extended to his remorseful soul concerning her sister.

"And where do you think you are going with that, Your Majesty?" Back in the swing, Hans familiarly grasps her wrist to halt Elsa's steps as she starts walking towards the stream with that criminal, formerly kransekake pan greedily devoid of their combined efforts in hand.

"To wash it clean in the waters of the stream." Elsa was not trying to be poetic, nor philosophical, though her platinum blonde hair, aglow in the fresh sunlight, had its own lyrical effect on the young man who had spent a sleepless night dreaming of her.

"Your Majesty, please if I may—" Hans begins to chivalrously step in. But again, Elsa would not play the part of the helpless maiden, though his persuasive hand was yet affixed to her wrist.

"No. No, you may not." In this second, the pair are both transported back some two years to their first encounter, when the exchange between them was much the same, though the sentiment passing between their eyes now was decidedly different from what it was then.

Hans nervously clears his throat, believing this the correct moment to pose the burning question on his heart again.

"And what of you, Queen Elsa? Is a worthless man worthy for a pure heart to forgive past wrongs?" He dares ask her crystal clear blue eyes tentatively, his guilt-ridden ones begging, in this everlasting moment, for a precious second chance.

"Forgiveness comes from a heart that truly loves the Lord. And mine walks with Him always." Calmly composed Elsa gives an encouraging, glorified smile, just as dazzling to Hans' beholden, grateful eyes as her absolving words. His hungry soul was beginning to hope against hope for this paramount reward of the essential gift of her requisite forgiveness at last.

"I'll be right back. Please hitch the horses to the sleigh so we can depart." Sounding all regal, though feeling tremulous inside, a touched Elsa was certain there were glistening tears forming suddenly behind those soft, velvety green pastures of his eyes. Hans finally gives up claim to her slim wrist and Elsa continues on towards the rushing stream, unchallenged, and pleased.

Hans' grateful, humbled gaze follows her every graceful step as the sun completes its ascent into the sky, taking his praising heart along with it.

* * *

Once the pair of well rested horses are hitched and everything packed up, Hans directs Iriserende and Guddy to follow Kristoff and Sven's sleigh back to the road where they briskly travel another forty kilometers alongside the glimmering waters of the Vinjefjorden all the sunny morning long.

"Anna's prettier than most people  
Sven, don't you think that's true?  
She's got a cute smile, makes life worthwhile  
With a nice behind in those feisty pants  
Through and through"

Kristoff had kept Anna preoccupied with his singing while he bravely tackles trying to teach his all-thumbs gal the magic of playing the lute as they drive.

The instrument's poor, battered and bruised strings were never so tested, nor were Kristoff's ears, but Anna was slowly finding her effervescent smile back again in its chords.

"We **STILL** can try." Dejectedly slapping the poor relieved lute back over the sleigh's front seat to the back, as if the broken superstition was its fault, Anna comments out of nowhere to the noonday sky.

"You can count on that, Baby." The strapping lad verbalizes his sentiment upon finishing his 'yoik', for, as part Sami, this form of poetic musical expression was part of Kristoff's makeup. He leans his blonde head over to her adorably agitated one to capture a lasting, tongue-tied kiss. His one unencumbered big hand freely wanders down her tensed spine to explore, with the newly inspired song still fresh in his spry young mind.

"You're a good guy, Kristoff." Anna concludes in all seriousness, meeting his brown gaze that always brought a smile back, even when she was bummed.

"Thanks for noticing." Kristoff was gratified he could be sure that Anna preferred his simple song to the more flashy and smooth, with big words and lofty high ranged melody of that former fiancé of hers.

Picking up Kristoff's thoughts, Anna wishes her eyes really **WERE** in the back of her head. Her neck was aching something fierce for the constant swiveling around to check up on the goings on of that certain sleigh driver behind them.

But when Hans innocently catches one of her glaring looks, he amiably gives a little wave of hopeful, waggling fingers to which Anna tersely flips back around forward, rather than acknowledge him.

"That jerk! Do you think he's a danger to Elsa, Kristoff?" Anna whispers fiercely again what's been eating at her the whole trip thus far, as if Hans could hear her from where he was several sleigh lengths back. She vehemently continues on her abnormally pensive and sober state of mind as she turns to her husband for his advice on the pressing matter—for once.

"Look, they're not alone. Your cousin Rapunzel is back there, with Olaf, too. And, don't worry, Elsa still can be pretty mean with that ice of hers. So, I'd pity that guy if he tried to get fresh. I for one wouldn't mess with the so-called '_Snow Queen'_ if I were him, 'cause it could get pretty cold down in Southern Isle prince's _southern regions_, if you get my drift." Even experienced married man Kristoff's ears go bright red by the time he finishes his embarrassing statement.

"**NO!**_ Ick_! I meant **really **dangerous stuff!" Anna spazzes out at her totally male hubby's icky incorrect take on her deeper meaning suppositions.

"Oh." With a little smirk at his 'mistake,' Kristoff huffs with a sigh, to glance over his shoulder at the scrawnier man with the lovesick look on his face.

"Nah, just look at him. He's in pretty sad shape."

Anna does just as her husband directs, physically spinning in her seat to take a long gander at that despicable redhead, whose sweet treacly, droopy puppy-dog eyed expression made her almost reconsider her question.

_He __**does**__ look like a lovesick puppy. I don't think that's what he looked like when he and I were—_

"Not that long." Kristoff's slighted, semi-jealous voice calls Anna's attention back to present day reality. His sideways look and rough hand readjusting her chin to face him or forward, gives his little wife her walking orders.

"He seems kinda 'de-fanged' to me, since we found him—beat up by those pirates, and all for protecting your sister." Kristoff assesses in his honest, fair-minded way.

"Oooh! This is crazy! All because of that stupid Eugene we have to rescue now! You know, _**EUGENE**_? Hans' big brother!" Stolen treasures, pirate ships and Hans Westergaard's reappearance all took their toll as Anna vents her frustration fully now that poorly feeling Rapunzel was out of earshot.

Suddenly, a bell goes off in her revolving brain.

"I know! Since you don't think he's too dangerous anymore, I'll just let Elsa have this nutty, insane fling with him—and then when he breaks her heart, that'll be the end of it, once and for all! Then, I'll go to work to find her a proper prince and—"

"W-whoa! Wait! You're _**hoping**_ he breaks her heart? That sounds kind of mercenary for the good gal I married." Kind hearted Kristoff didn't like at all the way that man's presence affected his sweet Anna's disposition.

"Yeah, but…that's the best way to get him out of her system! Totally like I did!" Anna's relationship with Kristoff was so honest and genuine that she could speak about her past near misses with another man as if Kristoff was her best friend.

Because, beyond her reestablished sisterhood with Elsa, he was.

"But you had _**ME**_ to fill up those cracks in your heart. Might not be so easy for your sister if it all falls apart for her. She's different than you." Kristoff was more of a love expert than he gave himself credit for. All those childhood years of growing up under love guru Bulda's thumb must've lodged somewhere in his thick skull.

"Don't be silly! Of course she'll forget him! We're sisters! She's exactly like…me…?" But by the end of bright-eyed Anna's fierce admission, upon self-circumspection it transmutes into more of a frowned realization that Elsa was _**NOT**_ 'exactly like her.'

"You're right…Why does life have to be so hard when we grow up?" Anna gives up her headaching contemplation as she tugs at her frazzled double braided ends fairly hard before Kristoff's muscle-toned warm arm reaches out to welcome her perplexities in.

"I dunno. 'Cause I'm not a 'love expert,' remember? But I do know that Elsa's a smart cookie and you did say you were going to trust her with knowing her own heart, right?" Kristoff tries to imagine what Cliff and Bulda and the rest of the singing and dancing troll crew would say about the man they once prescribed to '_get the fiancé out of the way and the whole thing will be fixed!'_

_Well, he's __**IN**__ the way again—and trying to make a comeback now with Anna's big sister. But is he truly __**in love**__ with Elsa this time? Problem is, he was so oily and conniving before—I can't tell if he's for real now. It's about now I really miss my troll family. Words have never been easy. You'd know what to say for me._

"But you don't have to listen to me. I'm just an average, working-class kind of guy." The brawny man admits aloud, keeping the remainder of his own counsel and his worries to himself.

"You could've fooled me, my big, lovable hunk of semi-sweet chocolate." Her anxiety settling down in her new husband's mellow voice, Anna combines two of her favorite tastes in the world—dark chocolate and Kristoff Bjorgman into one adored treat.

She wraps herself entirely around the firm bicep arm of her rock—her Kristoff, as his caring anchors Anna from all the concerns and questions obviously preying on her mind for her beloved sibling's welfare in Elsa's first timid steps into matters of the heart.

"I love you, too, Baby." He responds in her hair, not even needing to give Sven a clicking tongue signal of 'giddyap' for the intuitive beast to put some speed on as the sleigh moves across the country into this second leg of their strange journey.

* * *

Many kilometers into their drive, Hans Westergaard's heavy-lidded eyes were finding it hard to stay open. He hadn't slept in over forty hours, but that wasn't entirely to blame.

_There've been longer stints of sleep deprivation._

It was more the monotonous plains and endless roads on this rocky, barren stretch of land that was far less than inspiring to a lately freed imagination longing for the green grasses and golden fields he'd been deprived of seeing when trapped below decks on that pirate ship.

That or the fact that his passengers had chosen to grow rather silent for the last ten kilometers or so.

"How is she?" Leaning backwards and down without losing the tautness of the imbalanced reins, a lithe, ambidextrous Hans reaches his flexible neck back as far as it could without snapping to whisper almost directly into Elsa's semi-startled ear, as she was seated with her back to him in the Vis-à-vis car.

"Sleeping." But as Elsa's quickly swiveled head leans back to speak with him in a similarly concerned whisper, their lips nearly brush. The mortified young woman snaps her head back around to see Olaf, whom she had ordered to keep his bantering mouth zipped shut since Cousin Rapunzel fell ill (fatback and bacon may not have been too good an idea, though it was too tasty for her to pass up) 'blink, blink' up at her, before going back to his silent swaying in his singing, ice cube brain. He swings back and forth rhythmically seated beside his red-faced queen.

"Lucky her. _**Yawn.**_ Do pardon me."

Elsa just makes out Hans' softly spoken, tired words and courteously quick pardoned covered yawn to the wind.

That's when the icy queen decides that her company out there may be more convenient than either he or she being silent and alone.

Truer words were never spoken.

"May I…join you out there in this magnificent, fresh open air?" A demure Elsa politely asks, though already squeezing her slim, sleek form through the front sleigh car opening before he answers. This snow Queen employs a diamond bijou display of her ice prowess to strategically balance her scintillating high heels in between the fast moving vehicle's suspension coupling, almost mid-air.

"My lady! That's dangerous!" A groggy eyed Hans warns when Elsa, her ice glazed body practically floating upon the well-controlled frosted rimes of water vapors in the air beneath her capered feet, rather agilely climbs out from the passenger car (as a leaping Anna did yesterday with unhappy results) to gracefully perch beside him on the driver's bench. Again, withstanding the bitter cold of her lustrous icy touch, Hans' stable hand was offered and accepted to help her gracefully alight.

"Since Cousin Rapunzel is peacefully asleep, I thought you may prefer some company to not." Though her trained ice was relaxing, Elsa was finding it more difficult to be as bold and daring as she imagined she could be, when, with the horses' reins clamped tightly in his hands, the stiffened man's now wide-awake eyes were fixated upon hers in an unwavering, unreadable stare that was both appreciated and discomfiting to the shy queen.

Elsa folds her fidgety hands together, as was her habit when she was in nervous doubt.

"Am I wrong?" Elsa asks, her voice quivering. That old, cold gnawing unwelcome feeling was creeping up inside again.

"Forgive me." Hans shakes himself, too, from his brown study. "It's only…I always entertained a dream of driving horses alongside the woman I…" Hans trails off here, for only in his half-conscious state would the guarded man have admitted his childish dream to anyone—let alone her.

But the unmatched team must've sensed his unrest. Their speeds divert from one another, ever so slightly, calling his attention back to them.

"Whoa, there, girl. Iriserende, bring that trot to a canter until Guddy can pick up the pace, please. Giddap, Guddy." Hans almost sings his soft commands that are almost instantly complied to by the two now re-balanced equines.

"You are truly proficient with them, aren't you…Hans?" The queen's utterance of his first name sends Hans' senses soaring yet again. He was grateful for the cool breeze whipping in his face to keep him grounded. "I, too, love horses. Especially noble breeds such as Friesians and Fjord horses." Elsa deftly changes the subject to a more conversational topic.

"Yes, Fjord horses are incomparable…Elsa." He returns the familiar name with a sweet smile. "No reflection on dear old Guddy, but I do wish my own Sitron was here. I've often wondered whatever became of my poor horse, during my rightful, indentured punishment." Lowering his already soft tone, as for neither horse to overhear, Hans murmurs to the baking overhead sun. His closed eyes and upturned head drinks in its rays. He recalls such summer days of swift winds and blazing sun, spent flying along crested hillsides, over mountains and meadow and glen—by the seat of his pants upon his noble steed's strong, golden back.

Elsa watches Prince Hans' closed eyes reminisces of riding astride his beloved friend in past glory days of youth.

"Sitron? Is that his name? He's fine." After a few more moments of enjoying his handsome features glowing with the pride and fond memories of him and his favorite horse, Elsa pipes up.

Hans' intense, inquisitive gaze and intrigued eyes suddenly snap open upon her, causing the Queen to avert her own. She was half-sorry she had spoken up out of place to interrupt the man's reverie.

But she plows on nonetheless.

"After you…left…I made certain your horse was cared for at the palace stables." Elsa answers, marveling at the strange attraction she had for the handsome golden stallion.

"You still have him!? How is he? Is he eating well? He's still rather finicky, isn't he? Does he miss me? I mean—have you perhaps glimpsed him around the stable when you go riding?" Not a shred of exhaustion left in his body now, Hans recovers by firing off enthusiastic questions, one after the other, like an eager schoolboy in the hopes of hearing something of his one and only childhood companion—equine or no.

"Oh, dear…!" Elsa chuckles at how sweet and innocent the adult man beside her seemed when speaking of his close friend. "When last I saw him, he appeared quite content—especially with the fresh offerings of Arendelle's wild blackberries that I pick for him each morning, when we ride up to the hill where they grow each summer." Elsa's own vivid recollections show on her lovely features, of pleasant summer afternoons spent wandering her castle's grounds upon the golden Fjord horse with the long, feathery tail whom she had befriended in his rider's absence.

"You…_personally_…cared for Sitron yourself, Queen Elsa?" Amazed and astounded, Hans' gorgeous green eyes illuminate at the realization of the Arendelle Sovereign's compassionate kindness bestowed upon the—albeit blameless—horse that belonged to the man who had wronged her, even to the point of attempting to—

_How could I have been such a fool?_

Hans' regretful heart is touched to the core by this beautiful woman's selfless benevolence.

"Oh! Yes, I hope you don't mind that I started riding him to give him exercise. But when we found we liked each other so well, he and I never stopped going out for our daily early morning run after chapel. I do pray I haven't spoiled his fine training with all those berries and treats in the afternoons after our trot around the shore." The elegant blonde turns rather cute as she bites her hesitant lower lip, uncertain if she had overstepped her bounds here.

"Mind? Not at all! I couldn't be more pleased that Sitron was so well looked after!" Hans was genuinely smiling from ear to ear by now. Elsa was pleased that she pleased him so. "Thank you, Queen Elsa. Sitron means the world to me."

"No, you needn't thank me. Caring for…Sitron…each morning has been my…delight. He's a very special, well-mannered, wonderful horse. You should be very proud of him." Elsa compliments the man's lifelong equestrian companion.

"Sitron has been fortunate to have deserved such particular royal attention from the kingdom's ruler herself." Hans marvels at his beloved steed's good luck these past two years, as compared to his own punished fate.

_But Sitron did no wrong. I, and I alone am to blame for all my unscrupulous actions._

"Sitron…I'll have to get used to that name. Yes, it fits him perfectly." Elsa concedes after a moment's reflection of associating that particular name with that particular stallion.

"What name did you assign him, if I may inquire, out of curiosity? After all, a horse by any other name…" Hans was so giddy with excitement that his Sitron was so blessed to be safe and fawned over that he was rather waxing poetic.

"Ohh!" But when the pale queen suddenly reddens at such an innocent query, Hans' curiosity was more than piqued.

"You must've called him something." He prompts with a growingly inquisitive smile.

"Yes, of course. I called him…'Prince…Prince Ha…'" Elsa, mid answer, realizes how self-incriminating the moniker she had assigned for the stallion belonging to the man who haunted both her nightmares and dreams these past two years, sounded for the noble Fjord horse.

Hans was giving her his all-entrancing green eyes encouragement to go on, right now, Elsa compelled to reply.

"Prince Hansome." Mortally embarrassed at her whispered revelation, she covers her mortified with shame eyes, biting her bloodless lips dry. Her cheeks flared hotly which was a new sensation for this snow queen.

Prince Hans' (the human one) vanity was fueled by the obvious derivative of Queen Elsa's choice of titled descriptives to name the horse that belonged, as she well knew then and still does now, to the comely young man sitting so close beside her that she wished she could become invisible. With all of these revelations, Hans' flushed head was so reeling that he had the feeling that the road was no longer beneath them any longer. His intensely flushing equally diverted eyes join in a mutual blush, until he finely divines to break the uncomfortable silence to say:

"Quite a noble name to flatter any stud." Stealing a bashful glance at the woman with the beautiful blonde mane glowing in the sunlight beside him, Hans' then naughty, teasing eyes peek over out their side to be rewarded by a sheepish Elsa sneaking a coy look beneath long lashes back at him.

Her pretty mouth lifts without a shred of fear into a radiant smile amidst their shared, soft laughter tinkling through the ethers as both bask in the noonday sun's brilliance.

Iriserende and Guddy look back to see what all the mirth was about between their driver and the pale woman laughing beside him on their horsedrawn sleigh. The seemingly endless kilometers Hans felt before now melt under the forgiving, merciful, hopeful gaze of the brightest star in the galaxy, who deemed to lower herself down far enough from the heavens to grant undeserving him company...

_She's my angel—with the dust of the stars in her eyes…_

Even the formerly drab achromatic road's milieu morphs into vividly glowing, lush foliage—full of life and beauty, as the horses now run in perfect sync reflected in the Vinjefjorden's bluest of blue mirror running parallel with the shimmering sleigh.

Though a dark shadow followed in the clear water's reflection not too far behind…


	20. Chapter 19- Juoska Make a Man out of You

We do not own "Frozen" nor any of its characters.

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act I**

**Chapter 19**

**"The Juoska Will Make a Man out of You"**

Making good time, the road wears on calmly enough under the bright summer sunlight as the travelers continue their journey past the Fjorden river towns of Hestnes and Rodal on their determined trek eastward.

That is, until nearly sunset when an ominous dark thundercloud decides to pause in its skybound meanderings to start to drizzle a rain on their parade.

"Oh no. This could be bad." Olaf's plain spoken comment just then was an understatement for the snowman. The sudden summer storm's warm droplets of moisture beginning to fall were proof of what happens to snow when it does get wet.

The happily humming snowman's face becomes all lopsided as the pelting raindrops that hit his carrot dribble down to loose the integrity of his facial structure where he was sitting on Sven's sleigh between the couple.

"Hold it, Sven." Kristoff's soft mellow voice calls out to his reindeer pal before turning to the only two passengers he had aboard his open sleigh. "It's gonna be a pretty fierce storm, so—Anna, I think you should go in Hans'—er, the other sleigh—now, before it pours."

Kristoff catches his designation of 'that other sleigh's' driver, knowing how it might set his impetuous girl off.

"No way! If you can brave the storm, big man, so can I! I was born ready! Not to run from a little rain!" Princess Anna had more than her share of a stubborn streak and she folds her arms defiantly. "I'm not going anywhere." Her jaw sets up at her husband.

"Anna, there's no use in two of us getting wet out here. Why would you stay and get soaked when we have a covered sleigh with empty seats available right behind us? Believe me, I've seen skies like this before. It's gonna come down pretty darn hard." Kristoff's experienced traveler eyes glance up to the looming dark cloud just above their heads as he shields them from the incoming first droplets with a large knuckled hand.

"Because I'm a rugged, outdoorsy—er, tough guy—too!" The independent-minded sweet caramel colored little girl leans over the back of her sleigh to root through their sparse luggage until she whips out her trademark fuschia cape with its pom pom tassels to sling the little cap over her head, as if that was all the necessary cover she required to battle the rainy onslaught. "I'm not eight years old anymore! And I don't like being ordered around like a child! This is half my sleigh and I can stay here as long as I please. So there!"

"Yeah…right. Why do you never want to listen to me?" A flustered Kristoff frowns with a sigh at her, at times, damnable stubborn pluckiness. He was already feeling the wetness seeping through his more water-resilient sealskin cap. "You may imagine yourself invincible but you're snowy friend here decidedly isn't, Anna. Be the adult heroine by saving Olaf before the raindrops turn him into a slush puppy. There's the covered sleigh. Get going—and tell Hans to watch for my signal. We'll be stopping off in a few more miles." Kristoff points a directing finger backwards to his frowny faced wife.

It took a good man to send his girl over to her ex-fiance's care. But Kristoff was more concerned about her health in not catching pneumonia than he was her catching anything from that guy.

"Ohh, all right! If I have to, Grumpy boots. Just for Olaf's sake—not yours. Come on, Olaf." After a long scrunched up brow and puckered mouth glare at Kristoff, Anna begrudgingly gives in to their argument after watching the worsening raindrops melting effect on her little snow buddy.

Grabbing hold of Olaf, she wraps her slushy snow friend beneath her vivid cape's folds quickly. Then, with a sigh, she gets up to hop from the sleigh side without waiting for her husband's usual help. But his punishing hand connects with her rump instead with a resounding SMACK!

"Get a move on, Feisty pants." He smugly teases as Anna glowers backwards from the road to give her hubby a snarky, nose-up-in-the-air farewell.

"That's no way to speak to a responsible adult." Anna trots briskly between the descending raindrops towards the halted sleigh behind theirs, being sure to keep Olaf's wriggling three-part snow form safe under her wraps until she arrives.

And there it was.

That same extended hand. That same inviting smile. That same pair of intoxicating eyes welcoming her when she got there.

"Here! Get him inside!" But instead of accepting Hans Westergaard's proffered help up into the Vis-à-vis sleigh he was at the helm of, a rather perturbed, sourpuss Anna shoves a dizzy Olaf up into the accommodating Prince's surprised arms.

"Hiya, JustHans." Olaf's branches wriggle in greeting as the prince delivers him into the passenger car to Elsa's waiting arms.

"I can get in fine all by—ergh—myself, thank you very much! Men! You all think we're so helpless." Anna haughtily states, hefting her own rain splattered becaped person up into the sleigh's passenger area. She saunters past Hans with a sling of her wet braids back defiantly.

Anna's one wet braid slaps the leaning over man right in his unfortunate green eyes, dazing him for a few seconds.

"**That** Kristoff gave instructions that we'll be stopping off soon. You just watch for his signal very closely, okay. **That **Kristoff said so, and we **ALL** have to heed his command, don't we, girls?" Anna tries to include the two wide-eyed girls in the car in her slighted rant under the canvas covered roof.

She trips her way angrily through the rear passenger car that a shocked Rapunzel and stunned Elsa have to steady the fuming, tipsy girl until she finally sits down.

"Ooh! Men!" She expels through gritted teeth with a wrinkled brow on her reddened face. "I'm only here because Olaf will melt if he gets too wet. **That** Kristoff made me leave." She adds the last bit like she had a bad taste in her mouth in uttering her husband's name before her shocked audience.

Up front,Hans raises an eyebrow, glad her anger was not directed at him so vehemently—yet.

But a mad at the whole male race Anna seemed to notice his unwanted attention on her.

"I do hope you can be half as competent a sleigh driver on these slick muddy roads as 'Nature Expert' Kristoff is, Mr. Westergaard." An uppity Anna tosses back, at her 'most favorite' man, over her shoulder as Hans was still wiping at his whipped eye while he takes up the horses' reins and braves the incoming thick torrents himself atop his elevated perch, as well as the annoyed girl's snide words directed up at him.

"I will endeavor to adequately follow your husband's expertise on these perilous roads, Princess." Hans answers her politely but then his own bit of witticism can't help but peek through.

"At least, half of them." He projects back to the car as he clicks his tongue for the horses to proceed, despite the pounding pelting rain upon him.

"Hee hee hee." Rapunzel giggles at the young man's clever comeback jibe to stormcloud Anna. It quite reminded her of a certain other handsome stranger who could always make her smile with his well-spun words, even on rainy days.

"He's **NOT **the least bit funny, Cousin." Anna, not amused, folds her arms, still steaming at Kristoff's masterful 'orders' that had started her off on this bad mood. She gives her cousin a dirty look but the elder brunette only shrugs to Elsa with a toothy smile, while Pascal imitates his girl to a sheepish yellow degree.

With a big sigh, Anna stubbornly turns her back on everyone, looking out the back window at the grey, dreary rain she could identify with right about now.

Her thus far silent sister was quietly stroking Olaf's snowy head and tickling his gurgling happy tummy, trying her best to stay out of 'Hurricane Anna's' way before she imploded. Elsa's exotic purple-shadowed eyes were forward, knitted more in fretful anxiety for the two men out there, braving the harsh elements, not under cover of any sort, while the unrelenting rains progressively increase.

"Perhaps if I could…" The Ice Queen appeared to be turning some options over in her intelligent mind after studying Olaf for a few moments—moreover, studying his ice flurry cloud she previously construed.

The quiet, tall blonde suddenly becomes animated, swiftly lunging forward to kneel on the bench beside an astonished Rapunzel. Queen Elsa then focuses her frosty powers to rapidly freeze the granular ice tufts mere inches above Hans' already drenched head to instantly form a super-cooled fog until the frozen water vapors create a constant thin coating of icy glaze to hover over, much akin to Olaf's cloud.

Looking upwards curiously, Hans immediately grasps that it was Elsa's innate powers that were fabricating the pelting rain to sustain a perpetual hazy, foglike shield directly over his head, in a meter long circumference. She uses the vastness of her mind's control to transmogrify the falling moisture into less deleterious fine ice crystals called 'snowflakes.'

"Snowflakes? You are magical…" Hans breathily whispers in his smile, as once again his razor-like intellect is pleasantly mystified by this unique young woman's capabilities. He turns, with cleared vision, to see how Elsa was holding one hand up towards the airborne crystalline water droplet fog over his head, with her other arm extended out towards Kristoff farther ahead with a similar demonstration of her growing ice prowess.

Though not wishing to distract her intense focus, Hans notes how hard her increased breathing was. So much so that he could feel her huffing cool breath puffs glaze over his own shoulder several feet away from where she was peering out from the sleigh to join under the fog cover over him, to precisely keep her fixed aim with another fog cover over a soaked Kristoff as well.

"Becalm your racing heart, my Queen. Embrace the elements around you—one deep breath at a time." Hans' soft voice was as warmly melodic as it was solidifying her confidence. Elsa was somehow always able to hear this Danish prince's tones in that special place inside she never knew existed, that it seemed only he could reach.

Her fiercely palpitating heart quiets when her heavy-breathing soothes to a more sedate temperature. Elsa found even more powerfully controlled in this calm state of awareness than in her passionate frenzy.

"There you go." Hans proudly speaks encouragement to her no longer wild eyes. He was yet astounded to be traveling under a small window of clear snowflake filled sky, as the torrent of rain still pelted all around the roads, the horses, and the rest of the sleigh—except for where she covered the heads of both he and Kristoff.

"Thank you." She responds in a soft voice to gaze upon the man wearing her kingdom's cloak so chivalrously well.

After traveling a few miles like this, Elsa was now not only able to control and maintain the two small 'snow' globes above the men, but she was also able to entertain other thoughts—such as gratitude for his stabilizing concern.

"That should be my line—for your amazing feat of holding up the rain for me, Queen Elsa. Though I've heard red hair takes on a foxy gleam when it's wet like this." He whispers quite wickedly out of the corner of his eye, alluding to her previous connection between himself and the sleek animal he found rather tempting. Hans was feeling rather emboldened with the pair of their heads now so closely enveloped together amidst this harmless snowflake spun snowglobe within the queen's magical field.

No one else could hear what passed between them, for all the thrashing rain beats buffeting around the sleigh upon the rhythmically pounding concurrence of raindrops on the canvas roof.

"It does." Elsa answers in all honesty, feeling equally just as freed from her repressed emotion within their cozy vacuum. But the wetness on Hans' flattened slicked back hair, dripping down his grown crimson cheeks to grace his licked lips still causes the 'good girl' to redden.

Back in the car, Anna may not have been able to hear what was going on in the conversation, but she was able to see Elsa's deep blush enough to give rise again to her own red hot anger. Lost in her own miffed irritated world, glaring out the back window, she had held her tongue too long.

"So what's going on out there?! Can I **play**, too?!" Anna yells loudly to be heard over the noisy din of the rain. She possessively tugs a yelping Elsa back in, which dually causes Elsa's strained focus on a pleased-as-punch-to-be-dry Kristoff to falter. The messy-haired blonde man was unceremoniously barraged by the fierce rains again as result. ("Gee, thanks.")

Anna then sticks her own curious noggin into the protective meter's worth circumference of calm from the raging storm outside.

"Hey, this is amazing! I didn't know you could do this for people, too." With an awestruck whispered voice, Anna is wowed by Elsa's gained powers on this journey. Her big sister had never attempted anything like this before at home, and it brings Anna out of her mood for a minute as a pleased Elsa reenters the wintry scene with a warm hug around her spirited little sister. "I like it!" A giddy Anna sticks her tongue out to receive a ticklish snowflake on it, just like they did when they were kids, racing out in the snow when it was first starting for the two children to play.

_Just you and me, Elsa and—_

—_what's that guy doing here, too?_

Anna's dreamy, nostalgic thoughts of happy days of youth with her forever best friend of a big sister were dashed by the slicked back dripping wet nape of the red head called Hans Westergaard.

_Wow…so that's what he looks like after a bath…_

She mentally slaps herself for that leftover stray 'drool' as she shakes herself out of this 'Helsa' winter wonderland to yank Elsa fully away into the passenger car where the pounding rain on the roof had made Rapunzel feel rather 'sick again.'

"Ohh! I'm so sorry!" With Anna's persistent distraction, both physical and psychological, Elsa loses focus and control over the fog cloud above Hans' head as well.

And this time, it doesn't merely float away to dissipate as it did for Kristoff. This time, the rain was transmuted into hail.

"Hee hee hah!" Anna silently giggles at the man's obvious discomfort.

"Ouch! Ah, ow—" Hans can't cover his harshly covered skull for fear of losing his maintained control of the uneven team of horses' reins, needing especial care in this confusing storm. So he just takes the icy punishment down his collar like a man, until Elsa was able to deconstruct the magic ice hail above his head so that normal rain was all he had to contend with again.

"Don't worry, I'm sure you'll master that delightful technique soon, Queen Elsa. With a little more practice and focus training, I'm sure you'll be—" Hans calls back in a raised voice to be heard above the recurring rainfall. In Elsa's eyes, the glowing smile on his handsome, dripping wet features adds to that indeed 'foxy' gleam of his red hair as the sunset begins to break through the storm cloud that mysteriously parts.

"—impeccable…" Hans quietly finishes his sentence with inquisitive eyes upward just as the copious rainstorm suddenly lets up.

Right on cue, too, as Kristoff's arm could be visibly seen raised and pointing to the left.

"There's the signal. Irideserende, Guddy, follow that Sven, if you please." Hans confidently brushes back the water streaming down his by now drenched, mahogany red head. He was feeling rather invigorated by both the cool wetness and Elsa's eye-opening exercise.

"Shall we, ladies?" Hans clicks his tongue for his team of steeds to curve around the muddy road's bend in pursuit of the sleigh forging ahead in the sunset.

As the dusk begins to settle after the unexpected sudden summer rainstorm, another silent sleigh takes the half-revolved same turn…

* * *

By the time Sven's sleigh pulls up to an invitingly well-lit, double cabin style building, it was nearly dark.

"It looks like you got hit, too." Commenting on Hans' similar wet head as he dismounts his own vehicle, Kristoff comes lumbering off his sleigh, flattened blonde hair sticking to his neck with water droplets still dripping down his strong chin.

"Soo…thanks for that interesting cloud cover back there, Elsa. It really cleared things up…while it lasted." Kristoff was honestly grateful for any helpful kindness the ice powered Queen had up her sleeve, albeit short-lived.

"Yeah! Wasn't that amazing?! It might've lasted for longer, too, if Anna hadn't pulled her away." Olaf was too brutally honest as Anna tweaks his carrot nose behind his back, with an angelic look on her smiling face and she scoots in front of the big-mouthed snowman.

"I should've figured you were behind it." Kristoff smirks with a mildly frustrated sigh as he takes off his cap to wring it out in his soaking gloves.

"What'd I do now?" Full well knowing that she was a 'disobedient little wife' on the sleigh before, a peevish Anna pretends to be all innocent, with her dry mittens cupped behind her coyly, shrugging him off.

"Look, there's a good kitchen with a good cook in there. Why don't you girls get something to eat while Hans and I see to Sven and the horses, and pick up some supplies from the mercantile. Take Olaf, okay—and try not to get in trouble." Kristoff was starting to get used to being in charge on this journey. It was quite a change for the much-bullied, sweet-natured laid back boy of his youth, who had learned at an early, parentless young age to bow to the seniority of the rugged ice harvesters and become accustomed to taking a back seat to the domineering troll family later on.

This command role was decidedly different for the now even-tempered somewhat henpecked husband of today. Though his bossy little wife believed herself in charge, someone level-headed had to lead this unlikely rescue party in reality.

And there was no way in hell Kristoff was going to allow it to be _**HIM**_—even if Hans Westergaard was proving to be of some worth.

The tall blonde smirks at how the slighter man who was obviously well-versed with horses was giving each of his 'team' a brush rub down before he even considered his own sopping wet state.

"I'll be in the store picking up some supplies. You come in and dry off when you get the chance. There's no room for pneumonia patients in this circus." Kristoff announces in his rough way, not yet sure how to address the former villain/former suitor of his wife's.

_We'll leave that for another time._ He thinks as he enters the general store and uses the glass polishing towel lying on the counter to attempt to dry his sopping wet hair a bit.

"Hey, Olsen! A little service, please!" Kristoff gruffly complains, when the scrawny, somewhat timid, yet kind-hearted general store owner doesn't immediately appear as he usually did when anyone came wandering into his rural out of the way store, a-ringing the bell.

"Hello, Kristoff, my boy! Long time no see! What have you been up to?" The older man with receding mousy brown hair and smiling, weary eyes comes out with a familiar slap on the big 'boy's' solid back.

Kristoff seemed to be well-known wherever he went here in the North Country.

"Just…here and there. You know me." Kristoff was still unassumingly modest enough to be self-deprecating with his old acquaintances. He never wanted to blow his own trumpet at his astonishing good fortune and turn of fate to be connected with royalty and living in the palace now.

"I've been hearing that from your wife. Have you been dragging that poor sweet thing 'here and there', as you put it, without a thought to her delicacy, little Kristoff?" A large woman comes bustling in to grab his left hand to display his jammed on wedding band. Mrs Olsen almost bitingly accuses Kristoff of mistreating his new bride, as she was wont to find fault with everyone—including her docile husband. She was so well known for this throughout the region for her loud bossy mouth that most traders and travelers pitied the man and avoided his 'old lady.'

'Little Kristoff' knew for a fact that his Anna was far from mistreated and had absolutely nothing to do with the word 'delicacy.'

"Hello, Mrs. Olsen. I see you've met my new wife." Kristoff looks down upon the dark haired, plump woman with a resigned smile.

"Well, I may have peeked in the restaurant at our guests. Your little woman is the bright gingersnap one with the big appetite, is she not?" The busybody, middle-aged lady asks as she scurries around the counter, practically knocking her husband out of the way.

"Yup, that pretty much describes Anna." Kristoff answers as his attention was more on assessing the tensile strength of some new rope leads he was perusing in his big hands when the door opens with a bell ringing 'di-ding!'

"'Anna!' What a sweet name for a sweet girl! You've chosen well, Little Kristoff." She finally finds something nice to say with the compliment in a treacly tone.

"Actually, she chose me." Kristoff was quite pointed in saying, knowing full well that Prince Hans had just entered the room and was no doubt listening in.

"Oh my! Come in! Come in! That was a terrible sudden storm, wasnt it?! You're soaked to the bone, poor boy! Come and I'll dry you off, my dear. Are you a friend of Little Kristoff's? What is your name, poor little lamb?" The shopwoman commandeers a wide-eyed and shocked Hans as she leads him away into a back room, for it was a rarity to see such a fine specimen of a svelte man, obviously of some breeding from his regal deportment, up in these more rugged parts.

Hans gives Kristoff a pair of pleading eyes for assistance, to which Kristoff merely shrugs at 'Mr Popularity' with the ladies, thoroughly enjoying Hans' discomfort.

_Hmph! Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. _He muses with a chuckle.

_**Di-ding!**_

Kristoff turns, only mildly interested to see who entered the establishment. But he felt somewhat responsible after sending Mr. Olsen on a 'scavenger' hunt to find a certain special type of grappling hook as well as fill out his order for oats and grain to feed the horses (and don't forget the free cooked carrots from the restaurant for Sven.)

"Hello? Did somebody just come in? The owner will be back in a few minutes, but I shop here so much I could probably tell you where anything is…? Hmmm…" Kristoff walks the small general store in a few wide strides. Looking up and down the three or four dark aisles where anyone could've maybe rushed in when he blinked, but other than himself, the store was empty.

"Ookay, I'm hearing things now. Way too much of Anna's strong coffee—Whoa! Where'd you folks come from?!" Turning around, Kristoff was not normally jittery, but something hanging in the very atmosphere after a strange sudden storm such as this, had the man who has always been in tune with nature, on edge.

And the abrupt appearance of three dark figures moving in the shadows at the other end of the mercantile's fabric cutting table was enough to set him off.

"Dat lea guhkesaigi." (_Long time, no see_.)

"Bures, ulca gonagas bardni." (_Hello, little Prince.)_

"Gaanda mii du nanna lea? ( _What is your name, Boy?)_

"Wh—what? Sorry, I don't understand anything you're saying. Do you speak even a little Norweg—?" But before Kristoff can rationalize what was happening, the three dark skinned elderly people obviously hailing from a far northern arctic based clime from the thick deep blue wool clothing trimmed with yellow and red bands peeking out beneath each of the mysterious trio's big black fur hooded coats, take a step closer towards him.

"Dat lea guhkesaigi." The oldest man of the bunch with white snowy streaks through his once long black hair leads with eyes black as coal to land upon Kristoff.

"Bures, ulca gonagas bardni." Upon reflection, Kristoff decides that the wrinkled though yet rounded tanned Eurasian face was that of an aged woman, whose leathery features were worn deeply with years of care.

"Gaanda mii du nanna lea?" Now the suspicious-eyed third member of this puzzling trio possessed a baffling oddity in both his elaborate garb and characteristic air of mysticism that the down-to-earth young man couldn't quite place.

The three indigenous reindeer herding Laplanders move from the shadows even closer as they purposefully repeat what they each said before in their cryptic Uralic native tongue, but this time more slowly and succinctly, as if speaking more definitively would make the tall blonde man understand their words.

He strains his ears, craning his head down to listen better to the foreign language he'd only heard once or twice before from a distance, when the ice harvesting men he was raised with were doing some reindeer trading with the inscrutable Saami…

"Listen, I'm sorry. I know you probably can't understand me, either, but I really can't get your language at all." Kristoff speaks very loudly and deliberately apologetic to the three older deadpan dark faces.

"Ahkkut, Okta giella ii leat goassege doarvai." Is what the old Saami woman actually says in her native scratchy sing-songy voice in response to him after a moment. But about halfway through the sentence, she moves in to tenderly touch Kristoff's befuddled cheek.

And as her wise old eyes lock with his, everything up to now indistinctly out of focus suddenly becomes clear to Kristoff and he plainly hears her fragile voice as if it were only he and she in the world, all else swallowed in eerie silence…

"One language is never enough, my grandchild."

"Whoa, what just happened? How did you do that?!" Kristoff staggers back, bumping into items hanging low on the store shelves recklessly as he moves away in stupefied confusion, his brain reeling from the overload of information.

"You **did **hear the words of your grandmother communicate in your head, did you not, pale golden one?" The long white haired Saami elder concludes from the sheer astonishment evident on Kristoff's face.

"Wait! '_Grandmother_'? You must've got the wrong guy! I've never understood a word of Samek in my entire life! Who are you people? And why are you messing with me now? I've got more than my plate full already, without this." Wanting no trouble more than he had, a puzzled Kristoff begins to back away from the strangely cryptic native peoples this land truly belonged to, and they to it.

_I mean, I know the mountain men who raised me thought I **might** be part-Saami, but I never could remember a thing about my young childhood so I just let it go..._

"The muites—the memory—is a capricious thing over the years, even for the Honorable Spirit Wind Whisperer. Are you certain that this is the boy?" That third old Saami, the one dressed in the traditional long gaktis tunic Saami robe of a Noaidi—_Shaman—_raises some chary doubts to the other two.

Although, just in the past decade, Protestant Father Lars Laestadus, a kind-hearted yet savvy Puritan missionary, had integrated Lutheran Christianity with the old Saami belief system that had been in place for thousands of years in the region. Many Saami embraced the ideal of One True God's love, though some still clung to remnants of past rituals, with a great number of Saami slowly accepting Christ into their hearts as a '_God who cares for the lives of all people'_, including the downtrodden pariahs of society such as they were often unfairly treated as shunned nomadic wanderers, despite their growing shared belief in the same God.

"Honorable what? I think the storm's got you nice old folks spooked." Kristoff scoffs now with a condescending smile at the small trio, none measuring more than 5 foot 5 inches in comparison to his massive 6 foot 5 as he turns his puzzled whole foot higher back on the three harmless little old loonies to return to the counter with his select length of rope and other various discounted supplies he'd picked up from the well-stocked shelves along the way.

"Olsen! I'm ready to go! Where's that feed, already!? And don't forget Caroline's glazed carrots from the restaurant for Sven! He asked for them specifically when we pulled in."

Kristoff takes out the weather worn old leather pouch, he'd had for forever, from his belt sash where he kept secured his hard-earned money. Then he economically begins to busy himself counting—_precisely_—what was to be doled out to the shopkeeper.

But the stoic young man was feeling a tad uncomfortable all alone in the empty store with the trio of enigmatic strangers' eyes boring a hole in the back of his skull, then exchanging some hushed words between them, dark beady black eyes staring up at him, as if he were some sort of—

Out of nowhere, all three aged Saami reverently fall to their knees, as if they had just been possessed of some great idol to worship.

"What now?! Come on, guys! This is getting embarrassing now." The red-faced easygoing laid-back 21 year old was feeling pretty darn silly himself, and more than a little shamed for the elderly natives bowing at his curly-toed boot feet like he was somebody way more important than the working class ice harvester he was.

"Riegadit golle maanas Baiwe boahtit farmi dii vuorbi." _("Golden child born of the Sun, the time has come to fulfill your destiny.")_

"Um. Okay. You're officially weird." Said under his breath with a crooked smile on his lips at the comical scene of the colorfully dressed elderly trio at his feet, Kristoff's eyes bug out at the strangeness being played out –especially when the Lapland trio begin to hum their foreign tongued yoike chant.

They were holding hands and swaying rhythmically on their knees on the floor when the mercantile shopkeeper comes bursting in to chasten them.

"What are you type doing in here?! This is a God-fearing institution. You natives know your sub-arctic voodoo magic isn't welcome here. Leave my store now."

Kristoff had never even imagined in all his wildest dreams that kind, even-tempered, quiet Mr. Olsen would've exploded with such ferocious racial prejudice against his fellow man—especially the elderly of any color or race, who at the very least, deserved respect.

"Olsen, these old folks aren't hurting anything." True-hearted Kristoff was too utterly good to fall into the pitfalls that many a self-righteous person often did as he watches with pitying eyes the small north Eurasian indigenous people rise to their worn out feet and hobble towards the front door without so much as a word of protest—as was the plight of their entire downtrodden race in that day.

"You side with those wandering homeless natives, boy? I guess you ice harvesters aren't much better. Just take your supplies and leave my store." There was more fear than anger in the middle-aged shop owner's eyes as he throws down the two sacks of grain feed at Kristoff's feet that he'd just brought up. He then scurries into the back storage room again, slamming the door behind him, so petrified of the Saami mystics' magic under his roof.

"But I didn't pay yet. Don't you want your money for all this stuff?" A frustrated, grimacing Kristoff whines. His trusty coin purse ready to be honestly employed was still in his shocked hand. "Fine. I'll pay you next time, Olsen. Just put it on my tab. You know I'm good for it." Kristoff cranes his neck around the corner to shout, far more loudly than his low timbres generally allowed.

He then struggle to gather up the sacks, and all the ropes and gear spilling over his already overfilled arms. Just about to put his shoulder to the door, he recalls he left something behind.

_Darn guy…_

"Hey, Hans! Time to…book…it…?" Kristoff's thick eyebrows knit in befuddled humor when, right on cue, the tall, lithe aristocrat comes unceremoniously bounding from the rear textile supply room, where Mrs. Olsen had 'kindly' taken him to towel off and to show him a new outfit of dry clothing to the surprisingly yet innocent young man.

But that didn't seem to be all the stout and portly woman, well past her prime, was offering. Prince Hans Westergaard, though deft with sword and ship, was rather none too versed, it seemed, in how to handle a middle-aged lady's 'hands on' expertise in measuring up and down the unpleasantly distressed young man for an agreeably form-fitting pair of dry pants.

"Yes, that does sound more than ideal. I find I wasn't…at all interested in making a purchase today." Rapidly tucking back in the oversized billowy sleeved inner sark Kristoff had loaned the shirtless man from his own meager luggage, Hans rather diplomatically addresses the delicate subject as he quickly smooths back some ruffled and loose strands of hair that nearly matched the color of his now flustered, near molested, cheeks.

"Must be tough to be born irresistible to the ladies." A patronizing Kristoff chortles, finding the situation funny despite the other peculiarities of this less than amiable visit as he eyes a flustered Hans self-consciously pull back on his removed Arendelle cloak _(for the fitting of course, dear!)._

"I wouldn't know." Swift fingers refastening the dampness-be-damned cloak, a bashfully mortified Hans knew he was being mocked, the blush still on his cheeks as he manfully hefts the two grain horse feed sacks over his scarred shoulders, lightening the load for his already weighed down traveling companion.

Kristoff opens the door. "Let's just get back to the humdrum sanity of the open road. It's nuts around here."

"That sounds more pleasant to me than my most recent proposition." A rattled Hans gives the taller man one of his rare discomposed genuine sentiments.

For the first time the two men share a smile as their rivalrous camaraderie had expanded to a new level of shared youthful humor. As they walk through the front awning, Kristoff sees Olsen's silhouette through the side window, he knocking on the windowpane as he silently words that he'd pay up soon. But when Olsen pretends to not notice him, the overwhelmed blonde gives one huge exasperated exhale. The pair prepare to leave with the verbal I.O.U still hanging in the air behind them, and Kristoff steps out into the suddenly bitingly cold, wind-whipping darkness.

"Varut! Nuorhtuvuoinna mu diksu jos boahtte aigi." (_"Beware! The Spirit of the North Wind is anxious of your future.")_

In the dark of the clouded half moon, the Saami nomadic man's voice eerily rasps out, stopping them in their tracks as the two young men stride towards the lean-to shelter for their waiting beasts.

"Aww, not again. This is getting to be too much." Though bewildered, Kristoff was far less reactively apprehensive than his companion. The blonde's eyes go quite wide to watch the recently woman-handled pampered prince immediately spring to action, Hans dropping both sacks of grain to the ground with a swiftly produced dagger at the gleaming ready to slash through any imminent danger like a professional blade man.

_Where the hell did he get that?!_

"**Hans**!** Put it away**!" Kristoff gruffly barks the command, as he takes a fiercely protective stance between the three grizzled to leather aged natives hailing from beyond the country's tundra far north and the one unexpectedly armed and dangerous youthful resident of the Southern Isles beneath Norway's far south.

"But, Kristoff—!" A pensive eyed Hans appeals to the brawnier man by his first name.

Prince Hans, hardened in these past two tormented years after a lifetime spent in constant defense, both mentally and physically from twelve mean-spirited older brothers, had learned more than his share of self-preservation techniques over his friendless, rejected youth.

"I'm asking you to trust me." The small assured smile and Kristoff's restraining hand on Hans' dagger grasped forearm that accompanied Kristoff's quietly spoken request diffuses Hans' agitation. The unnerved redhead had been on edge since last night due to these unknown intruders which had put his mind on prime guard.

Sensing deep certainty in the big blonde's unguarded eyes, Hans lowers his weapon, even to the point of re-sheathing it in his tall boot's hidden side. With a trusting unspoken nod in his direction, the slim man moves to stand beside a surprisingly docile Iriserende and Guddy with a wary eye still on the strangers as he loads their sleighs.

"You possess the wisdom of your forefathers, Spirit Whisperer. Your Juoska is nearly complete." The white-haired elder now announces to Kristoff's perfectly translating ears, though he understood little of the unreadable emotions on the deeply creased forehead of the leathery face for the man's true meaning.

"Spirit Whisperer? Juoska? Look, I don't know how to break this to you, but I think you've got a case of mistaken identity. I'm no legendary foretold Saami hero. I'm just a regular ordinary ice harvester nobody named Kristoff Bjorgmann who doesn't know a thing about your culture. I'm no one special."

Though leaving off he held the title of '_Prince Consort of Arendelle'_ now due only to his recent marriage, modest Kristoff still always considered himself a normal working everyday Jon as he reaches over unconsciously to pat Sven's gratified supportive neck.

"'I thought you forgot me!'" 'Sven' says through his demonstrative voiced smirking interpreter.

"No, I didn't forget you this time, old buddy." The real Kristoff answers his wobbly throated furry friend as he digs through the packets the storekeeper wrapped atop the feed buckets.

The droopy-eyed reindeer practically leaps for joy at his best friend's words, panting excitedly when the man produces a special cooked and seasoned carrot that a justified Sven half gobbles greedily before pausing to leave the remainder of the half chewed beta carotene rich vegetable for his pal. "Nope. It's all yours this time. Thanks anyway, Sven." The three Saami watch with interest as Kristoff seemed to be having a sociable conversation with his extremely tamed reindeer.

"But it is who she opened your heart to hear that day, that made you the man who you are today." Rhyming a cryptically sung yoike, the old woman now vocalizes as she touches a twisted old withered hand to Kristoff's chest, right over his pounding heart, causing Sven to cock his head at her inquisitively.

"I don't understand. Why do I need to know this? Who are you? What are you trying to tell me?" Kristoff pleads to the old woman with the deep soul in a whisper, never feeling so curious in all his life as to his genealogy as he looks into the fathomless depths of the elderly woman's mysterious, yet comforting, eyes.

"You will remember how you were chosen when the moment is right, little one. That is when your reflection will show who you truly are inside, if you search deeply and honestly within."

Did she say that aloud? Or was it merely a thought broadcast to him with an instrument beyond her inexplicably unmoving lips?

Kristoff was growing so addlepated his mind was beginning to not be able to think straight. as he and Sven share an equally perplexed stare.

"And when the Bielgomai rears its ugly head through the darkness, you will require this, _Christ Bearer_, to fight for the Light in His holy name, to drive the evil back from our land and back into the sea."

The previously dubious Noaidi shaman now acquiesces to recognize Kristoff for who he was and Whom the golden haired youth's namesake was, more definitively, after keen eyes watch the interaction that was foretold between chosen man and beast.

Conveyed amidst this puzzling, mysterious conundrum, the nomadic shaman reveals from beneath his large fur trimmed bearskin cloak, he was holding some arcane secret within its folds.

"A Saami long bow and arrow." A thoroughly impressed Prince Hans breathes, as the shaman brings the curved wood out. The young male had made quite a study of nearly all forms of weaponry in his days of ignored youth spent tucked away in the palace library. And the boy who had his own modest experience in the field of archery was intrigued in seeing the most famed, most sought after bow in all of Scandinavia in real life before his curious eyes now.

Widely know for its fine craftsmanship, specialized refined wood, all hand-carved, specifically treated and painstakingly polished to create the ultimate superior weapon that was wholly instrumental in a young man's 'Juoska'—the legendary journey for a Saami from boyhood to manhood when he was fully able to string such a fine bow himself and send its arrow flying straight and true…a Saami man's rite of passage...

A mystified Kristoff merely stares down at the golden tan well lacquered bow as the man's dark skinned bony hand transfers the legendary bow into Kristoff's lighter complexion brawny ones.

The impressive composite bow, delicately handmade and passed down through generations, was created by the Saami who took great trouble to perfect the compression spruce to be able to bend so the finely honed bow would have the maximum reflex strength of the polished conferrous rare woods curved into a 72 inch length of highly sought after scarce goat willow.

"But why give this to me? I've never shot an arrow before in my life! So, I'm hardly the one you should be entrusting this to." Kristoff is finally able to ask, belittling his own shortcomings as he tries to hand it back over.

"Twenty-one midnight suns have passed over this land since the Great White Woman prepared you for this. Your moment in the sun is soon to come. Ancient legend goes:

'_This bow will speak the Spirit Whisperer's name through. And with his arrow, so too flies his soul, straight and true…_'"

The eldest of the three Saami extends a gnarled bony hand to land on a hesitantly amazed Kristoff's shoulder with the prophesized yoike and enigmatic phrasing.

"Ollu Iihkku." (_Good luck.)_ The aged Lapland sage murmurs directly to Kristoff's confused eyes before he turns to disappear into the dark night.

"Baze dearvan." (_Goodbye.")_ The convinced dark shaman Noaidi priest nods his farewell after placing a revered hand over the recurve limb of the decades old honed wood of the cherished bow as he hands Kristoff the bow's sleeve quiver filled with special crown dipped nock shaft arrows.

"Kristoff, Ipmil lea johtalit don." (_God go with you, Kristoff_.) The old woman had wells of tears in her eyes, Kristoff was sure, as she grips both his big hands in her little ones to christen them with both her kisses and tears.

"No, wait! Don't go! I need you to tell me more about—" Kristoff was not skeptical anymore, for he believed they were speaking truth, freely given and taken between he and these aged nomad wanderers in some strangely unique bond he'd never felt before in his orphaned life as he recalls the ice harvesters' sparse rumors of him as being part-Saami.

"Jos Eadni mu cabmi lea…" (_You have your Mother's eyes…")_

The old woman, who called herself 'Grandmother' moves back slowly, as if parting from him was almost too painful for her to bear, as she holds onto his full warm hands within her shriveled bony trembling palms, emotion evident at last in her warm final words.

Until she finally lets go to join her companions to melt into the shadows so completely vanished without a trace, it was as if they were ghosts, never there at all.

"Were you able to interpret anything they were saying in that strange tongue? I'm afraid I didn't understand a thing, though you appeared able to." A pondering Hans softly interrupts the hushed silence with the wondering curiosity, causing a mixed up Kristoff to question his own teetering sanity.

"Did I?" Yet Kristoff could gaze in a mystical daze down at the conclusively incontrovertible physical objects of bow and arrows and quiver actually held in his spellbound hands in the darkness to prove those Saami **were** real.

And just in the snap of a finger, the heavy dark cloud hovering overhead in the sky dissipates, allowing the fresh moonlight to stream though at last.

Along with it, as if preordained, comes the trio of girls. Rapunzel, like a true 'big sister,' was tugging Anna, who seemed to be dragging her heels into the ground a bit upon seeing Kristoff. She squeezes Elsa's hand for support as Olaf waddles up behind them.

"You fellas ready to go?" Rapunzel seemed to have been elected as 'spokeswoman' for them after the three ladies had had a 'heart to heart' talk over the meal.

Looking sheepish after their first tiff earlier, Anna was in a more content, pleasant mood once she'd had a dose of her older cousin's advice on men and married life—plus a full tummy of chocolate frosting on her lips, Anna licking her sticky with sweet, gooey goodness fingertips.

For half a moment, Hans almost feels the urge, but just stops short of doing the honors himself, by gentlemanly handing Kristoff his handkerchief to help Anna, while he gazes raptly at the taller, young blonde woman with the corseted blue print frock, illuminated in the moonlight instead.

But the strapping ice harvester was almost too preoccupied to notice, until Rapunzel's elbow in his gut brings him back to reality and he distractedly wipes his wife's chocolate smudged face, without either comment or eye contact.

"Are you still…sore at me?" Anna asks her silent husband in an unusually timid, shaky small voice, when he just stares straight past her into the thin, dark air—like she was invisible.

She wouldn't have admitted it before, but Anna was feeling like a naughty little girl all evening after their very first argument over being disobedient and defiant to his doting, caring concerned responsibility for her health and welfare, when the earlier rainstorm also fell over her rebellious heart.

That guilt and the fact that she just spent so many extra orts frivolously on chocolate confections of every sort in vengeful, 'getting evenness', that the sweet, normally happy girl was feeling so down and out she could just pop.

"Oh, Kristoff! Anna's been a bad girl! She's so sorry for making you angry!" Spoken in the third person cutely, Anna throws herself wholeheartedly into her husband's unexpectant arms. Kristoff powerfully wraps her up in them as he passes his new set of bow and arrows in their quiver to an observant Hans, who casually adds the weapon to the supplies he was loading into the sleigh he was already adeptly hitching to the reindeer.

Elsa's keen eye that had been following Hans every action, now focus with curious interest on the new items he was covering up under a blanket.

"No, why would I be?" Kristoff replies with a smile.

Anna's heavy heart soars at his gentle words and increasingly affectionate soft eyes.

"I could never be mad at you, Sweet cheeks." His hand reaches to pat her rosy cheeks, petting them adoringly, then giving the rosy pair a gentle squeeze, showing her that all was forgiven.

Though he never even knew they had had a fight.

"Anna, I was just talking to these three old Saami people and they said—" Kristoff was the most honest and accessible husband a girl could ever want. He needed his relationship with Anna to be always out in the open, but he didn't quite know where to begin, so as not to cause any excess alarm.

"They wanted to give your husband a gift to mark your happy occasion." A cunning Hans swoops in to smoothly fill in the gaps for the disoriented blonde.

"Oh! A wedding present! Wow! We're famous! How sweet! What is it!? What is it?!" She asks excitedly as a little child as Hans uncovers the bow to display it before her enthused eyes. "I always wanted to try one of those! THANK YOU!" Caught up in the minutiae of wedded bliss again, Anna was wildly yelling and waving in every direction to the pitch black road, though there was no one to be seen in either way to receive her gratitude.

"Okay! Let's get this show on the road! I'm gonna shoot me some arrows tomorrow!" Anna cries out her newly revitalized battle cry after standing on tippy toe to secure a happy again kiss on Kristoff's bewildered, yet satisfied lips. He was becoming more grounded to earth again by her love reflected in his eyes as he and Hans load the women and friends onto the sleighs.

"Thanks for that." Kristoff goes up to Hans as if to discuss the roads ahead. "I guess they don't need more on their shoulders to worry about than they've already got. Good call." Kristoff relinquishes to Hans' own wisdom here in holding one's own counsel in impending predictions of doom where bow and arrows may be required weaponry.

However, there was one point of contention still eating at Kristoff's mind.

"Exactly how long have you had that nifty little dagger tucked away in your boot, Mister? I guess you never felt the _need_ to share that strangely intriguing point of information with your unsuspecting friends, hmm?" Kristoff may have been more perturbed with this unsavory discovery a day or two ago, but Hans Westergaard was starting to grow on him—_just starting, mind you_—with the way in which he always had his back.

"Friends? Thank you for that…Kristoff." A smiling Hans seemed genuinely touched and pleased.

"Yeah, and that's still 'Mr. Bjorgman' to you—because I have a new bow with a quiver full of arrows to prove it." Kristoff smirks at the other man with a glint behind his challenging eyes.

And as Kristoff returns to his own sleigh, his investigating gaze travels up to the contouring shadows crossing the mysterious dark side of the moon…

* * *

Thank you so much for reading this exciting installment! :hugs:

And if you please...**Reviews make Olaf a HAPPY SNOWMAN! ^.~**


	21. Chapter 20- Diamonds in the Rough

We do not own "Frozen" nor any of its characters.

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act I**

**Chapter 20**

**"Digging for Diamonds in the Rough"**

In the midnight's overcast dearth of light, the gorgeously tanned and well-sculpted muscular physique of a shirtless man pauses in his unpalatable forced toil to stare down at his two painful hands.

The scrapes and blisters he had 'manned up' enough to endure the past few hours spent in the difficult job of employing a shovel through hard permafrost encrusted soil that had not been broken for the past three hundred years were now splitting and bleeding incessantly.

Despite the cold evening chill, the salty sweat that had been stinging both his already bruised black eyes now trickles down his exhausted bicep muscles along the popping veins of his well-formed arms and across his still-half frostbitten extensors until, by bad luck, his own body salt and acids burn at his freshly opened wounds.

"Owie! I don't see how you pirates expect the delicately refined skills of these talented hands to pick any locks to your precious secret treasure in this state. Damn, that stings!"

Tossing down the heavy shovel to display the bleeding scratches on his chafed palms, not to mention his already beaten and battered body from his failed mutiny attempt of the Pearl Lady, Flynn Rider now bewails his painfully blistered and bloodied palms as his yet arrogant voice calls up from the hole he had been digging himself into.

Literally.

Since their clandestine arrival under the cover of darkness some five hours ago after the previous night's secret reconnoiter of the area, a beaten down Flynn had been an unwitting and unwilling participant in. Then accomplished thief had unhappily had his back put to work doing one of his absolutely least favorite tasks, his tall form bent over an endless amount of dirt to break ground in such tough soil, digging.

And boy, five hours into their happy jaunt, Flynn's exhausted back was sure aching.

"I don't do 'dirt.' I don't even like potted plants! Never mind that garden Blondie always plans for us to plant in the castle's backyard." In a whiny voice, Flynn grimaces aloud under his breath in the dark at the packed dirt crater he had spooned the soil from one exerted shovelful at a time until he was physically six feet under—

_No, scratch that. That sounds bad—I'm six feet down in the dirt._

"If ye're hands be worthless, thief, ol' Houtebeen's sword might be amiable to relieve ye of zem all together so ye have no more complaints mumbled under ye're breath." The sneering patch-eyed pirate's ready face, made even more sinister and hideous by the lamplight he was holding, had been looming over the two meter wide pit Flynn had excavated. Houtebeen was so close and full of eager curiosity that the thief could smell the foul odor of the aged pirate's putrid breath through the captain's rum-soaked beard wafting over him.

_Ewww…everything about this guy reminds me of the color of mud._

He looks up at Houtebeen's sneering red face lording down over him.

_I really hate mud…_

With shifting, sunken black eyes, Flynn dejectedly wipes the filthy sludge old Houtebeen's dragged pegleg had just catapulted at his eye sockets and cheek—and even some into Flynn's opened mouth at eye level, to which he spits out, disgusted at the thought that this wasn't just plain dirt. It was the dirt of a graveyard where age-old bodies had decayed within.

_Yuck. I need a good gargle._

"So which be it, thief?" Houtebeen cruelly removes his cutlass from its scabbard hovering threateningly closer to Flynn's hands, as the exhausted man leans them against the cool dirt wall he had created for support.

"Did I mention I suffer from claustrophobia? Ever since the orphanage when the bigger boys locked me in that old, smelly trunk, which, by the way, as a kid of four years old, was good incentive for teaching myself some pretty nifty lock picking abilities. Handsome little devil I was, if I do say so myself." Flynn rattles near the end of his response with a somewhat quirky smile, remembering the lonely days of a little, abandoned whelp left at the front doorstep of the orphanage—who didn't belong to anyone, anywhere, except to himself.

And that's who taught him how to survive.

"Enough of ze mumbling, thief!" Captain Houtebeen's redheaded temper explodes. He had had just about his fill of Eugene Fitzherbert's 'fond' childhood memories.

"Who's mumbling? Was I mumbling? You must've been hearing this grave's former occupant's final gasp, angry at us for invading his hallowed space. No complaints here from me though, Cap'n. Just connecting with old terra firma here." Patting the unsettlingly disintegrating dirt wall, Flynn smooth talks his way out of the dicey situation. Then he grabs up the discarded shovel in quick hands to industriously return to his tunnel burrowing down through some poor deceased's uprooted gravesite in the eastern rear side of the Nidarosdoman's cemetery of consecrated grounds.

"That be better, ye cunning scoundrel. Enough of ye're fast-talking mumblings." The unctuous Houtebeen angrily growls. "Job! Ye keep an eye on zis unscrupulous blackguard while ye're captain has a look around zat zere river to make sure we've not been followed."

As cued, the dark Caribbean man swiftly appears from the shadows had had been almost totally swallowed up in, save for the whites of his cynical eyes.

"Hi there, tall, dark and—" Flynn takes a sweet talking approach in an attempt to beguile the bristling, taciturn man who had previously beaten him to a pulp to perhaps garner some—

"Just dig, t'ief." The quiet, sullen, dark-skinned first mate grunts out the three terse words. He was clearly able to spy the wily conniver's sketchy dishonesty in the lamplight he was passed.

"Fine. No one cares if I have morbid fear of dying in confined spaces. It's only me…" A sighing Flynn gives up with one final mumble, mainly because it reminded him of this pretty girl with seas of green eyes he longed to swim in again.

The same girl who cared for him way more than the no-good crook ever deserved.

So Flynn damns the pain of his raw blistered palms and manfully continues his now more dangerous shoveling as it angles beneath the top soil turf through the cold, grimy clod with an undaunted smirk that had her plucky name mumbled upon it.

"Rapunzel…"

_Come on, Blondie. Shine that magic of yours to light this thief of yours way out of this mess he's gotten himself into._

Flynn thinks in the pitch darkness as he steels himself to the task, not only physically straining, but also risky. The innate human fear of being buried alive should his tunneled squirreled out hole collapse around him, and end all of Flynnigan Rider's swashbuckling daydreams once and for all.

But Eugene Fitzherbert, once he got past the blustery bravado and cocky smooth-talking, knew that he would miss most of all his greatest treasure hunt's most brilliant jewel to surpass all other precious gemstones he'd ever tried to steal before—his little piece of sunlight named 'Rapunzel.'

_But if I close my eyes, I still can see your light…_

Flynn stalwartly plunges forward as he chunks out the packed dirt to his left like an intrepid mole burrowing his way blindly, as the cold, dark world starts to shudder and shift above his head frightfully...

* * *

"Eugene…"

Almost like she heard her husband's thoughts come to her across the miles, the soft words hanging on the lips of the slumbering girl was full of longing and trepidation—and above both, love.

A calm Elsa, with eyes full of compassion, within the quiet parked Vis-à-vis coach, shares a glimpse with Pascal seated next to her on the bench opposite to where Rapunzel was stretched out, resting with arms dazedly hugging herself in a fetal position.

The soulful eyed chameleon alters his light greenish scales to a more melancholy grayish shade whilst Elsa comforts the lizard with a soft stroke of the head.

Arendelle's Queen, too, was meant to be sleeping, but while the horse-drawn sleigh had spent most of the night following the one in front of it, they had circumnavigated the Orkla Fjord, leading through the more eastern provinces of Skauva and Vinjeora. Then they began weaving their reindeer and horse trails through the many small fjords that dotted this northeastern section of her kingdom's scenery, all whilst cousin Rapunzel's grief was eating away at her.

_She loves him so…_

A sympathetic Elsa tries to put herself in her brave cousin's shoes. Though the two girls wore vastly differing styles, there was something fraternally familiar about their men.

…_My man…?!_

Though she was as yet having a difficult time wrapping her bewildered mind around the fact, a part timid, part terrified, part thrilled Elsa could still hear Olaf's question from earlier—from when their epic journey was just at its start.

And she had been pondering its mysteries ever since.

_Is he a good bad guy…or is he a bad good guy? _

_But aren't we each born of Man's sinful nature? It's what we all must strive to overcome—every single day, made easier to achieve in our walk with Him. Right? _

_And if the Lord can move mountains, how much simpler a human heart?_

Queen Elsa feels God's bright morning sunlight begin to break through the dark night's lengthening shadows that the sun's rays were slowly dispelling over the vulgar mountain ranges.

But now closer in the periphery, those grayish, dusty peaks were actually– if you looked with fresh, not jaded, unsullied eyes—glowing glorious, awash in the purple majestic glow of a new day.

* * *

Yesterday was a lot to digest for a young man just starting out in his new life, with a new bride, a new home, new responsibilities—and now new problems and worries that came along with those new predictions of impending danger and doom that he had been told he himself would somehow be instrumental in defeating.

_Me? But how? With this thing?_

The tall blonde sitting on a large boulder under the dawn's early light that had fallen over the peaceful glen they'd set up as camp for the night, stares incredulously at the wooden long bow that had been handcrafted and passed down from generation to generation of Saami warriors—from father to son, for hundreds—maybe thousands—of years in the rite of passage of the enigmatic Juoska.

_So what's all that got to do with me? Were those old Saami people back there saying I'm a part of their Clan? I really** do **have Saami blood in me, then? I know I've never met any of my real kin—with my parents being killed in an accident when I was just a little fella. The ice harvester mountain men took me in then and they seemed to be intimating that I was at least part Saami —but whenever I asked, those guys were never much on conversation. So I never heard much else about who my real folks were. _

_But they did teach me the valuable lessons of having a good work ethic out there in the frozen tundra areas, where I learned that a hard honest day's toil gave a man dignity and self-worth. I'll always be grateful for that._

Kristoff's musing mind heeds his own thoughts. He stands from the rock perch he had been seated on, in deep contemplation of what to do with the foreign device that he had been gifted by those mysterious three people last night.

_Oh yeah, last night…_

Kristoff allows himself the hint of a silly wistful smile in recollection of how his little ray of sunshine—his sweet, little Anna— had somehow mistakenly convinced her spirited mind that he and she had had their first fight as a married couple, over the dumbest thing he couldn't even recall now.

However, to reassure his emotional new bride that he was truly not vexed with her, the fun of making up the argument after a several long tedious hours' drive, **_in_** the sleigh for the first time was memorable enough to convince her.

Once the other sleigh and a dropped off Olaf was securely placed for the night in the quiet mountain base location, Kristoff directed Hans to make camp while he and Anna went on ahead to 'check out' the safety of the perimeter surroundings.

But that wasn't all the newly wedded couple, bursting with youthful hormones, were checking out under the soft, pale summer moonlight, beneath a pulled up tarp cover so that all unobtrusive Sven had to deal with were sound effects of Anna being quite a giddy, forgiven giggler.

_Crazy Anna! There was nothing to forgive. Though I did enjoy the benefits of you thinking there was..._

_**Ahem!**_ _The big and tall man still possessed the sweetness to clear his bashful throat loudly. _

_Right. Let's do this!_

Slapping his hands together, a red-cheeked Kristoff, with his adrenaline well pumping by now, stretches to his full six foot, five inch height as he grasps the long bow bequeathed him in one strong hand and the quiver bag full of various pointed honed bone arrows with his other.

He raises one of its thin shafts up to the bowstring as he had imagined he'd seen one held by the hero of a children's storybook. Now to fulfill his own tall tale's 'destiny', Kristoff draws the length of bowstring to arrow shaft ratio as the purple and pink hues of the dawn rise over the mountain peaked horizon.

**_Boing!_**

But the young man whose hands had never picked up, never mind shot, this type of weapon in the entirety of his life finds this simple enough first step to be a tad too demanding—what with all its strange foreign taut strings and sight crosshairs parts going all awry under his inexperienced hand.

"Oooh, this thing doesn't like me…!" An aggravated Kristoff angrily murmurs to himself in vexed disappointment as the wooden compound bow with the heraldic markings on its well-notched, tried and true curvature, drops to his depressed side.

He had been trying all morning, since before the first light and with all those inspirational speeches of him being some 'chosen Golden one', 'Saami legendary hero', 'Spirit whisperer' and the like, the sweet, innocent young boy that still yet lived within Kristoff Bjorgman's untainted heart wanted to believe that he would just magically become this ultimate, mystical archery master with his first flown arrow.

_Reality check, Kristoff. You get nothing for nothing in this life—and you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear._

The humble young man mocks himself, for ever entertaining the far out fantasy that he—a nothing ice harvester, mountain man, orphan boy who may even now claim some Saami roots— two groups of the Norwegian working class's poor outcasts, would ever be considered as more than the low rank in society he was born to.

But that never bothered him one iota before.

Kristoff had always lived an honest life, true to himself for himself. The confident man found much pride in the sweat of his brow and the work of his hands. There were no false vanities nor delusions of grandeur that he could ever aspire to anything more than his station in life.

Not that he ever wanted to anyway. It was just by luck that the girl he fell in love with just happened to be a princess of the kingdom.

Did that matter to down-to-earth Kristoff Bjorgman?

Nope.

He would've married Anna if she was a poor fisherman's daughter who washed windows for a living.

_Now there's a scary thought…_

Kristoff amuses himself in envisioning his accident-prone girl dealing with fragile glass on some rickety old window ledge several stories up.

But his knowing smile deepens with the assured thought that his strong arms would still always be there to catch her when she slipped.

"The arrow, with a proper fletching, does tend to fly better when its spine is held perpendicular to the nock point between the bow's riser."

_Oh…that all-knowing voice again._

Kristoff's already ruddy face from all that morning's exertion reddens even deeper at being caught only half aware, daydreaming, when he was supposed to be practicing with his new sharp tipped 'legendary toy.'

"Good morning, Mr. Bjorgman." A polite Hans didn't intend to sound overbearing, but he couldn't help himself in the tease upon watching, for the last several minutes, while he was feeding the horses, how poor Kristoff was proving so inept with his new bow and arrow.

_The man doesn't even know how to hold its anchor point properly!_

Now Prince Hans, formerly of the Southern Isles, more than any of his twelve older, begrudging brothers, just happened to have some awards back home on archery that attested to his own mastery of it.

Hans Westergaard was declared an uncanny natural at archery, even at an early age. Although deemed too small to stand taller than the standard long bow's twenty-eight inch curved height, the eager to please boy took it up anyway, as if the red-headed lad had archery skills in his blood running straight through the Scottish heritage of his veins.

After awhile, he was even able to hit moving targets, right on the mark astride his galloping trusty steed, Sitron, all through his childhood, pleasing many an approving audience, though never his cold, uncaring father, nor entourage of jealous brothers watching, still, even in his memories...

"Oh, it's you...'Morning." A brusque Kristoff remembers how Bulda had ingrained some degree of manners, though his salutation came out rather too gruffly due to his own frustrations.

Hans nods at the greeting, albeit late in arrival. Mr. Bjorgman had his shirt off despite the cool chill of mid-northeastern breeze, displaying his ample muscular build's peak physical fitness.

From Kristoff's tight _**eight**_-pack abs of rectus abdominius, transverse abdominus, external abdomens and tendinous inscriptors, to around his well built external intercoastals and seratus anteriors, up to his finely sculpted pectorals, then back down to his deeply carved abdominal obliques, the burly blonde had every bit as much musculature as all the pored-over encyclopedias on human male musculoskeletal anatomy a thin and bony Hans himself had always envied since he was a gangly teen.

_It's no wonder Princess Anna would ridicule me, if this is her standard._

Kristoff looks at the strange way a smirking Hans was eyeing him. The big blonde grows self-conscious as he fumbles with his bow to hold it more…

_What was that? Perpendicular…?_

"**_What_** are you looking at?" Having enough, a ruffled Kristoff finally confronts the man whose eyes were boring holes in him beneath the purplish cloud strewn sky.

"Oh, do pardon me." Hans clears his embarrassed throat. "I was merely considering your lack of form—in archery, that is. A proper posture is essential in achieving success with your aim." The Danish prince smiles encouragingly from years of learned experience.

"What are you? Some kind of bow and arrow expert, too?" Kristoff scoffs as he defiantly lobs off another volley of wilted arrow shafts that traverse the air not more than a few feet in either direction from where he was standing.

"Modesty forbids me to say, but it may aid you in that I have much hands-on knowledge in this field, since the early days of my youth. Believe me, archery is a difficult sport to delve into if you have no prior experience or helpful instruction, at least. It's as if I could just be able to pick up some ice tool and instantly know the learned skill of splitting or cutting or lifting ice as perfectly precise as an experienced harvester, such as yourself." In animated expression, Hans was doing his best not to sound too conceited or lordly, for his diplomatic studies had given him a heads-up on fragile male egos as well.

But fortunately for him, Kristoff was too utterly good to own much in that ignoble bumptious self-intoxicating area linked predominantly with alpha male types. The fair-haired man was too fair and level-headed by nature, and at times, near angelic, to sink to those all too mortal, faulted pitfalls.

"I can just see **you** doing that." After hours of trial and mostly error with his bow, Kristoff pauses in his exasperated attempts to afford Hans a crooked smirk. He then turns to try just one more arrow. But when the latest one shoots so far askew in left field that it bounces and skitters across the ground like a bunny rabbit, his confidence follows suit.

"Ohhh, darn thing! Okay, I give up…!" Kristoff sinks to his knees in total frustration, flopping to his back and covering his frazzled face with a bent arm over it, though the wooden Saami bow was still tightly gripped in the other. He just lies there still on the ground, feeling defeated.

After a few moments spent in silent self-pity in the dawn's early light, Kristoff is called back to his senses when a handsome silhouette covers the illuminating sunrise in the east over him.

"She is too fine a lady to surrender her so easily. You only have to learn how to hold her and stroke her gently—like a lover—and believe me, she will respond in much the same manner." A coy eyed Hans whispers to Kristoff as he kneels beside the prostrate young man. "But you would know more on this subject than I." He adds rather bashfully with a slight blush tracing his high cheekbones. Hans then holds out to Kristoff the six spent arrows that had been strewn across the field he had gathered for him.

"Stroke her like—" Kristoff repeats, as he removes the arm flung over his eyes, quite intrigued with Hans' interesting analogy concerning this new bow clenched in his big, brawny rough hands, that couldn't find the delicacy to handle.

"—you would tenderly hold your new wife." Hans' smile was wily, yet soft, in his underlying rudimentary meaning, not in the terms of technical names for the instrument's many intricate parts or titles of honed archer skills, but in basic, guileless ways that Kristoff could connect with.

"…Hold this bow…as if it were Anna?" It was like a light suddenly switched on in Kristoff's brain as his legs, almost unconsciously, leap his body up to his full, tall height. He was now cradling the wooden bow in his arm.

"Here, you'll be needing this." Hans takes this opportunity to slide onto Kristoff's left wrist and lacing it securely, a leather armguard bracer he had crafted from some excess parts of horse tackle that he'd gleaned from Iriserende's well-pouched saddle she'd come with.

"Thanks…" Eyes concentrated forward on his goal, Kristoff doesn't question the 'professional' archer's protective leather strap after the more experienced man had laced it to his wrist.

As the day breaking world suddenly goes starkly silent around him, and feeling a new surge of confidence within a daze, Kristoff thoroughly focuses on the same target on a tree, fairly far in the distance, that he had hung earlier, though no previous wilted or misdirected arrow had even come close to assailing it.

But this time, against the craggly grey mountain backdrop, with Anna's sweet smile in the forefront of his mind, Kristoff Bjorgman raises the golden hued, handcarved spruce and willow compressed bow. He gives it a fond stroke to its curved limbs at exactly the correct height over his head, exactly the correct placement of arrow shaft to nock point, exactly correct draw length on the bowstring between the riser through his sight window, until, as if in an out of body trance, he pulls the perfectly strung arrow in a skilled finger pinch technique, with even more precise aim to release—

**_Zzzzing!_**

The sharpened stone point cuts straight and true through the crisp morning, still air beneath the purple billowing clouds, directly in line with its objective goal and—

Bullseye!

The Saami arrow whistles through the air until it finds its target, dead center, so precisely zeroed in, that even Hans was impressed, especially after an invigorated Kristoff now swiftly loads and reloads, shot after perfect shot of arrows, until the target on the tree was replete with perfect bullseye hits.

**_Clap clap clap!_**

"Wow, Kristoff! You've got really good aim! Who knew? We thought you were just good at delivering ice, and painting birthday signs. I bet I could shoot arrows almost that good if I had rippling muscles on my chest like you do. But I don't even have muscles…or a chest. So you don't have to worry about competition from me. Heh heh he. Hee hee." Olaf's inane giggles and clapped together branches loudly call attention to the impressive scene as he waddles from the camp over to the modest man, who was looking down at the bow in his hands, amazed at himself for abilities he knew he never had before.

_Maybe those old Saami weren't kidding._

Kristoff snorts a chuckle to himself as he gazes at his destined, legendary bow in eye-opening astonishment.

"By the way, Elsa sent me to tell you guys that it's time for—" Olaf begins to convey his original message when a loud, boisterous voice rings through the skies in his place.

"—**KRISTOFF! BREAKFAST TIME!" **

His little wife's big voice cries out from around the meadow's bend with her demanding, rustic beckon and banging clamor of pans.

* * *

Sometime after Hans had left the camp earlier, after he had already started the campfire before seeing to the horses, Elsa and Pascal had climbed from their covered sleigh to take the initiative and begin cooking the team's early morning breakfast.

And it looked like head chef Elsa was handling their 'frying pan'—now makeshift 'griddle'—very well indeed. Her platinum blonde hair done up in a neat bun, Elsa had become pretty deft at mixing up some flour, sugar, and water, plus the secret ingredient of finely chopped potato slices that she had found in their replenished food supply basket. She cleverly made her best quick spur of the moment recreation of one of the recipes a certain prince had taught his 'scullery maid' in their time together aboard that pirate ship.

A few minutes later, Anna had stumbled from her sled bed beside the furry neck that a tired Sven had extended into the sleigh for her to use as the fuzzy pillow she had been drooling on when, either (A) Anna had heard a suspiciously happily humming Elsa up and at'em at this crack of dawn by the campfire already, where Anna would not let her big sis and that Westergaard go _totally_ unsupervised. She could just imagine the pair cooking up something rather intimately at the roaring fire with that man in Elsa's hair again.

Or (B) Anna's own adorable hungry nose had scented the tasty aroma of toasted flapjacks and she would offer to kindly help her big sis set their picnic blanket table for the breakfast meal.

* * *

"Could that really be Potato Lefse my pleasured senses are all detecting? Please, allow me say, I am continually fascinated by your limitless aptitude, Queen Elsa. Good morning to you." From the nearby glen's target practice area, wearing his Arendelle cloak well, Prince Hans returns to the campsite to have eager eyes and rewarded nose be greeted by the lovely pale-skinned woman's tasty ministrations of flipping hot cakes of Denmark's most favored morning treat on the new griddle pan (AKA remastered, remitted, remalleated former Kransekake cake pan) upon the campfire's flames that quick-to-skedaddle Pascal had volunteered to crawl under to light the fire for the Queen of Ice.

"Good morning, Sir. I do hope I remembered all the amounts of ingredients to keep true to the original recipe you so kindly instructed me on, Prince Hans." A doe-eyed Elsa can't help but blush when Hans can't help his stray fingers from brushing those 2 pesky strands of loose hair from her coiffed, back-bun do.

"I am certain they will be all the more delicious if created by these delicate hands." Now not just symbolically brushing the back of Elsa's trembling hands that were still busily a-flipping hotcakes, Hans drinks in the girl with the meek wide eyes attempting not to glance up at his touch. But his undeniable oozing over charm was far too attractive for any girl not to be drawn into it for long, as Hans responds by gently smoothing those stray bangs again that a frazzled Elsa was attempting to blow back away from her forehead out of her eyes.

_The hair again! You just have to have a thing with her hair, don't you, Red?!_

"—**KRISTOFF! BREAKFAST IS READY!" **

'Good hostess' Anna practically growls her banshee-like screech so close behind the pair she was covertly skulking behind that Elsa is so startled she pulls away to toss a mid-flipped lefse straight up in the air. But fortunately Hans' quick reflexes grab hold to catch the steaming hot pancake in his hands.

"Hot! Hot! Hotcake!" He was playacting of course, chuckling as he passes the fresh off the presses flat potato cake between his two hands until the jocular redhead comically manages to land the escapee breakfast fare back into Elsa's well-aimed fry pan.

All to which causes the highly entertained Ice Queen to join in his lighthearted laughter before leaning down to blow some swiftly formed ice vergles and snowflakes in her super-cooled controlled hands over to his impishly waggish, teasingly feigned scorched ones. The chilled ticklish action of which, both soothes and entices Hans simultaneously under her cool breath's touch over his fingers.

"Ooh!" Secret observer Anna stomps a sabotaging furious little foot to the hard-packed grassy ground. But in her usual clumsiness, goes slipping and sliding along the wet dewy grass blades of morning.

And again, as per usual, Kristoff appears just then from around the bend of the glen where he was still pulling a shirt back over those admired rippling muscles for sociable decency's sake. He swoops in to stabilize his spinning like a ballerina/top out of control sweetie doing awkward pirouettes wearing her Scandinavian designed olive green frock beneath her puffball trimmed cape draped over shoulders bobbing in the cool morning breezes.

"Is breakfast ready? Why didn't you call me, Anna?" Kristoff was uncharacteristically full of himself with more than a full measure of the tease as he glances down to his breathlessly dizzy girl from where she was laid out in his arms tensely.

_He was right. Holding that bow gently is how I hold Anna gently._ Kristoff's face had a quirky grin pasted all over its bemused twisted lip as he squeezes her skinny arm, with fingers soft yet firm.

"You didn't hear me?! Why do I even bother?!" Anna throws her hands up in the air in exasperation until her short attention span catches sight of that new 'wedding present' of a longbow clutched in her hubby's hand as he sets it on the ground beside the picnic blanket she had laid out earlier (_a shame I missed that_). He then settles himself and a plopped Anna on the blanket to eat some of those delicious smelling—'manna' to a nutrition starved well-exercised stomach—potato lefse that Elsa had made with her own hands and Hans was gentlemanly serving out, from a politely extended tray as a proper waiter—_not a Prince_—would.

"Did you try it already?! Without **_me_**?! How does it shoot? When do I get my turn?!" Anna sprawls her lithe body over Kristoff to reach over him to touch and ogle the golden wooden limb of her thrilling new prize. She was so giddy with bubbly excitement (as the sheltered little Princess met every new experience in her life, full of gusto) that Anna forgets all other concerns when she sits back to grab a flapjack in either hand to give a quick enthusiastic absent-minded big bite chew on each one in turn.

"Whoa, slow down, Feisty-pants! You're gonna get indigestion eating fast like that!" He chides with an amused smile as he then has to fend off the guilty faced girl who had just downed the rest of the hotcake nearly whole just that second before his warning came. She lunges back over Kristoff to grab the bow lying there, like a kid with a new toy for Christmas would.

"Hold on, flutterbudget. You're gonna have to promise to learn some safety precautions first before I let you loose with this sharp headed baby." Kristoff has to physically restrain his spirited squirming wife who was almost kicking and screaming to grab hold of that shiny new toy glimmering gold with the rising sun in her bewitched eyes.

"Stop it, Anna. This is a dangerous weapon that only we men should be handling." It was humorous how diminutive snowman Olaf takes up that mantle as he aids Kristoff by yanking away the bow and its quiver of deadly pointed arrow tips out of the reach of Anna's grasping hands just itching to scoop up the bow and purloin some arrows to start blasting off in any given direction.

_Hans Westergaard's tight bum bent over the campfire seeing to the firewood looks pretty darn fine a target about now_, Anna begrudgingly had to admit, as she raises her arms mimicking the bow she wasn't permitted to touch—_yet!_—in his direction with a wicked gleam in her eye.

Anna decides to just chew on another pancake lefse instead, though the look on her face was far from satisfied.

* * *

Finally finished whipping up the remainder of the lefse batter to take as snacks on the road, Elsa and Hans had just sat down to join Olaf, Pascal, and a fondly bickering Anna and Kristoff with their first serving of potato lefse, for which Hans praises the Lord of Heaven and then the Queen of Arendelle for 'providing for the deliciously created meal that feeds both hungry stomachs and hungry souls for the good company,' when the final member of their rescue party comes bounding and tripping from the Vis-à-vis sleigh.

"Eugene! Somebody help him, please! My husband's in terrible danger! I can feel it! Please, take me to him quickly!" A disheveled and distraught Princess Rapunzel launches herself bodily from the sleigh car where the others had thoughtfully left the poor nightmare-tossed and stomach-turned young woman who had been softly moaning for hours, though she was sleeping, as if her very soul itself was in restless pain.

For it was. Her love for her beloved husband, her funny friend, her other half soulmate was so intense that Rapunzel's broken heart was certain she could hear his plaintive voice calling out her name in the darkness. And she could just sense through their true love's bond that her Eugene was cold and sad and hurt and scared—

_And alone…_

Elsa and Anna immediately jump up to their feet to comfort their hysterically weeping older cousin in a tight group hug that Olaf and Pascal soon are squished within as well.

Kristoff and Hans exchange a silent look as both men carelessly abandon their breakfasts to spring into action, their pensive eyes sharing a foreboding sense of trepidation, sending Hans running in one direction to quickly hitch the horses and Kristoff in the other to get Sven ready to move out all due haste.

But the big blonde doesn't forget to reach down to grasp hold of his new companion in all its legendary golden glory glinting in the fresh sunlight. His Saami bow and quiver was filled with arrows readied for the fight against this emotionally charged incoming storm with Flynn Rider's fate riding in the heart of the eye of it…

* * *

Hello there friend SSB-sama! Thanks for your great reviews on chapters 2 and 17!

I really enjoy hearing new comments on even past chapters gone by, so we can relive the story fun together!

Just thought I'd try to personally drop you a note of gratitude for your kind interest here, since I can't reply to your review.

It's so nice to share our thoughts and hearts over the miles thanks to Fanfiction and imagination's magic. ^_^

God bless you as you continue to read through our very long and winding still continuing tale!

Please review often and tell me what you think of your favorite chapters and characters as you forge ahead in "Frozen: Again"!

Thanks!

Your Frozen friend,

HarukaKou!

P.S. La Corda is wonderful too! Did you read my full blown novel, 'Crescendo 2f" yet? My sister (who is my greatest writing supporter and forever best friend) adores Len x Kahoko and the story revolves around the entire Corda gang having romantic adventures traveling to the city of music, Vienna and culminating in Len &amp; Kahoko's engagement.

It's complete, so give it a read, if you already haven't ^_^ (then I'm tilting at windmills :)


	22. Chapter 21 - Tales from the Crypt

We do not own "Frozen" nor any of its characters.

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act I**

**Chapter 21**

**"Tales from the Crypt"**

"So…I've been getting pretty well adjusted to the infinitesimal amount of lighting down here as we enjoy one another's company. However, my internal clock tells me the sun should be up by now somewhere up there, topside…so—

"How about stopping for a breakfast break, Big Guy? After all, these massive biceps, stunning triceps and pretty impressive traps and delts of mine can't be expected to keep running on empty, can they? It's bad for the balanced nutrition of my four daily food groups." In spite of his aching overused stated arm and shoulder muscles, never mind the black and blue beaten up body trapped between the freshly dug dirt packed walls that were miraculously holding up in the tunnel he had been burrowing through all night, _(Thank you, Lord_) Flynn Rider's biting wit still was as ever-present as his winsome smirk beneath those trademark heavy eyelids.

"No." In stark contrast to the con man's elongated sentences, the dark individual at his back had only a one word terse reply. Job then utilizes his own pick axe to pointedly take a swing at the underground stone portal that Flynn had recently unearthed before their path, once the consummate thief found his bearings from the treasure map that his swift brain had already committed to memory.

"Why did I have a feeling that was going to be your answer?" As he ducks the crumbling dirt ceiling from above, Flynn glances back at the four feet of packed dirt he had broken through laterally until he and his 'shadow buddy' were pleased earlier to find a larger already carved out section of the tunnel structurally in place. They had been able to move forwards more at leisure, until the pair was confronted by this rather enigmatic lower level entry door hidden beneath the eastern cemetery plot section of the Nidarosdomen's hallowed grounds.

"Uhn, uhn, uhn! Let a professional get in there!" After watching with jaded lowered eyes the big Caribbean native give the immovable door a few powerful whacks extra with his pick axe, Flynn halts Job with a calm hand placed on his shoulder. "That is, please, allow me, kind sir." Flynn amends his command when the dark man with an axe at his disposal gives the former thief a dirty look.

Warding the sour face off with a trademark smirk, a shirtless Flynn Rider then masterfully cracks his knuckles together and flexes his injured digits in the air before he begins to feel his way across and down the stone door engraved with the scenic etchings that depicted the nation's canonized holy king—Olaf's legendary exploits.

After slow careful inspection, Flynn pauses at a certain spot on the monolith to rap a pounded fist upon its stone surface before leaning an ear to the lower left sector of the ancient solid stone entrance.

Job patiently looks on as a silent Flynn appeared to be listening for some untraceable sound as his nimble fingers peruse the locked impediment's carved face in deep thought.

"Aha!" Flynn's excited voice abruptly cries out, as sure hands spread eagle over the slab door in full expectation. With a satisfied grin pasted on his handsome, yet totally smug features, the thief's eyebrows shoot up in a veritable salute to himself when the kneeling man's two outstretched extended thumbs simultaneously press the center of each encircled St. Olaf the Holy's symbolized coat of arms decorating either side of the tablet.

The subterranean door slowly makes a creaking noise as it unseals for the first time in three centuries to reveal a slight crack.

"Still got the touch." The muscular-chested man proudly murmurs to his vain ego as, in true showmanship swagger, he blows the dust from either golden gifted hand.

"Nevermind 'touch', man! Shut up and push!" Job orders the self-congratulating miscreant as the black man puts his own wide shoulder in to convince the secret entrance to allow them entry the rest of the way.

A sighing, exhausted Flynn follows suit. as told, damning the pain in his aching neck and scratched up bare back to shove the stone door until the gap widens, and the two tall men slip through the egress of the cavern.

Flynn's eyes strain in the dusty dark catacombs they stride into beneath the cathedral. Here a series of dilapidated and cracked stone monuments and carved tablets marked the last remains of many beatified holy saints of the faith where their relics had been relegated to this sub-basement from the small chapel's reliquary during Nidaros Cathedral's slow restoration after fire damage in the late 16th century.

"Now that's creepy." A never awestruck Flynn comments drolly upon spinning from the stone he had helped heave forward beside Job to come face to face with a gothic styled statue of the King in all its eerie realism, wielding an axe in one hand in his crusade to extricate heathenism of the old Norse code from his land. In the opposite hand, the sculpture held that squirrelly scepter Flynn himself was all too familiar with that symbolized Norway's power and authority.

Once Flynn extracts himself from the disturbing projected statuette attached to one of the dusty stone tables, he slowly begins to read the only non-runic Proto-Norse letters inscribed on many of the chiseled broken marble pieces lying upon it.

Suffering the ravages of time, accidental fires and era changing upheaval, most of the 11th century holy fragments were reused as building blocks in these lower level catacomb walls during the medieval period's turbulent Middle Ages, leaving only these few discarded left on the surface.

"Rex Perpetous Norvegiae—Olaf den Hellige" (_Norway's Eternal King- Olaf the Holy_)

"Boy, you think they liked this old geezer?" An irreverent Flynn Rider incredulously glances around the dark spider-web strewn catacomb at the vast amount of archetype carvings and sculptures honoring the 11th century ruler of Norway depicted alongside many recognizable religious symbols.

Growing up as an orphaned throw-away rascal who ran from the cold dark asylum as soon as his independent legs could, to give his eager eyes escape to explore the freedoms of the big world out there for all its richness had to offer the poor discarded lad, young Eugene Fitzherbert never found much reverence for anyone or anything. And some omnipotent invisible God who lorded some mysterious power over people's lives was included, top of the list.

At an early age, the boy full of dreams of adventures who so dubbed himself 'Flynn Rider' after his fictional hero Flynnigan, rejected, nearly off-handed entirely, the stiff religion of the cruel cold orphanage headmaster who was more interested in strict drilling the children and slave-driving work from the unwanted ones left unfortunately too long in his 'God-fearing' care.

But that same boy who had matured into a man was preordained, perhaps, to meet with the girl with magic not only in her hair, but also the glow of the sun in her smile changed Flynn's—_Eugene_'s—whole perspective on the harsh unfeeling hypocritical world with her innate goodness and light. And that shine was soon to be accompanied by the sweet abiding faith of her good-hearted—albeit nutty—parents, who embraced the lost boy as a son, without prejudice nor need of elucidation of his sordid disreputable past that made God's unfailing forgiving Love all the more inclusive to him in their examples of generosity day after day, not only as churchgoers on Sundays.

All the little ways Flynn Rider and Eugene Fitzherbert both came to see the Light thereof, as Rapunzel's caring family showed him that there must be Someone up there guiding our steps, for a worthless sinner such as he to have been blessed to gain not only his precious girl's genuine golden love, but also a family who took him into theirs as well.

_God knows I miss you, Blondie. But I got a pesky orb to retrieve first...So, I might be a while, darlin'. Hey, you take care of the little lady while I'm gone, Big Fella Upstairs…please…_

Maybe the sanctified relics were doing something to his jaded heart, but Flynn had to find some release to steel himself with a deep breath to get back to present reality, if he ever was to get back to a life with her.

That and Job's rumbling thunder low voice from where the tall man was industriously moving with his strong muscular arms a large cracked tablet that had been leaning against the dark room's interior door. The stone structure had been obstructing entry to this secret reliquary room full of old discarded relics, untouched and unremembered for thousands of years.

"Hey. You find us what we came for, **now**, T'ief." Purposefully placing before a distracted Flynn the folded up map Captain Houtebeen had transcribed from Arendelle's stolen orb, Job pushes aside the marble tablets Flynn had been transfixed upon to lay the creased map upon the stone table.

"Okay! Okay! Sheesh! Brr! I wish I had a shirt! It's too damp and cold down here with all these dead folk's relics for a guy to thieve properly! First grave-digging, now raiding some holy crypt's reliquary of its treasures could chill a man's bones. How low do you expect a respectable thief to go? Eww! I hate spiderwebs!" Flynn bellyaches as he waves gyrating arms about himself and the statues nearby, then gives the dark giant a twisted lip all whilst sleight of hand techniques pocket some new anomaly that had caught his roving eye.

"Low." Job's deep voice responds in a grunt as he finishes clearing the doorway that had been tightly sealed off from the rest of the cathedral basement area for centuries gone by to ensure he had an alternate route out to the Captain should the tunnel collapse on the thief who gets the auspicious spot of crawling back first.

"Gee, thanks." Flynn smirks, though his attention was elsewhere in this cryptic crypt.

"He may have been a great guy and all, but ole' Olaf wasn't much in the looks department, was he? Just look at that nose! Do you think they got it wrong, too? 'Cause I personally can attest that artists do _**not**_ do fine Roman noses justice. Oh, looky here."

"Did you find somet'ng, T'ief?" Though exasperated at all the petty pilferer's ramblings, observant Job still notes the high pitched change in Flynn's tone. He detects something new was afoot from across the room where he had just peeked open the door he had loosened to peer his dark head from the dark catacomb into a stairwell leading up to a more brightly lit higher floor of the Nidaros Church chapel. There, a few of the most devout members had already begun to enter the holy edifice upstairs and Job, feven rom three stories down, could hear the faint sounds of the musicians' choir start their early morn practice run high above in their choir apse.

"Me thinks—_ergh_! I may have—_ungh_! Just put my finger upon it—_ergh_! My saturnine friend! Right on the nose!" Flynn, as usual, jibes his way through his ingenious archeological leap of faith. It was either genius or his fetish for noticing noses he could thank for this discovery.

_Whichever, works for me!_

Intrigued by his own wily curiosity now, cat-like Flynn suddenly stealthily begins to climb upon the dangerously crumbling marble tablets to stand on each of their peaks until his long arm could just about balance to reach across to the depicted saintly halo-ed King Olaf on the long tapestry hanging on the Northern wall of the crypt. On its rich fabric, the exalted ancient King was standing in a scene beside the saints of Heaven, pouring droplets of holy water and wisdom down upon those peasant believers who were giving supplication for healing…

But upon the tip of St. Olaf's beatified nose near the tippy toppest of the 15 foot long hand embroidered crewel tapestry, just out of regular eyesight from below, was a spot that Flynn had at first considered an ugly characteristic blemish.

But now in second circumspection, sharp-eyed Flynn conjectured that blemish way up there, just may be a concealed lever…

_And levers were made to be pulled, right?_

The swarthy stubbly man throws abandon to the wind and yanks the lever amidst the tapestry at King Olaf's face, with a silent prayer this madness would all be over soon and he could safely get back home with his wife—

—Until a flying axe, that had been part of the kingdom's heraldic crest's regalia, comes zinging through the air from the opposite wall with exact trajectory to ensure the end of any would-be defiler, slicing asunder any hopes of quick exits.

* * *

"Oh, no. BOOBY TRAP!" But years of living on the edge of his seat gave Flynn Rider the advantage here. The agile young man had garnered quite a knack for slipping in and out of danger unscathed.

_Shhkkk!_

The sharpened weapon that came hurtling from the converse wall of the dark crypt catapults its deadly streak towards Flynn. But the dexterous thief finds just enough bounce in him to push off the wall and leap to another dark ledge. The spinning axe just misses its chance to carve into his back by a razor's edge.

_There's a fine choice of words._

After releasing a pent-up sigh, Flynn's gripped on fingers slowly start to weaken and let go, one by one, until the poor crazed-eyed man can hold on no longer…

"Wh-whoa! Oh no, no, no!"

But his survival instincts kick in at the last moment, as he uses the remainder of his strength and pliability to launch his open chested body back-flipping towards the long tapestry as grasping hands and flailing arms catch hold of the thick embroidered fabric to slide back down to the safety of the ground, though his thoughts were traveling along with him at a comparable swift speed.

_Didn't some other handsome fella just show me how to do that with pinache recently_?_ Never thought any kid could teach this old dog some new tricks! He was every bit as good as I am. We would've been great together. Note the word 'would'. Anyway, moving on…_

"Yeah! Baby! How's that for some quick re—"

_**FWOOSH! **_

_**WHOMP!**_

"—flexes? Oof. That's gonna leave a mark." An at first triumphant Flynn then dizzily grumbles as he sits squarely on the floor, rubbing the back of his addled head from where, by his constant companion—_bad luck— _the ancient hanging's riggings had been sliced apart by the flying axe to send the heavy tapestry tumbling down. And part of its flapped ends unfortunately descended to smack Flynn on his rock-hard noggin, a bulbous bump already rising upon the crown of his head.

"Look, T'eif! You uncovered somet'ng! You found a new map of da river!" Job eagerly points one dark digit upwards, several feet up to where, had the revered tapestry remained in place as it had for over seven centuries, none would be the wiser for the existence of this secreted map.

"Of course I did. I was planning that all along." A snide Flynn shakes off his own surprise mingled in queasiness with amply supplied bravado. He scrambles to his feet, squinting instantly keen eyes putting to mind the easily mapped coordinates simply depicted in numbered steps and a clearly marked 'X' as well as compass directions of N, S, E, &amp; W for all the old Norse runes sketched upon it that the continental thief never claimed to know.

Along with the telltale cartography symbols of the Nid River to compass by.

After all, the _Nidelva_ –Nid River– would have to play a vital role here, again. For it was after his martyred death at the Battle of Stiklestad in the year 1030, or so the story goes, that the holy warrior King Olaf was transported in a simple wooden coffin and buried on a hill in the sands overlooking the Nidelva, high above the city of Trondheim. Though it was the Norwegian patron saint's life that stirred sagas and legends throughout all of Scandinavia in the years to come, acclaim for the King who dared to spread Christianity's healing Good Word to the people, lives on still…

_Some leaders trust in God, some not_

_Even so, their men well wont._

_God-fearing Olaf, fought and won_

_Twenty pitched battles, one by one._

_And always placed upon his right_

_His Christian men in a hard fight._

_May God be merciful, I pray_

_To him, who never shunned his fray._

Saga of St. Olaf vs. 260

* * *

The Nidarosdomen's high spire Cathedral stood atop a hill overlooking the river Nid. Its green double tiered turrets peering out over the rich Gothic architecture cathedral built over the trade city of Trondheim so majestically in the fresh morning sun was a scene that could take one's breath away.

With its decorated pillars at the entrance and ornate dragonstill trims and numerous statues of the saints glowing in the sun's rays, the Nidaros Cathedral reaches for the Heavens to the One who blesses it, as choirs within begin to sing praises to the Lord.

That is, if you were interested in giving praise to a loving, constant God, which one heartless, deformed—body and soul—peg-legged pirate had absolutely no intention of doing by exalting anyone other than himself.

"Vat took ye so long? Ze sun already be up nearly an hour, ye spineless wormfed scallywags!" Captain Houtebeen's grey streaked red hair was as flaming hot as his angry, perturbed features that gruesomely greet Flynn and Job as the pair reemerge from the underground chamber crypt they had tunneled through earlier.

"Did ye get it?!"

"And a 'good morning' to you, too. You're looking very red in the face this fine morn, my anxious Captain." A vainglorious Flynn's quick tongue was feeling rather brash and cocky after his triumphal fresh delving into his former life of adventurous larceny. He swaggers across the grounds after hefting himself with swank from the six-foot dug chasm that he and Job had just crawled through.

_Ahh, daylight again! Dark, deep pits are__** not**__ good for my complexion. _

_**SLAP!**_

_And neither is that…ouch!_

The maddened pirate backhands a backtalking Flynn in the mouth with his fisted cane, drawing blood from the man's jaw.

"Ookay…that hurt…I guess you don't want to hear about the new map with more exact coordinates that I just uncovered, then." Flynn licks his bloodied chops with his tongue, knowing he had a bit of an ace up his sleeve here, so he could test the waters.

"Vat new map, ye pilfering parasite? Vere is the jewel? Did ze thief find me my diamond?" Houtebeen's already spent patience was all but nil, and Flynn had this way of rubbing people the wrong way.

Especially, ones of the red-headed variety.

_Sideburns back there was a red…but he didn't seem to have the bad temper typical of the shade. Poor kid. He turned out to be pretty quick with his hands and all those slick moves that got me out of trouble in the end. And what do I do to repay him? _

_Get him dead. Just like his old girlfriend—that stunning Queenie with the long gams. All my fault again. Sorry, kids, I think you two could've sung some beautiful duets together again, had I not blown it. No good lout I am. _

_And I'll never get the chance to say 'I'm sorry' to either of you._

Flynn's calculating, cunning mind only gives a moment to spare for such depressing thoughts of the ill-fated lovers.

"What diamond? Were you talking about diamonds? Sorry, no diamonds. Just a map carved in the wall of the dirty old crypt full of dust and broken stones. And did I mention I nearly broke my neck on flying axes from a booby trap? Do I get extra hazard pay for this job, or wha—?"

But Flynn's excuses are cut off by Job's succinct answer.

"Yes, Cap'n, he did." Job gives the flabbergasted, slack-jawed thief a no-nonsense look.

"I'm hurt, Job. I'm really hurt that you don't believe me. After all we've been through together? I really thought that you and I were developing a close—yet not too cozy—relationship, built on respect and trust in one another's abilities—"

"I'll take dis." The Caribbean man's hand plunges into Flynn's trouser pocket and feels around until he pulls out a rather large octahedron jewel from the jewel thief's filching pocket that had contained the lustrously rare, uncut, transparent crystal.

_Hey! That is __**not**__ the close relationship I was referring to!_

"Damn! You are one sharp tack in the box, big fella." Flynn grudgingly compliments the man at the same time he was inwardly swearing at himself for getting caught with his pants down.

_Metaphor._

"Good! Good! Since we have zis here, zen we won't be requiring zis filthy pig's services anymore. Get rid of him and his unhinged, vexatious mouth once and for all, Job. Now I will examine zis new little pretty…" Houtebeen's buggy, greedy eyes were drinking in the large, perfectly clear faceted crystal between his grubby fingers with an even bigger smile that begins to run across the wrinkled old lines of his hideous face.

"Listen. I don't know how to break it to you, Captain, since you've got your heart so set on it. But the quality on that thing is so bad that I wouldn't even call it a diamond. That's primarily why I didn't want to give it to you just now! Believe me, I've seen carats on real ice before and this ain't it. So you'll still be needing me to find you a genuine article, right? I'll do it at a special discount rate for you—considering we're old pals. How about on the house? To show no hard feelings, okay?" Flynn's voice was ranging from low and arrogant to shrill and pleading, with a gamut of anxious feelings in between, as the lifelong charlatan was delivering the most important con of his life—because it most probably would be his last one.

Flynn gulps, staring down the barrel of Job's raised and pointed revolver aimed right between his eyes. Houtebeen's smile and subsequent chortles of laughter dismay Flynn to no end as the aged seaman appeared to be tickled pink adding even more red to his tones at the thief's desperate pleas.

"A fake diamond, ye say? Zat's why ye were sparing me, ye say? Heh heh heh! At least ye'll die hearing me hearty laughter go with ye." Houtebeen breaks out in a belly laugh at the confused blackguard.

Flynn had no idea whatsoever what the dirty old pirate would want with some practically worthless rock crystal so much that he'd go through all the trouble of kidnapping and dragging Flynn all the way here to the sticks of stupid, cold Norway to pilfer from dead people's tombs.

"Look! No one on the market will buy that—it's too rough. I'm lookin' out for you! Just wanted to save you all the bother of finding a diamond cutter, a dealer, a middle man—believe me, there are some unscrupulous characters in that business who will try to edge you out of your take. I personally would advise to just have me lift an already prime diamond, for a quick and not too risky profit. I hear they've got some really doozies in France on that nice balmy Riviera. Or maybe, better yet, in warm, sunny, scenic Venice, where frostbite is** never** an issue when getting a gorgeous tan gliding on gondolas through the canal…Yes, I'm sure I could easily introduce you two to some choice gemstones ther—"

"Just shoot him already, Job! So we can have some peace and quiet." Houtebeen dismissively cuts off Flynn's loose tongue ranting as the pirate twirls the many angles of the lustrous, clear crystal in his gnarled hands.

"Wait! Hey! I did my part! I'm still an invaluable member of this team. _And _I've got that new map memorized in my head. We didn't have a chance to write it down—no pens provided. So, you've gotta keep me alive, at least until you find your precious treasure, right? Job, you can't be so sure of what you saw because it was up so high, can you?" Flynn flies one more tack to save his life—despite how worthless he was feeling now.

But his life meant something to Rapunzel, so he had to try.

"T'ief's got a point, Cap'n. We can slit his throat after we be findin' the treasure." Job speaks with the cool and collected wisdom that hot-headed Houtebeen hears.

"Yeah, after you lay your grubby hands on that stupid treasure, you can slit my—huh? What am I saying!?" Flynn's eyes go wide at the realization of the words he was saying, and he wished his own hands were free to cover his gulping constricting Adam's apple.

"Very well. Just tie him up to zat tree over zere—to keep him out of our way, ze bilge rat. Ve'll kill him as soon as ve're sure ve're successful." The odious pirate captain nods to his first mate to, under threat of sharp knife, muscle an overpowered and out-weaponed Flynn towards a pair of oak trees on the far left side of the Cathedral's back wall.

"You wait here." The dark seaman harshly double knots Flynn to the tree's trunk so that the wily man couldn't move a muscle.

"Do I have a choice? Oh no, the gag. Why always the gag? Ugh…"

Job was sagacious enough to think to tie Flynn's rampant mouth shut with a quick gag, for finishers.

"Put ye're sails to ze winds, Job, while ze sun's still high in ze east!"

The timing was absolutely crucial on this weather perfect day. The anxious old pirate was so close to tasting success that it was agony to wait any longer now.

"Aye, aye, Cap'n." Job replies as Houtebeen entrusts the precious crystalline 'gemstone' to his first mate's care. The tall Caribbean places the crystal atop a pole the old pirate captain specifically carved according to the data gathered from Arendelle's orb held in his gnarled greedy hands.

Houtebeen had taken great pains to expertly whittle the sized pole to be able to advantageously cup the flawless transparent rough diamond in an unfettered high perch.

At his boss' command, Job carefully maneuvers the balanced pole the length of Houtebeen's scratchy voiced counted steps read from his transcribed map, six steps first to the west beyond the graveyard, then twelve steps to the north towards the treeline.

When the captain finishes directing the dark man to the spot where the orb's hidden map identified, and the raised crystal stone has no positive reaction after a few paused moments, Job gives a nod to the irritated seaman who begins cursing someone under his muttered foul breath, before continuing.

Abruptly amending his bearings, patient Job adds five extra steps east back towards the cathedral, just in a location, that as his eyes look upwards, the sun was beginning to peek through the high green turrets of the church's spires.

"Dis is where da 'X' was on dat map in the crypt. Am I right, T'ief?" Observant Job sensed Flynn's sharp eyes widen after silently counting along with each one of the big man's steps in the memorized slight change in orientation.

The quizzical feigned doubtful look in Flynn Rider's unsuccessfully deceitful shrug assured the shrewd first mate that he was right on target.

So, as Job erects the correctly measured pole to the correctly placed out spot, in perfect line to fall between the tall double tiered green turrets, the crystal was balanced precisely in its hewn cradle as all three men watch with baited breath.

The sun's brilliant 10 o'clock morning rays begin to rise and shine above the easterly section, with a trajectory now even more refined due to the new map that Flynn had uncannily discovered behind the tapestry that depicted St. Olaf looking down from Heaven upon his subjects with the miraculous healing power to change the heathen heart of a nation. The rained droplets on the carving symbolized the legendary healing waters that sprung from the martyred King Olaf's burial spot—here on the steep bank near the western side of the Cathedral that was posthumously built around it, overlooking the River Nidelva's sparkling waters.

According to medieval Icelandic history throughout the Scandinavian area, the spring that flowed forth in the year 1031 AD was accredited with healing properties that made the blind see, the sick walk, and the crippled be whole again—much akin to Ponce de Leon's 'fountain of youth' that Captain Houtebeen had encircled the globe to find and fail time and again.

It was the very stuff legends were made of, that, through most of his adult life, the embittered seaman, who had hungered for the vitality to walk on fully functional two legs again, for the past thirty years longed for every waking second.

So when fate dropped anchor this new chance before his pirate ship's floundering course, no matter what the cost to his soul it took him to get it, the ruthless pegleg would achieve his goal—if it took Heaven and Hell to do it.

At first glance, the vivid sunlight gleams its vital rays upon the accurately raised eight-planed equilateral crystal that myths through the ages had stated was created by King Olaf's royal descendants with the explicit rule to only be used in this fashion should there be some terrible deadly outbreak of plague or illness among the people that would unravel the very fabric of their beloved kingdom. King Olaf himself had founded his country on the tenets of Christianity's teachings of goodness and peace and fairness—hence the law of the land was called 'St. Olaf's Law' that still holds true to the righteous laws of the Ten Commandments to this day.

Holding his breath, the insidious pirate watches as, just as foretold, the sun falls between the double tiers and the small parallel cleaved crystal is struck by its precise solar streaming rays. The iridescent light of which is redirected by the diamante-like crystal's refractions to aim at an exact point on the steep embankment.

As the crest of the sandy cliff is illuminated and heated by the dazzling sparkling light, and all eyes upon it are astonished when, at first a small amount of liquid dribbles out, to grow steadily stronger until a small fountain of water springs forth from the side of the rolling sands on the steep hill near the Nidarosdomen's western side.

"He was right! Ze fool was right about ze legend of ze crystal!" Houtebeen was so elated that he was practically doing a jig on his one good leg as he rushes forward, kicking up sand recklessly as he races towards where Job was standing, to fall on his knobbed knee directly behind the trinkling spring.

The wild-eyed Captain comes just short of plunging neither his face, nor his hands nor his leg to be immersed in its mystifying waters he's yearned for so long.

_Not just yet…Patience…patience…_

But the hopeful elation drops to Dutch cursing despair when his wide, dark shadow against the eastern sunlight puts a damper on the streaming rays, causing the miraculous spring to dry up almost immediately.

"Vat?! Verdomme! You cannot stop yet! Not until I exploit your riches for myself!" Houtebeen doesn't realize that it was his own wide cast shadow befalling the sunlight-hungry spring until level-headed Job rushes back over to his stagnant, stubbornly rooted to his spot Captain, to bodily move the willful Pegleg so that the solar light could once more have free reign to radiate God's warmth again upon that particular clump of cold frost just beneath the soil—and permeate it with His healing light to coax the waters from it again.

It was a perfect analogy to a lost mankind's eternal plight, for a wayward soul's frozen darkness to be transmuted into the pure healing warmth of His secure proffered gift of Love...

The Holy Cross that rose high in the sky on the tips of each turret are aptly silhouetted on either side of the gently flowing renewed spring that pours out the healing waters to those hearts that were genuine enough to accept that Love…

It was just as King Olaf understood, hundreds of years ago, that he was to allow God to determine his life—to take Norway's history and change it, bringing the justice of the Lord to the entire Land of the Midnight Sun.

For the ascetical patron saint of this nation was inspired to unite all of Norway under His Healing Light as a servant of Christ, whom his heart trusted to defend this country, for all time…


	23. Chapter 22- Get Me to the Church on Time

We do not own "Frozen" nor any of its characters.

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act I**

**Chapter 22**

**"Get Me to the Church on Time"**

The soft waves of the River Nidelva gently crash against the transport river ferry that Kristoff had commissioned. He had persuaded the usual sightseeing ferryman to allow their entire party onboard (that included reindeer, horses, and sleighs, plus many extra speciedalers passing between hands for the noisy overexcited ooh-ing and ahh-ing magic snowman).

The tall blonde man stands near the front bow's capstan, vigilantly scrutinizing the weather-worn craft's movement forward. His eyes strain towards the distant hill still some kilometers west across the glimmering summer ripples of water.

Was the fresh morning sun playing tricks on his bedazzled senses? Or _**was **_there an inexplicable beacon of light streaming down upon the sandy slope near the left side of the Nidaros Cathedral as the edifice looms closer on the horizon?

Leaning further his raised knee onto the bow's capstan pole, the suspicious young man's heightened senses couldn't be sure, as a white throated dipper caws when it comes into view, its golden feathered wings in swooping aerial display.

"Why are you being so quiet, Kristoff? I mean— even _more_ quiet than usual? Do you see something out there?"

Anna may not have always been the most observant of people, but her close bond with her best friend—her new husband—told her that his attentions were preoccupied by something up ahead that his yummy brown eyes were squinting to make out.

She trains her wide blues in a tracer gaze to discover what so piqued his interest.

"I thought I saw—Nah, must be nothing." Grounded back to real time as the feathered soaring dipper too makes an exit, Kristoff shakes the weird feeling when that odd light beam he'd been following flickers off as the river bends a curve. He turns away from the lightshow's entrancement, not wanting to add his peculiar new 'sixth sense' feeling to his little gal's troubles.

At least, not yet.

"So how're the horses holding up back there? They getting used to river ferry travel?" The responsible man redirects his focus and hers on their present predicament.

After all, he knew personally that good 'ole Sven had had his share of choppy river transport in their past. But Kristoff wasn't familiar enough with the pair of those new ponies some guy bartered for earlier in the journey, to speak on their behalf.

Especially that skittish white Fresian mare that Hans chose.

"Yup! Guddy's as good as gold!" She sings out in a voice more jubilant than the morning sunrise, giving Kristoff his reason to now smile.

"And Elsa is actually really good at handling Iriserende, once **that **Hans got the horse settled down." Anna scrunches her little nose up at the idea of _**tha**__t_ Hans being useful for anything. "See? She's having her hair braided right as we speak. Elsa's the best braider in all of Arendelle!" Anna proudly points around the ferry's main deck wheelhouse over to where her older sister was showering the pale horse with such attention, neither timid retiring female seemed worse for the ride. And though Anna was loathe to admit it, it probably did help that a certain handsome prince's experienced, firm, yet comforting, hand had been placed solidly on her hindquarters (_Iriserende's, that is) _for balance

since the voyage began.

Hans appeared to be rather affable in entertaining the pair of high-strung purebreds whose eyes were all upon him whilst he was feeding Guddy.

"And your cousin? How's she doing?" Kristoff's concerned, compassionate gaze travels upwards, to where the short-cropped brown haired young woman was perched on the top side of the center captain's bridge on the maindeck.

With no fear of falling, faithful Pascal ever-vigilant on her shoulder, Princess Rapunzel was leaning so far over the edge of the wheelhouse that she was precariously dangling over its side in her attempts to see even further through the marine telescope the crusty ferryman had relented to allow fellow seafaring man—Mr. Smooth-talking Westergaard— to borrow.

In the two hours or so since the group began traversing the deep Trondsheimsfjorden as they now glide into the mouth of the Nidelva, the anxious brunette had been fastidiously wielding the scope, once Hans had lifted her up in strong wiry arms to perch on the roof of the ferry's bridge. The lifelong naval man had then instructed Rapunzel of the clever device's proper uses.

Pascal's one bulgy chameleon eye peeks over his girl's shoulder into the mahogany and brass handheld telescope, peering rather disturbingly down at the Prince and the Queen tending to the horses in the aft section of the boat's deck below.

"That was truly kind of you to think to ask the ferry Captain of his looking glass for cousin Rapunzel." Elsa suddenly comments after her upwards profiled sunning face the man was silently admiring, catches sight of her older cousin optimistically rushing to and fro atop her crow's nest higher ledge view above the center boathouse, trying to get the best vantage point for a gander at the land's shore.

"I gathered how the poor girl was so very eager to have her prayers be answered to perhaps glimpse first sight of the man she…" Hans trails off the sentimental statement he began. His own lifelong loneliness of yearning for someone so far out of his reach, sympathized with the young woman separated from her love.

Elsa's eyes smile shyly up at his auburn head gleaming in the fresh sunlight for his romantic nature and overt compassion for her friend as his hands were assiduously at work currying Guddy's wild mane from his un-seeable eyes.

"Any little thing I can do to ease her suffering." Hans says in velvety soft tones more to himself than anyone.

The tall, svelte man's kind eyes then connect with Elsa's crystal clear appreciative ones when both settle back down to their level on the main deck from watching Rapunzel studiously peeking through the lens of the telescope she was swinging around wildly.

For several long minutes their intertwined gazes couldn't seem to pull away from one another until Hans finally clears his throat, as if he could suddenly feel Anna's piercing glare from across the deck boring holes in the back of his red head.

_Ahem_ "Did you know that the modern two-draw marine telescope with day or night sunshade over it's five inch main lens possesses four times more the magnification than the original device that was invented in 1608 by a man who just happened to be named-"

A nervous Hans begins to prattle collected data from all the solitary library visits that lasted even long into the nights during his youth. He'd often fall asleep with such historical textbooks amidst an array of geographical, literary, and nautical studies, with only a small daguerreotype he'd saved all those years ago, of a Norwegian admiral, his loving wife and two little daughters, in an idyllic family setting.

"—Hans Lippershey, a Dutch spectacle maker. He put in the patent for the three times magnification device that would become an invaluable standard for marine navigational equipment." Elsa finishes his encyclopedic information sharing with some of her own youth's book-learned knowledge. Her brilliant smile was aware of the small pardonable 'sin' of showing off. But the woman inside of her couldn't resist preening before him.

Hans' eyebrow raises, with a sparkling intrigued smile of his own curling his lips.

"A beautiful queen with the sharp mind of an historian—I _**am**_ impressed." Hans' bowed head and complimentary words cause a tender-eyed Elsa to blush.

But only slightly, for she was proud of the amount of retained knowledge that she had gleaned from all those years spent with all those library books as her only companions.

_No, not only…Mama and Papa would always be there to explain what I read whenever I had any questions._

"Well, nautical history of all varieties was Papa's favorite subject. That—and our study of the founding of our nation."

Hans notices how Elsa's glazed over eyes showed gratitude for the time she had spent in the company of her dear parents. Now in reflection, five years since they've been deceased, the young woman was glad of her family's cloistered seclusion that had been due to her awakening ice powers—if only for the total close-knit life with her Mama and Papa that few other children who shared their lives, by that age, with the outside world experienced. All for her sake, her caring concerned parents had lived austerely within their castle's confines for twelve years in raising herself and Anna, before their loving guardians were taken from the sisters all too early.

"Papa used to tell us such fantastic fairytales about the legends that surrounded our ancestors, especially King Olaf's adventures. Papa would read us stories of the skaldic verses from the 'Saga of St. Olaf' nearly every night. He knew it by heart himself, and could recite passages from memory." Elsa was whispering by now, tears of pride for her good father palpable in her true blue eyes.

"Rather intense–at times violent—bedtime reading fare for a young impressionable girl. Though, in my opinion, you didn't turn out to be a 'hoyden,' did you?" The Prince, trained in psychology from his naval academy days, always seemed to know how to gain control of any situation. And so, Elsa's tears are abated by his humorous Middle Dutch referral of the ladylike demure queen as an 'uncivilized, ill-bred, tomboyish female' called a '_hoyden'_.

"I should hope not, Sir." Elsa grins back at Hans' teasing eyes. "Papa believed it imperative for every future ruler of this nation to be well versed in the accomplishments and trials of our forefathers' achievements. He only wanted to prepare me, despite not being a boy, as his oldest heir, to be able to serve our country, as all my ancestors before, with courage and honor and love of God, just as his father drilled into his heart." Elsa speaks the words rationally.

"I understand now, that no matter how difficult a child I was, Mama and Papa loved me enough to train me to take over his sovereign duties of being Arendelle's—and this entire country's—leader someday. I pray to the Lord everyday, that I may never fail my nation's sacred trust ever again." Elsa's lighthearted demeanor turns serious as she lifts her pale chin high to look with resolve upon the cherished Norwegian landmark built on the hallowed grave site of the nation's royal patron saint.

"Your father sounded like he was a fine man, as well as an admirable King and Admiral of your prestigious fleet, Queen Elsa. Growing up in the Royal Danish Navy as, at first, a sub-lieutenant, then full lieutenant soon thereafter, I invariably valued King Agdar's esteemed heroism for never leaving his crew in danger, even at the risk of his own life. Admiral Arendelle's lauded rescues of his shipmen against all impossible odds on the high seas, made him so well respected in naval circles, I always aspired to meet him one day. Now, even more so…" Hans was so glad that the normally reticent and quiet, introverted Queen was opening up to him, of all people, particularly on such a tender delicate subject as that of her lost parents, that he couldn't help but expound.

"Why, 'Now, even more so?'" Elsa curiously asks, gazing up at him, to permit herself this teasing and cajoling, despite her past sadness and present trepidation, all for the enigmatic mystery behind this compelling man's expressive green eyes.

"Oh, I—! Did I say that aloud?!" An instantly, uncharacteristically mortified Hans Westergaard was still surprised by the way this enchanting young woman with the enthralling voice and dancing eyes could make the _clever,_ composed, and all-together man in him fall apart at the seams like a puddle of jelly. The redness he could feel creeping up his slender yet prominent Adam's apple neck, across his noble cheeks, all the way over to his debonair sideburns, smoldered in ways that no one else ever before could jar the urbane young man's unflappable, smooth confidence, with just one of her shy glances.

"You did…and he was. Thank you." The dignified, proud of her father's achievements, Queen Elsa of Arendelle was chuckling, surprisingly at ease with this handsome, noble man who resembled her handsome, noble Papa in sweet, all a-blush moments such as these.

At that thought, her pale thin cheeks too color to a healthy shade as the tentative two enjoy this fleeting smile of peace, awash in the bright warming sunlight of day. All of which causes an eavesdropping Anna, who had been awkwardly, with no elegance whatsoever, clinging with her back to the wheelhouse around the corner, to grit her teeth that that guy set on edge whenever he flirted with her big sis, for all his trickling sugary-ness.

_But that's according to my plan…All good things, all good things, Anna…He'll show himself to be the rat scum he is, soon enough…Imagine! Using my wonderful Papa's good name to get into my sweet, naïve, unworldly Elsa's good graces! Villain!_

* * *

"There it is! I can see it! The Cathedral! That's gotta be the one we're heading for, right?! Eugene! I'm coming!" Interrupting the tender moment between Hans and Elsa, Rapunzel's frantic voice cries out, causing the skulking in the shadows Anna to leap several feet up into the air from her supposedly surreptitious angle of concealment below.

As she swings the borrowed telescope up and down until Pascal—who had been clinging to it—was dizzy, the ecstatic brunette nearly clobbers Anna with the mahogany and brass rod. Keenly watching from afar her amusing antics on the leeward side of the ferry, Kristoff covers an exasperated palm over his eyes at his funny little wife's clandestine surveillance gone awry as the swinging telescope just misses braining the perky orange head squarely on the sneaky noggin.

"Where?! Where?! Where?! Let me see! Oh, hi, Anna. Why are you hiding there spying on Elsa and JustHans like that?" Olaf, who had been playing 'responsible midshipman,' had flamboyantly, with a knowing condescending air, been exhibiting his maritime skills, repeating the nautical terms he'd heard unpretentious seaman Hans utter on their recent lifeboat journey together, like he was a pro too.

A puffed up Olaf sways beneath his snow flurry before his 'adoring enthralled' audience— which included only a skeptical-eyed Sven, who simply munches on the hay the 'swashbuckling' Olaf was feeding him and a sleepy-eyed Guddy, whose long blonde bushy mane hanging over the Dole's eyes made his amused expression unreadable as the stout horse too chews his feed, uninterested.

"Not my carrot, Sven! No carrot for you either, Guddy! This one's mine. You get your own, you fuzzy wuzzy cutie-pie." Olaf happily babytalks to snuggle the furry head of the cuddly, starved for attention Gudbrandsal gelding as he gently yet firmly lays down the 'no carrot stealing' law again.

The brutally honest snowman obliviously pauses in his playful childlike enthusiasm to blink up blankly several times at the goofy-acting girl. Shrugging with a giggle, the able bodied snowperson hops over Anna's muzzy head from the towing hawser rope he had been telling his tall tales upon as his bully pulpit to land on Sven's sturdy back. With a twigged thumbs pointing upwards, Olaf gives the reindeer his unspoken order for a lift up on Sven's tall antlers. At that extra elevation, Olaf's three parts all eventually leap to Rapunzel's high perch atop the ferry's bridge house where the impatient snowfellow pokes her knee with his branch until the spirited, yet generous, girl pats her lap for a curious Olaf to hop aboard.

His charcoal black eyes peer through the telescopic lens to get a sneak preview of the Nidarosdomen's front gates, where they could just make out the church-goers gathering for service.

"Ahh, I can almost hear the church bells ringing already." A closed-eyed imaginative Olaf blissfully coos. After all, it was natural for a being born of pure innocent child's love to enjoy the goodness and purity of spiritual love that Christianity's teachings prescribed. Besides, the music-loving crooner of a snowman adored the consecrated choir singing back home in Arendelle chapel, so here with this Cathedral's huge Gregorian choral apse and wide array of Heilagrisene (holy songs) that the hallowed Lutheran church's congregation enjoyed, he'd probably love it even better.

Olaf then places the telescope to where an ear might have been on his snowy skull-less head in a naïve belief the cool new apparatus would enhance his befuddled listening as well, until a head slapping, sane Pascal reclaims the wrenched nautical instrument back to return it to Rapunzel for its intended proper use.

The hopeful girl's green pupils scan through the telescope's lens over the glimmering waters of the Nidelva river to the hilly grounds surrounding the holy 800 plus year old edifice, through the unswerving eyes of love in search of her missing husband's stunning physique.

_Please be there. Please be alive, my darling Eugene..._

* * *

Once the ferry docks along the river Nid at the entrance port to the famed city of Trondheim, the men see to it their sleighs are unloaded from the vessel's cargo hold below deck. Kristoff and Hans then get right to work hitching their sleighs to their respected pack animals in all due haste.

By now, the sun was up fairly high in the sky between the double mountain chain ranges of Douvefjell and Rondene, swinging from the southeast of the old city to the peninsula located to the west of the holy shrine.

And for the first time in his life, Kristoff Bjorgman was having a bad feeling about the sun's usually heartily welcomed warming rays. The hairs on the back of his neck had been hackled for miles, but there was nothing he could do about it. Just silently keep moving forward, so as not to alarm a pleasantly chattering sun-drenched Anna in his sleigh's passenger's seat.

Behind the raw stamina of Sven's reindeer pulling power, the well-oiled runners of the ice harvester's sleigh glides swiftly as the wind that the perceptive young man had been picking up inscrutable signals upon, from one direction in particular.

The two sled teams make good time across the summery mountainous region leading towards the Nidaros Cathedral as the beautiful old hymn "Herre Gudi Dittdyre Navn og Aene" _("Lord God, Thy Wondrous Name I Praise")_ faintly rings throughout the hillside.

Hans directs his horse-drawn Vis-à-vis, with his two female passengers plus Pascal, to follow Kristoff's lead on Sven with Anna and Olaf through the bustling town center to the westerly road, then down towards the Cathedral's impressive tree-lined front gate.

When they arrive, they notice the gates left open and readied to receive visitors for this morning's Sunday mass services already in progress. The transcending liturgical music intermingles with the church bell ringing and impeccable choral and instrumental cantatas where a boy soprano's sweet ethereal voice invites the pious soul to step within its hallowed doors for worship.

"When I was little, I always used to dream of visiting this venerable Cathedral. Of attending its renowned Sunday services in the Seat of the Diocese of Nidaros, with Mama and Papa and Anna, once I had learned enough control to leave Arendelle castle." Leaning forward from where she had a comforting arm around a restless Rapunzel, Elsa whispers in an awestruck tone with tears biting behind her regretful eyes when Hans chirrups Iriserende and Guddy to canter the well trodden path into the sanctified shrine's holy gates.

"Perhaps this is your chance at long last, to come here, with Princess Anna, at least." Hans responds in a soft understanding voice over his shoulder to her as he dismounts the sleigh to hitch the pair of horses to a waiting post.

"Why don't you and your sister take Princess Rapunzel into the Mass while Mr. Bjorgman and I secure the grounds as we begin our search for her husband. You three ladies may inquire inside of any untoward occurrences of late around the chapel. Within the crowd of church attendees, I don't foresee any danger of devilry inside these sacrosanct chambers. What say you, sir? Shall the ladies attend church services while we investigate the perimeter outside?" Hans extends his question to Kristoff when the redhead finishes hitching the Vis-à-vis to the hitching post in the cathedral's parking area and Kristoff comes rapidly walking over to them at a quick pace to discuss their best options.

"Yeah, I agree." Kristoff's brown eyes carefully scour the unassuming church entrance grounds where everything seemed at peace despite the foreboding multitudes of gothic style and imposing statuary archways lining the Cathedral's front entryway.

"I know it looks like just a normal church service, but when the hairs on the back of Sven's neck stand up, I take notice. So I think it's a good idea to keep those three safe in the crowd, too. You and me will look for Eugene." Kristoff speaks to Hans in a low soft voice in confidence as not to be heard by any other ears.

He then pokes his blonde head into the Vis-à-vis passenger carriage.

"Elsa, take Anna and Rapunzel into the chapel, and wait there until we—" Kristoff, though lowliest in rank amongst these blue-blooded royals, had an overwhelming sense of hands-on responsibility to take charge of the situation.

Though once upon a time unaccustomed to being ordered by subordinates, Prince Hans, formerly of the Southern Isles, now immediately responds to Kristoff's command, moving in a swift gait to escort the pair of ladies from his sleigh's carriage.

He reaches to open the door to gentlemanly assist the elegant Queen on one arm, then reaches for her princess cousin with the other when the agitated brown head appears at the door.

"NO! Eugene is here somewhere! I can just feel it! **I **have to look for him too!" Rapunzel stubbornly yells at the two men trying to be in command of her as she pushes past Hans to let herself out of the sleigh's carriage to stand squarely on her own two defiant feet.

"Cousin Rapunzel, please. There may be real danger out there, with ruthless pirates on the loose, planning who knows what. Believe me, it would be best if you women stay clear while we scout around." The protective hero in Kristoff tries to calmly explain his machismo rationale.

"Why?! Elsa, tell them! We're not helpless damsels in distress. I've been on risky adventures before. My Eugene needs me!" Rapunzel retaliates like a fierce tigress as she turns from Hans to claim her tall platinum cousin's arm under hers for back-up moral support. Rapunzel didn't even know half of the extent that the 'not helpless' Queen Elsa of Arendelle truly could show if she set her mind to unleash her full ice prowess.

But on her own adventurous journey, Elsa had learned that restraint was more the better part of valor in life's struggle of self worth.

'_Don't be the monster they fear you are…!' _

His clear melodic voice that had pierced her frigid cold heart then, still echoes its warmth in her very being to this day. Elsa was forever grateful that Prince Hans had stopped her from committing such an unpardonable sin which blood-soaked stain would not be easily washed away.

"Perhaps inside the Cathedral we may be able to glean some evidence of intruders or thefts that may give us some insight as to their current whereabouts." Queen Elsa states in a collected intelligent demeanor that once again impresses Hans with her head of state-like possession of mind.

"Well said, Queen Elsa. It may be the better strategem for us to divide and conquer, utilizing you three ladies' vast collected intellect and cunning to good purpose inside, whilst we search the premises without for your missing husband, Princess."

Hans finishes his sentence, addressing Rapunzel directly, gently taking her hand in this opportunity to cajole the girl whose heels were dug into the ground (both literally and figuratively) into accepting his proffered left arm, while Elsa snugly reattaches herself to his right one.

"Eugene wouldn't steal from a church!" Rapunzel scoffs, then corrects herself without even having to make eye contact with a skeptical everyone else as she concedes her lover's weakness with a deep sigh. "Okay. But if you guys find Eugene first—please save him for me." Rapunzel pleads, locking meaningful gazes with each of the two men, who nod sincerely back to her in promise.

"Can I come to church, too?" From below, Olaf's small wheedling voice beams up at them with a hopeful toothy grin.

"After all, I have the same name as the brave king they built this church for. _And_ they could use my excellent singing voice as a quick stand-in alto tenor for the choir."

Kristoff smirks at the chatterbox snowman who was inviting himself to tag along, as Olaf follows the departing trio. The tall blonde young man watches a reverently head bowed Hans escort Elsa and Rapunzel up the famed house of worship's frontal approach until they disappear into the esteemed Cathedral's front door beneath the gothic monument's ornate religious statuettes that adorned one of Europe's most celebrated Christian pilgrimage sites since the Middle Ages.

"Hey! Where's Anna, Sven?!" Kristoff demands of his own girl's whereabouts from a wide-eyed and guilty Sven, who was too busy listening in on the heated debate in the Vis-à-vis to notice the small caramel colored girl sneak away.

Kristoff's normally steady tones begin to panic when he returns to fetch his own, now in reflection, disturbingly silent passenger to find not a trace of his wife on or around their sleigh.

"Did you see Anna in there?!" Kristoff's wild eyes told volumes of his anxiety to Hans after the slender Prince returns from graciously depositing, through the Nidarosdomen's entry vestibule, Elsa and Rapunzel inside the holy establishment mid-service, to seat them in its rear pews.

"No, I did not. Where has she gone?" Hans answers with rising sentiment, his worry for the girl genuine.

"Crazy. She's just gone crazy. Why did't you stop her, Sven?!" Kristoff smacks an apologetic faced Sven's rump in total frustration, though blaming himself for being just as inattentive even more fiercely. The man goes bounding around the western side of the Cathedral in an urgent hunt to find his AWOL little woman, who was just nutty enough to try to recklessly take on an enemy she doesn't know a thing about, to retrieve her kingdom's holy relic orb in a place she doesn't know a thing about, to save a thieving cousin from an unspecified danger she doesn't know anything about.

All in all, even if Princess Anna of Arendelle didn't know very much about anything else—she knew extremely well how to get herself into a load of trouble.

And that terrified Kristoff more than anything, because **he knew** his Anna had an uncanny knack for bad trouble finding her.


	24. Chapter 23 -The Last Sunflower of Summer

We do not own "Frozen" nor any of its characters.

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act I**

**Chapter 23**

**"The Last Sunflower of Summer"**

Kristoff's frantic eyed side glance was grateful to note that Hans Westergaard (who happened to be one of Anna's past troubles, but that was another story) was now close at his racing heels and had been conscientious enough to have paused by the sleigh's cargo to bring along something Kristoff had forsaken in his mad dash to find his missing wife.

The golden tan hewn wooden long bow and its quiver full of arrows that had been bestowed upon Kristoff to fulfill some Saami predicted destiny was clenched tightly in Hans Westergaard's hands.

_But a peaceful life with Anna is the only destiny I want!_

Kristoff's panicking mind shrieks in defiance at all the mysterious forces he'd never bought into, pulling at him in every direction. Hans manages to catch up enough to pass to a heart pounding Kristoff the legendary long bow, with a sharpened bone-headed arrow, drawn and readied to be loaded in anticipation of the fierce battle ahead.

Gaining some pause from Hans' level-headed composure, Kristoff slows his crazed, blind rush to look around and get his bearings.

That glowing stream of light that he'd spotted from the ferry was somewhere in this vicinity. The, muscle-bound huffing man regains his breath, along with recollections of some scenic markers he had put to mind while aboard the ferry craft.

_A pair of green tiered turrets…a horizontal long building structure with an extra addition built onto it…a sand bank, running alongside the river…a stair walkway, a grove of trees…_

…_There he is! Thank God he's alive!_

Kristoff was excited to at least discover Eugene's whereabouts, when he sees the struggling shirtless man, bound and gagged and strapped to a tree on the other side of the sands where one of the two other figures was just turning—

_**YANK!**_

Kristoff, in his heightened, danger-alerted mode, almost lashes out with his one free fist—

But instead of the normal reaction of pulling back away or ducking, said troublesome Hans Westergaard just stands there, with his eyes closed in full preparation to get the receiving end of the large, angry man's flying fist right in his resigned face.

"What the—?! I could've just decked you, stupid! Why didn't you get out of the way?!" Kristoff's fierce whisper was more bewildered than angry by the time it completes the question.

"Because I've been deserving that one for a long time." The repentant prince answers in rightful chastisement.

"Yeah, you did." Putting down his bared dukes, Kristoff recalls just coming short of punching the lights out of this guy on the deck of another boat, on another day, when feisty Anna had chosen to do the honors in his place.

"By the way, thanks for pulling me back in time. I don't think those pirates saw me…yet. Those are the pirates we've all been hearing about, right?" From the safe vantage of the small corner alley recess space between the main church building and this back one, Kristoff states, rather than asks,.He had the sneaking suspicion, even from his cursory glance, that the tall, dark-skinned man and the patch-eyed peg-leg were the two villains in question as they were inexplicably capping a bottle they were bent over.

"Yes. That's Job and Captain Houtebeen, all right." Hans surreptitiously peers around the corner of the recessed building that was shielding the pair of them from being seen by those below. "They seem to have bound and gagged and tied your friend to that tree." Hans observes in a quiet tone to his reconnaissance partner.

"He's not _**my**_ friend. He's _**your **_brother. You get him loose." Kristoff gives Hans a sideways smirk." Hey, what are those guys doing down there in the sand, anyway? And what's that weird spotlight beaming down over them? They must be up to no good. I guess it doesn't matter as long as we get Eugene over there free. But where's Anna got off to?" Mumbling questions more to himself than to his cohort, Kristoff was pulling his hair out about now. Pirates and thieves and missing orbs were all trumped by 'AIT'—'Anna in Trouble.'

"It's a large churchyard. Your wife probably simply wandered off in her curiosity and found herself lost. We'll locate her later, once we subdue these ruffians. Outmaneuvering those pirates and their armaments must be our immediate concern. The first mate—that large man called 'Job'—is formidable in head-to-head combat. And from all I've gathered, Captain Houtebeen never steps outside his ship without being in possession of an array of firearms. His trusty Francotte pinfire revolver has a deadly aim—believe me, I know."

The trained tactician in Hans touches a place over his heart where the ruthless pirate's bullet certainly would have lodged a complaint for his death, had an ingenious Rapunzel not crafted him a 'bullet-safe' iron plate fitting vest to shield his vital heart and chest organs from the gunpowder driven impact.

"We only must coordinate in triangulation between our two opponents and the prime objective of bringing my brother from his capture to safety. Your ample muscle and vast strength may be better suited to handle the larger combatant, whilst my archery skills are more tested to accost the wily pirate from a distance." Hans breathes out a plan to his hunkered down companion, awaiting Kristoff's approval, even if leadership and command was in Prince Lieutenant Westergaard's basic Naval Academy training.

_But in this kingdom, I am but a foot soldier._

"Yeah, that might work…" A lot of the educated, _Sovaernets Officersskole-_Royal Danish Naval academic terms go over the peace-loving ice harvester's head. Though it sounded good in theory, Kristoff still was not wholly convinced that finding Anna wasn't his top priority.

He was, however, impressed at how good at field tactics and strategic focus the other man could be in a crisis situation. Weighing his next action against his heart heavy thoughts, Kristoff's screwed up in consternation face gazes up to the sky for a second, in hope of some Divine inspiration.

Once his eyes acclimate to the striking overhead sunlight, Kristoff's fist clenches when he spies that same white-throated dipper swoop downwards from the high air stream it was floating upon. Norway's national bird coos and caws in a high trill, as if the graceful golden winged creature was trying to give him a signal as it hovers over the treetops, where Cousin Eugene was tied to one of the tree's trunks.

"_**Caw Caw! Little girl, stop! Hide! Danger! Wind Whisperer! Wicked Pirate will see! By the tree! Caw caw! Danger!"**_

Kristoff holds a hand to his pounding head as he imagines he was hearing a shrill, urgent voice faintly whisper from somewhere, traveling on the wind from above to him. Although he was confused, something in the panicked description of the scene causes a keen-eyed, frantic Kristoff to peer around the corner, if just to appease his apprehensive mind that he had been daydreaming again.

But once he turns, his cynical, disoriented eyes are greeted by his worst fears. There, in his line of vision, was little, headstrong Anna, sneaking and slinking her awkward way from tree to tree. She was smiling all the while, like a ray of pure sunlight trying to hide in the darkness it illuminates, in her almost humorously clumsy attempt to get to the birch tree that the captive man was imprisoned against.

Her hair was tied up in a hasty knot, so as not to encumber her 'stealthy' moves, as furtive Anna dashes along the tree line as if neither of the pirates would notice her reckless, sloppy trailblazing—

As if.

"Da t'ief!" Job spots her in that exact moment when Kristoff immediately springs into action.

"ANNA! NO!" Kristoff's frenetic, wild eyes see a perceptively swift footed Job bounding over to where the up-braided 'heroine' was unsuccessfully trying to undo the sailor knots around a squirming Eugene's torso. But her cute face snarls in sweet comical contortions with each failure.

As usual, unobservant Anna was so focused on getting the ropes around Eugene's chest loose from around the back of the tree that she never saw the tall, dark man coming, despite Eugene's intense mouthed murmurings beneath his gag that she had '_bwedda huann!'_ or something that sounded nothing like 'better run!'

But an inattentive Anna had already zoned out his gagged noises, even as Job's long arms were nearing her in a grasping, dangerous reach…

_**KAPOW!**_

But his large dark hands weren't permitted to lay one threatening finger on the orangey princess' head—care of her loving protective husband.

Kristoff Bjorgman shows his moxie as he angrily pummels Job with his well-matched fists. The pair of muscled men wrestle to the ground in a full-pitched slug out fight.

"There! I did it! Eugene, you're free!" Totally unaware of the world around her, a laughing, regardless of care Anna hops about, congratulating herself, triumphantly singing out when the giddy-with-excitement girl manages to untie the squirrelly knots on the rope that were securing Flynn Rider to the tree.

And a good thing, too.

The overexcited, bright smiling Anna enthusiastically gets into her new favorite thrilling spectator sport of watching her big, burly brute boy beat the daylights out of the similarly physically well-matched man. The demonstrative, air fist pumping, giggling girl didn't see the bloodthirsty Captain Houtebeen from somewhere down below, raise his pinfire revolver up the steep embankment. Anna never saw how the pirate's well-practiced revolver was directed right at her pretty little head, with years of deadly accuracy under his filthy belt—

**"ANNA! HIT THE DIRT!"** But a mortally terror-stricken Kristoff's barked out warning from where he was pinned beneath a pummeling fisted Job was filled with intense worry for her more than his own dire situation.

"**GET OUT OF THERE!**" Kristoff cries out in deep concern, left powerless to just witness the scene in heart-stopping fear. His utmost attention was on her well-being when Job's relentless fist comes in full undefended contact with Kristoff's nearly dislodged jaw. The overt battering full force blow, accompanied by the back of his poor head being bashed into a big boulder jutting out from the rocky terrain, knocks the tall blonde out cold.

"**KRISTOFF!"**Anna shrieks in hysterical dismay at seeing her hunky husband go down.

"IT IS **NOT NICE** TO PUNCH OUT PEOPLE!"An audacious, anger-aroused Anna was so incensed to see her snuggly sweetie bear be cold-cocked by the towering hulk of the Caribbean, that the little 5'4" befreckled princess fearlessly berates the 6'8" dark shadow of a giant, shaking her confrontational fists at him as she stomps forward.

The twice her size Islander's mocking sneer as he stands up to his full height, after pounding the most formidable opponent he'd tussled with in years in Kristoff, was still not enough to get the seething gutsy girl to retreat. The large Caribbean who had knocked the strong blonde man successfully unconscious, now glowers at Kristoff's vulnerable little wife, who glares obstinately back. Anna possessed a childlike eternal optimism in her own abilities and spunk in defying the odds, even as Captain Houtebeen pulls the trigger of his trained gun …

_**SCHKKK! B-BANGG!**_

* * *

_Then, there's always a 'Plan B', isn't there?_

The bullet expelled from Houtebeen's cherished Belgian revolver is misdirected when the pirate's fired weapon's six inch barrel is knocked from his hand by the silver streak of an expert flying knife slinging through the air—

_**SCHKKTT!**_

A dagger to be more precise.

Prince Hans reveals himself from around the corner to have adeptly thrown the secreted blade in his boot to jolt the gun from a growling Captian Houtbeen's gnarled grip.

But the heroic dagger's dead-on target, even from the distance of his downward angled 11 meter range, comes a millisecond too late, for the evil pirate had already pulled the loaded revolver's trigger ring.

As if this was all happening in a slow motion dream sequence, Anna's widened eyes stare from Kristoff's comatose prostrate body to Hans' lurched forward form in attempted gun redirecton, then back towards the evil pirate's snickering face down the sandy drop. The whizzing bullet, though thrown a touch off course by Hans' dagger from making contact with her head, spins towards Anna nonetheless, now in line to strike her heart…

"Shake a leg, Pixie!" And it would have, had there not been a third fairytale hero on today's scene. One who never would've believed himself to be so altruistically selfless in all the lonely 26 years of his empty life before he climbed the tower of a certain little lady with the cutest button of a nose and humongous green eyes that could just swallow you up…

In one felled swoop, Eugene Fitzherbert defies every law of survival that the self-preservational roaming thief in him lived by. His toned muscular bare arms, just freed from all the roped tether encumbrance, stretch and reach out to scoop up a frozen-in-place Anna by the tiny waist as if she were nothing more than a little cupcake—

"Whoa!"

_**PTAFF! SMACK! SPLAT!**_

The incoming cartridge from the pirate's revolver does find a mark though. Flynn winces as the unlucky, yet heroic man feels, despite the moderate frostbite already radiating pain in his arm, the 11mm cartridge bullet rip straight into his right arm's ample bicep muscle and lodge between his rear triceps, causing the bare-chested man, as carefully as he could in such a circumstance, toss Anna's safely rescued lithe little body onto a soft clump of grass nearby her husband's unconscious form.

"Damn!" Flynn swears at the pain as he covers his injured arm and all its splurting out blood between the fingers of his other hand as another wild bullet loudly cracks the still of the morning sky.

_**CRAACKK!**_

Yet another gunshot shoots over his ducked head to disturb a flood of dispersing birds from their peaceful nests in the nearby trees.

"You're bleeding!" His blood on her hands–literally—Anna leaps to her feet and scurries towards Flynn when yet another projectile goes zinging between their two heads.

"Hey! Only **chickens **shoot unarmed innocent people from a distance!" She yells furiously, waving her offended fists in the air at her unseen sniper.

"Do you have a death wish, little lady?" A hunkered down Flynn Rider bodily pulls the feisty pants girl by her skinny legs back down to squat on the ground beside him. Clumsy Anna subsequently teeters over, until she falls on her miffed bum to the dirt path, legs and arms flipping high in the air.

_**P-CHING!**_

A third frenzied bullet's loud crash snaps the air directly above them, seeing her moving target.

"Stay close to the ground, Pixie!" Flynn orders the little girl some 11 years his junior, he having to physically push down Princess Anna's wriggling form, that was ready to jump up into the thick of it again already. The injured thief shoves her rather forcibly into a prone 'lie-low' position on the dirt.

But nothing could keep Princess Anna of Arendelle down for long when she was this riled up.

When Job moves in towards them, seeing that Flynn had been winged by his Captian's gunfire, Anna completely confuses the towering dark figure as she quite athletically leap frogs onto his wide broad shoulders to pound at his head, boxing his ears with all her pent-up vicious might.

"Aw, hell! She's as mad as a March hare!" Flynn curses the imp's insanity as he forces his wounded self up to join the raucous melee of the swaggering back and forth black man. Job was just trying to rid himself of the pest of a little ladybug annoying the big barbaric brute with her relentless fierce attacks astride his shoulders.

"Woo!Whoo! Take that! And that! And that one's for hurting my Kristly!" The bright-eyed girl rebukes and punishes almost too cheerily, for Anna relished getting the thrill out of flexing her own muscle, as Job's thrashing arms unsuccessfully try to remove the slippery dodging girl from his personage.

Highly entertained, Flynn stands back to survey the comical pair of a spunky fearless Anna riding the drunken looking pirate first mate like a bucking bronco. Job only succeeds in whacking himself in the head silly for Anna's quick evasion of his indiscriminate incoming blows.

"Whoo, Mama! I'm putting my money down on the little orange firecracker! Between you, Pixie, and your icy big sis with the long gams, they sure know how to make'em up here in the Tundra!" Flynn wolf whistles as he swerves out of the big perplexed man's unsteady way. Anna laughs almost gleefully as she repeatedly drubs Job's ears, her energetic little digits even reaching down to twist the pitiable giant's nose.

Flynn Rider wasn't too sure which one of them needed his rescuing anymore as he fully stands up to watch the show, forgetting himself with amused hands placed on hips

* * *

"How is it you are still alive? Are you the Fossegrimm spectre, cabin boy?" Now Captain Houtebeen squints his one eye in consternation as he compares his runaway slave to the intangible Scandinavian mythical handsome young creature who plays beckoning music to lure women sublimely beneath waterfalls, unable to be accosted by human hands.

The pirate seemed to be having quite a hard time getting the remainder of his shots out, for dexterous Hans Westergaard had snatched up Kristoff's discarded archer's bow and quiver as he ran forward in a mad dash to cease the wicked pirate's gunshots from aiming at Anna as his quarry above.

_**T'CHI ! SCHKLIKT! T'CHI !**_

The frustrated old seadog's succession of spent cartridges are each thwarted by Lieutenant Westergaard's preferred ammunition—of arrows.

"No, sir, I can assure you. I am feeling very much _**alive**_." Hans pronounces with some battle invigorated certitude that gives the pirate villain mental perturbation.

Each time the pirate leveled his deadly weapon at either Anna or Flynn, Hans' deft archery skills stared down the revolver's barrel with such precise aim until every bullet had been sent askew.

_**ZZZTT! T'CHI!**_

"Why do you turn on ol' Houtebeen, dear Cabin Boy? He is but a harmless, old man come to pray at ze holy church, no?"

But when Houtebeen's fumbling reloading fingers are finally relieved of his precious weapon, Prince Hans, confident in the element that he was awesome sight to behold, had made his striding way down the hillside to stand above the pirate, with each precise arrow pulled from the quiver slung around his back.

Hans' hair gleams like fire in the beam of sunlight at his back, blocking the trickling spring now entirely. The groveling pirate falls backwards, losing his one-legged balance as he is blinded by the high tiered holy crosses silhouetted upon the green turrets in an aura about Hans' back.

The wily old sea captain then pitifully smiles a toothy grin up at the handsome young man.

For all intents and purposes, Captain Houtebeen had gotten what he came for already. The greedy old man knew the young 'cabin boy' had the upper hand here and decides to play it coy as he uses his cane to 'clumsily' cover up the clay bottle he had just finished filling with the legendary spring waters in the steep bank's white sands.

"Ye wouldn't strike an unarmed man when he be down, would ye, dear Cabin Boy?" Half wheedling, half taunting, Houtebeen's crooked, black-toothed smile up at Hans from his prone position on the sandy knolls was disturbing to say the least. "Ye wouldn't kill a man before yer Holy God in His hallowed places, would ye?" The soulless Houtebeen plays upon Hans' growing uncertain wide eyes that seemed heart unwilling to sentence the aged pirate to a close-range arrowhead corporal punishment.

_Don't be the monster they fear you are…_

Hans' own words worked even more for himself, for he knew that he too had been a monster in the past to get his way. The thought reverberates in his doubtful mind, along with every right of vengeance and comeuppance for the past two years of harsh servitude, beaten and shot down, then finally thrown overboard to his death by this evil 'sea monster' of a pirate, who had dared to lay a hand on righteous and good, Queen Elsa.

Hans Westergaard lowers the arrow aimed directly at Houtebeen's main heart ventricle from its shaft's well placed nock point. His exacting finger pinch loosens its grip to let the tensed arrow merely rest against the bow string. His racing mind then considers what to do with this subjugated blackguard.

"Prince Hans!" Just then, a shocked Queen Elsa and Princess Rapunzel, with Olaf and Pascal astride him soon at their heels, inconceivably appear to emerge from the graveyard trench tunnel Eugene had tenuously dug earlier at the pirate's command, to behold this confrontational scene.

* * *

_Minutes before…_

Once the church services were over, the sedulous pair of young ladies and their sidekicks had taken the initiative to ask the helpful nuns if they had seen or heard anything suspicious of late. But at the holy sisters' negative response, the two females nonetheless doggedly continued to investigate the sectioned off lower regions of the ancient church, apparently undisturbed for hundreds of years, save for one hidden, recently cracked open doorway a scouting Pascal alerted them to.

It was evident from the amount of fresh sediment on the floor Olaf had spotted ('_Snowmen and dirt do NOT go together! Brr_!') that the door led to a secret catacomb lair where many tapestries and statuaries depicting the country's patron St. Olaf had been secreted away.

Although Elsa was a tad overwhelmed by the historical and religious significance of the holy crypt, as Norway's Queen gazed about the darkened cloistered room full of old antiquities in awe, a single-minded Rapunzel, with a curious Pascal's aid, had soon discovered the ferreted out tunnel leading somewhere outside. Soon, upon entering the burrowed tunnel that the Ice Queen's powers bolstered with hard frost that glazed crumbling walls safely thereof, the brown haired princess soon made a startling discovery.

A dirty crumpled up piece of fabric lay there, crunched between the rolled open rune chiseled stone door. It was a silken violet purple embroidered square that was all too familiar to Rapunzel's widened frightened eyes. For it was a memento from her own wedding some five years past, with her kingdom of Corona's sun encrusted symbol etched upon its fine threads.

And more importantly, her Eugene's trademark rich scent was thick upon that sunburst embroidered purple handkerchief her mother had monogrammed for them as a surprise, their initials entwined together in celebration of their happy marriage. It was the one keepsake that he always made sure to stick in his pocket, '_For good luck'_the romantic in new Prince Consort Eugene Fitzherbert had said then on the first night of their blissful honeymoon on that dream-filled houseboat.

A touched, tearful Rapunzel had no idea this little scrap of fabric meant so much to the cynical man that he'd still carry it in his pocket, all these years, all these dangers and troubles later. And she vowed anew to never doubt him again if they were to be reunited, as she scooped up the blood-stained article of cloth that was more valuable to her than any sparkling jewel or ancient golden royal scepter.

* * *

_Back to the above ground present…_

"Ze scullery maid, too, lives?" The subdued Captain Houtebeen's mistrustful gaze falls upon the tall stately blonde who was now wearing far more regal garb than she was when stowaway-ed aboard his ship.

Elsa's tight-bunned hair and royal airs gave her all the appearance of a noble lady. Houtebeen's one keen eye considers her closely, the wicked wheels in his head turning.

_My slave of a cabin boy was told to be some unwanted disgraced royal prince when he was sold to me, was he not? So why not a dalliance with a pretty young Queen? He,he,he. I wouldn't put it past the untrustworthy rogue!_

"Where is Anna? She never did come into the Cathedral." Big sister Elsa's first thought was for her beloved little sister, her anxiety growing for the step-and-fetchit younger princess' welfare.

"Don't worry. She's up there with her husband and—" But even as Hans was pointing up to the left side tree-lined path above the steep embankment's rise, Rapunzel catches sight of someone she's been praying for a long, long time to see.

"**EUGENE****!"** She recklessly dashes up the hilly sands on wings of anticipation to be with her true love again.

"Wait!"

_Something's wrong!_

It's what his squinted eyes against the bright sunlight did not see that causes the strategist in Prince Hans to grow suddenly apprehensive.

"Here, Elsa." An urgent Hans hands to the surprised Queen the pirate's confiscated walnut handled Francotte revolver that Hans expertly loads in record time with the dropped cartridges Houtebeen had fumbled earlier.

"And don't be afraid to use it. The man is an entirely unprincipled reprobate. Listen to none of his nonsense…please." Steadying her cool hand with his warm one, Hans secures the gun's cold metal within her delicate thin palms, in well conjectured presumption that her royal naval father would teach his eldest daughter to be able to shoot a revolver.

"Olaf! Pascal! Keep an eye on him for me! I'll return shortly!" The Prince manfully takes the helm of command, his emotive eyes locking with Elsa's to strengthen her resolve before he takes up the steep embankment in long purposeful strides.

"So, ze boy finally leaves you in ze care of a real man. Imagine, you posing as a lowly 'scullery maid,' _**your Majesty**_. Why don't you move in a little bit closer for me to see you better, my dear. Heh, heh—" Putting 2 + 2 together, the evil pirate begins to chortle, reaching an arrogant hand for his cane with little fear of a dainty beauty such as this pretty deer in the lighthouse.

"Yes. I was the scullery maid. And I know exactly how to _clean up_ _messes_." With a confident eyebrow raised, Elsa clicks the hammer of the long barreled weapon her father did indeed instruct her thoroughly on how to use. Straightening her posture to be as tall and imposing as possible, the Queen aims the revolver downwards at the cackling pirate, a serious expression of pragmatic no nonsense sensibility prescribed on her every cold as ice feature.

_I can do stone cold emotionless very well, if you push me._

Elsa lets the threatening thought bolster her toughness, as she deftly levels the gun trained to his heart.

If he had one, that is.

Captain Houtebeen's condescending mirthful look up at her begins to fall away. But the humored smile remains as the pirate captain bides his time, all whilst covertly covering the trickling spring beginning to bubble again from the sands now that he had gotten the angered Queen to move her cast shadow out of the sun's rays.

His grubby hands motion beneath his concealed wide girth to stealthily pull open the secret latch to fill one more small golden orbital relic's rounded vessel that had been hidden within the folds of his waistcoat pocket, greedily capturing the few last morsels of healing moisture within it…

* * *

Hans' long legs overtake Rapunzel's shorter steps quickly, for he recognized haste was necessary. His one glance upwards before told him that his immediate presence was imperative to ensure Princess Anna's safety, as much as he was loath to leave Queen Elsa alone with the rascal pirate.

But he knew she would choose Anna's safety first—Anna meant the world to her. And he, Hans Westergaard, as a sign of his repentance, a symbol of his contrition, an act of his…_love_…personally couldn't allow harm—physical or emotional— to come to either Arendelle sister ever again, if he could prevent it.

"Eugene!" Rapunzel calls out her beloved husband's name, forgetting how much she loved him until she found something that reminded her how deep their commitment to one another had been.

_And still is!_

She was so thrilled to see him again, she didn't even see the scars, the black eyes, the overgrown facial stubble or the profusely bleeding arm, as he flippantly answers his wife without making eye contact whatsoever.

"Sorry, Darlin'. Can't stop for our morning smooch, as tantalizing as that sounds right now. Got my hands full at the moment." The mouth never ceases to amaze as Eugene Fitzherbert was manfully bearing the pain of his bullet-shot arm in his gallant attempts to steal and disarm the slashed knife blade that the ferocious Caribbean produced when Flynn challenged the already vexed man. He and Job had been vying for the sharp steel switchblade's control for several minutes now, all while Anna was still dangerously riding the massive man's shoulders, as if she were some kind of daring rodeo queen.

"Hey! Sideburns! Redheads do have all the luck! _Argh!_ You must have nine lives! _Hey!_ I'm glad you made it, Kid! And that slick grey cloak beats pirate rags anyday, you know what I'm talkin' about._Oof!_" All while he and Job were dueling, Eugene teases the tall, thin, younger man aside when Hans makes his first appearance to Eugene's elated guilt-ridden soul.

"You're looking good, Kid. Goes to show, you can't keep a good redhead down." Eugene rather big brotherly scruffs Han's neat hairdo until it was a red hay bird's nest.

"And Queenie?" Eugene's blameworthy conscience just needed a day like this to surpass the dark night of yesterday.

"I brought her here with me." Hans' wistful smile and quixotic voice in referring to Arendelle's lovely ruler, was music to Eugene's hungry for good news ears.

Sharing a small implied glance with Rapunzel, whose own gaze all the while was fixed on drooling on her daring shirtless stud, Eugene sighs in solicitous relief at his double or nothing emotional gamble panning out at Hans' comforting smile.

Both partnered up, battle engaged, yet preoccupied men then inattentively and simultaneously duck Job's incoming slashed blade, as if they each possessed some extrasensory charmed ability whilst they were quite civilly conversing, the smooth duo frustrating their stymied opponent to no end.

"Hiya! Get'em, Eugene! Get'em!" The squirming high-strung Anna, who was exhilarated by a good scrap between men, eggs on Eugene alone as he braves Job's knife to bob and weave around the encircled man until the first mate was dizzy. Working together, strategizing Hans uses this brief window of Job's unsteady wooziness to make a grab for the deadly knife, as the cunning thief shrewdly recognized he and Hans jointly were still out-muscled to not to resort to utilizing some of (_frying pans aside_) his finest gleaming weapons at his disposal—

His teeth.

"Owww!" Job wails as Eugene's vehement chompers clamp down hard on the dark man's blood-drained palm, making the man drop his flailing knife as he backs away rapidly to throw back his head violently in a deep-throated howl.

But these believed positive reactions result in a negatively surprised Anna to lose her perched balance atop Job's convulsing shoulders, and she gets thrown off quite roughly to be smashed down to the rocky boulders lining the path, beside her still mostly passed out hubby…

"Oof! Glad I caught you." They'd both heard this song be played before, as Prince Hans, formerly of the Southern Isles, swiftly glides in just the nick of time, to safely catch the flailing, falling, female called Princess Anna of Arendelle in his svelte, yet sinewy, strong arms.

But this time, instead of Princess Anna's wide besmitten eyes smiling up at his gentlemanly rescue, a sour smirk replaces the once tender moment.

"Eww! Put me down!" The feisty gal demands with a disgusted scowl and frowned brow up at his face.

A sheepish-eyed Hans immediately complies to her wishes as he quickly sets her little body gently on the ground.

"You just help Cousin Eugene beat that guy once and for all!" The haughty faced and voiced Princess snootily orders him over her shoulder as she moves expressly away.

"Kristoff!" Anna then falls to her knees at her downed love's side. She, a bit too roughly, grabs his head up from the bloody rock it had been bashed against multiple times to helpfully rub the fresh wound on the back of his head. This ministration causes Kristoff to wince awake with renewed pain. His girl was a bull in a china shop when it came to 'handling with care.'

"Oops, Sorry." At first giving Kristoff a twisted lipped quirky smile, Anna then decides to full mouth kiss him in both apology and relief instead as his eyes fully flutter open now with a satisfied grin up at her.

"You okay?" She breathlessly asks after lifting her fierce liplock from his wowed ones, the passed out blonde on the receiving end of Princess Anna's reverse take on the fabled 'Sleeping Beauty' tale.

"I am now, Baby." An equally breathless Kristoff does indeed feel revitalized enough to have his wife help him scramble to his feet in order to re-enter the ring. He rubs his truly kissed all better jaw as he does, knowing how very lucky he was to have a great passion like Anna's as a pick-me-up trick that worked every darn time.

"Hey! What are you doing up here anyway, _**Hans**_? Who's with Elsa?" Glancing back and forth at the rest of the 'team' of all their human people around her, Anna's sisterly love and concern kicks in next as she barks the question to Hans. He seemed to always know where her sister was, most of the time, unfortunately.

"I left her standing guard over Captain Houtebeen down there." Directing his expressive eyes down the hill, Hans manages to elucidate in between he and Eugene taking turns in exchanging blows with the hurt, but yet ferocious large Caribbean who had been a prize-winning pugilist in the boxing ring before the sea called him to be a pirate.

"You. Left. Her. Alone. With. The. Pirate?!" Scooping up Job's fallen knife, and swinging it in Hans' face viciously, Anna scornfully retorts as she then recklessly hurtles her little body over the steep embankment edge to heedlessly skitter down the sands the rest of the way at a temerarious, rash pace.

"Anna! Be careful!" Kristoff was getting used to warning his impetuous gal of the trouble she always found herself a free ticket aboard, though he had a feeling that she didn't even hear him.

He was about to give chase to her when Flynn's knocked back body crashes into his, signaling to Kristoff that it was his turn again in this punching tag team to face off the solidly massive 6'8" brawny bruiser who towered over even him.

"Good to see you up and at the good fight again, Mr. Bjorgman." Though Hans Westergaard's slighter, pale frame was almost a comical match for the darker skinned professional fighter, he was holding his own. He utilized the defensive tactics he was expert at in swordplay, although he was minus his 'talented' sword.

_Alas…_

I must warn you though, _ugh!_ this gentleman _akt_! !does not play by the _ungh_! Queensberry rules." The former Prince of the Southern Isles just manages to dive out of the line of Job's proper etiquette rule-breaking attempt to grasp his thin opponent's waist in an illegal wrestled squeeze.

"Yeah…the Queensberry Rules…" Kristoff smirks at how toffee-nosed and wordy his once enemy/now unlikely partner could still be, even in a hand-to-hand pitched fight.

_For us 'lower classed' folks, a fight is just a fight. No rules apply beyond the laws of the fittest._

With that silent thought, the blonde delivers a crushing blow to Job's lower jaw cheek in return for his own still sore jawbone, causing Hans to smile. He was impressed that the tide of their fisticuffs battle with the gargantuan man may just be turning.

* * *

"Oh, Eugene! My poor sweetie!" Rapunzel had interrupted her guy's K'O'd descent as he was falling backwards. She brushes his dark brown hair, full of mud and sweat, from his two black swollen eyes.

She then scans—in horror—his multiple scratches, the dirt-smudged beard growth and black and blue bruises all over his entire bare-chested body, with the blood still dripping down his bullet pierced right arm.

The sweet young woman's eyes fill with tears for what her lover had had to endure, all on his own. Her well wept tears spill down onto his closed eyelids, the warm wetness of which causes Eugene to awaken, just as her magic tears had called him back to life, once upon a time ago.

_cough cough_"Why are you crying, Blondie?" Eugene whispers, reaching an exhausted left hand up as his eyes squint in pain to touch her overcome, soggy cheek.

"Does my face look that bad? Be truthful…if you must."

Nonetheless, Flynn Rider always had his vain, sardonic humor at the ready to wipe away all of his emotional girl's tears for him. She cries now with tears of joy running down her cheeks at finding him, though battered and bruised, yet still alive. The handsome rogue smiles flirtatiously up at her adoring face, in true Flynn Rider style.

"Oh, Eugene! You're so beautiful! I love you!" Rapunzel weeps and laughs all at once, as she euphorically hugs her husband's head on her lap to her heaving chest.

"Yup, still got it." Eugene remarks, still full of himself, with his trademark smirk sidling up his dirt-streaked face just for her benefit.

And he never looked more stunning to her ecstatic eyes. "Did I mention, recently, how much I love brunettes?" He runs his fingers through her stick-short hair and she hugs him even tighter.

"Ooph! Not that I'm not enjoying your ample cuddles, but just go easy on the arm." Sucking in air, Eugene almost passes out with the pain of the embedded bullet still wedged in his upper tricep Rapunzel was unintentionally pressing.

* * *

As Anna races down the sand embankment towards the sparkling Nidelva River, something else that glitters catches her eye and she scoops it up without even missing a dashed beat.

Exhilarated by all this action and adventure, the fun-loving Princess storms down the sand bank at full speed, until she suddenly trips on a jutted out rock. She then tumbles the rest of the way until she clumsily lands headfirst at the scene.

Shaking the strewn sand from her brow, Anna pushes her mussed bangs away to find herself looking eye level at the prone, ugly, old patch eyed pirate's sneering face.

"Eww, you're yukky." Sharp knife somehow still fixed in one hand all the dangerous while, Anna can't help the comment as her big sister's helpful arm pulls her up to her feet, with the gun in Elsa's grip still trained. Olaf helps out on the other side to steady the tripped girl.

"Ze little princess, too…" Under his breath, Captain Houtebeen's interested stare across at Anna darkens as the wheels spin in his evil mind full of dark thoughts circulating a newly devised, spur of the moment plan.

"Hey, you!" But Anna's own eyes were too observant for once. From her view at his lateral side, she glimpses something mighty interesting concealed beneath the old pirate's twisted form.

"Anna, get back from him!" Elsa warns her gutsy little sibling to stay back from the crusty old captain.

"But look what he's got there!" Bold Anna announces, wrenching her arm from Elsa's grip as she pounces back down to straddle the pirate and wrestle with his gripping hands behind his back.

The determined girl wins to triumphantly pull out from under Houtebeen's hidden grasp to proudly display…

"The orb of Saint Olaf…!" Elsa was full of amazed pleasure at her younger sister's discovery of the stolen holy relic that the Queen had partly begun this epic journey to come in search of recovering.

The joy is shortlived, though, when Captain Houtebeen proves to be less disabled in his incapacitated state than they all believed. Even an old cripple, when his lifelong quest for wholeness is threatened to be ripped away before it had even been glimpsed, could surpass himself in the moment of driven necessity.

_**SHIKT! SHIKT!**_

"Anna!" Elsa shrieks her endangered best friend's name even as her entire body begins to shiver with the cryokinetic energies surging up to pour out in retaliation as even the gun metal in her hand starts to turn frosty.

"Don't ye be moving a one of zose long slender fingers to harm me, Queen _Elsie_, if ye want yer pretty little sissy to keep her pretty little head attached to her pretty little neck." In this, his finest physical feat in tens of handicapped years, Houtebeen swiftly manages not only to sit up and grab Anna's shocked upper torso, but he spins the dizzy girl in close proximity, turning her around enough for his gripping hands to seize the knife from hers to turn the tables and now threaten its deadly blade to her constricted throat.

Using Hans' diminutive name for Elsa when he first met her, Houtebeen wrenches the golden orb from Anna's stiffened grasp. Elsa is only able to watch helplessly, for fear of Anna's precious life being lost.

Always a wily conniver, Captain Houtebeen had swiftly forged a revamped, evil plot as his new grand scheme—one that could involve these two young women. He sensed the young queen's delicate spirit could be broken with one word—if he revealed all he knew…And that he could use to his advantage someday soon...

"Now, zis be mine again as well. And don't ye be trying to get it back again. Bring me my cane, Yer Majesty." Houtebeen demands, as he reclaims the orb. He enjoyed ordering the fearfully shaking young woman to do his bidding, Queen or no. But he mustn't have been aware of Elsa's full powers, or he would've tread more lightly.

After a silent pause, Pascal and Olaf forlornly pass the cane to Elsa, who tosses it to the ground within arm's reach of the wicked captain. He was eyeing her slender form with greedy eyes again as he stands with his cane, back up to her level.

"So, my lowly cabin boy has tasted ze _**Queen's**_ lips…Why not try ze Captain zis time, Queen Elsa of Arendelle, and I may let yer little waif of a princess go." A bedeviled Houtebeen taunts as his gnarled old hands were still gripped around a wide-eyed Anna's waist with the sharpened blade of the knife moving in ever closer to her wheezing throat. It nearly draws blood, as his hideous face leers in closer to Elsa's terrified, frozen in place one.

Every voice inside her screams out to strike with her ice powers, but Anna's frightened face was too close in the line of fire. Elsa loved her too much to take the risk of hitting her beloved sister ever again.

And that immense love was what gave her the control to hold back.

_**T'chai!**_

An expertly aimed arrow zings across the river front's still air. Its head buries itself to plunge into the sand at the pirate's feet.

"Hmph! Sorry attempt at a rescue, incompetent archer!" Houtebeen's derisive chuckle is soon replaced, though, when he looks down at the crumpled bulge beneath the sands where the arrow struck into a growing—

"Puddle?! Now, where'd that come from?!" Speaking to his rippled reflection in the crystal clear, blessed waters, pooling in the sand, Olaf fills in the previously foreign word to him.

Once the puddle dissipates, the snowman curiously digs beneath the shallow sands to where a large clay bottle had been utterly shattered by the dead-on bullseye of the honed bone arrowhead.

"**NOOOO! My spring water! All my precious water!"** Dragging Anna down with him to his knees, Houtebeen bewails the spilled moisture whose last miraculous drops seem to run away from his touch. The remainder of it seeps back into the ground as if it were never there, in a matter of seconds.

"Grrrrrrr….." The viciously angry pirate's ugly face turns even more repulsive in his fury as he stands back up, his knife now readied to strike a direct blow into a struggling Anna's pure heart…

"**LET. HER. GO."**Wielding his long bow and arrow of proud Saami heritage, protective Kristoff Bjorgman fiercely bellows out each commanding word as he races in leaps and bounds across the Cathedral's Nid River facing grounds towards where the merciless pirate was holding Anna before a pleading eyed Elsa.

**"TAKE ANOTHER STEP FOOL, AND HOUTEBEEN WILL SWEAR TO KILL HER!"** The enraged pirate screeches out in his broken language, incensed that his plans were all unraveling. Hans and Eugene were each holding an arm of the captive Job between them, with Rapunzel trailing behind.

"Free Job, or I slit her puny throat right in front of her sister!" Neither Hans nor Eugene needed to exchange a look with Kristoff to already start untying the ropes they had tethered around a finally beaten Job (once Kristoff had added his muscle) as they were escorting the big, captured man down the hill.

As a freed Job marches forward, he stops to stare at Kristoff. The two big men's eyes slit at one another until Job suddenly decides to punch Kristoff again, for fear of another of his injudicious reprisals. The dark man then grunts in the other two men's shocked faces, as he wordlessly takes off in the opposite direction, around the corner to fetch the pirates' small steam driven propeller boat tied to a post several lengths down the riverbank.

Next were the nail-biting few minutes of Captain Houtebeen's sneer silently daring anyone to make a move, lest Anna be killed.

Minutes later, an odd-shaped double paddlewheeled ferry with a bore and stroke steam propulsion system soon comes puffing around the Nidelva River's bend.

"Please, sir! Let Anna go! I will give you anything—to the half of my kingdom! If you just don't harm her!" Elsa's shaky voice diplomatically tries to plead with the crazed-eyed pirate.

"Yer kingdom? Yes, Houtebeen will claim all yer kingdom has to offer me, in exchange for zis *meisje, when I return, Queen Elsa of Arendelle! Perhaps I will even deem to keep you as my queen, beautiful lady…and you will bow before me as King, you will see!" Houtebeen touches one hand beneath Elsa's trembling chin with a lusty, longing look in his greedy, maddened eyes.

He revels in Hans' quite audible growl from where he was some meters away. The irked young man's fisted hands were just itching to—

"**GET AWAY FROM MY SISTER!"**

_**STOMP!**_

Feisty Anna doesn't take this being a victim game seriously enough, though. Her tiny boot comes smashing down over the peg-leg's one working foot. Her protective streak for her sister outweighed any sense of self-preservation, anyday.

"_**Yelp!**_ Ye are asking for it, ye little *terreur!" Houtebeen now brandishes the steel blade before Anna's widening eyes as he slowly runs its flat coldness against her cheek in menacing intimidation.

Anna gulps as fortunately just then, Job appears from the boat craft, at his redheaded Captain's side. He lifts the whole package of pirate and gutsy young girl, to carry them onboard the small steamship he had just pulled alongside the riverbank.

"And don't ye try to follow me, or yer little princess will be _dodelijk_—dead!" Houtebeen, still holding the knife to her throat, shouts out one last threat as the steamship quickly departs.

"**NOOOO! ANNA!"** Elsa screams, feeling utterly powerless again, just as she did that terrible day long ago as she rushes to the edge of the river. Her feet long to run upon the water in foolhardy pursuit of the steam engine ,but that evil pirate's final ominous word on what would befall her sweet, little sister with his knife to her throat should they give chase, terrified her.

She could still see, through her fierce tears, Anna's struggling, kicking and screaming little form be passed to an impenetrably strong-armed Job as the Peg-leg captain takes the helm of his new craft. The vessel grows smaller and smaller as it moves further and further away down the River Nid, via the Gaulosen Fjord, and towards the open northern seas…

The horrifying sight of having to allow the cruel pirate to escape with her kidnapped little sister, freezes a devastated Elsa's heart inside.

The Queen of this land falls to her knees in the historic riverbank's shallows. The swirling waters immersed up to her waist were nothing compared to the forlorn despair and extreme anxiety in losing her beloved sibling and not be able to do a blessed thing about it, for fear of jeopardizing Anna's welfare further..

"Anna…" Shaken to her core, Elsa feels her world begin to shatter like ice crystals spiraling out of control, again…

Within seconds, Hans dashes to the shore, swiftly removing his Arendelle cloak along the way. Vaguely sensing someone near in her delirium, Elsa feels the grey cloak almost magically wrap around her, his body warmth and strangely inviting scent still viable upon its folds.

Distraught, impuissant and panicked, Elsa's hyperventilating frost exuding body that was involuntarily freezing herself from the waist down in the no longer warm summer waters, was just able to discern a pair of warm arms gather her up from the high tide at the river's edge where she had sunk to her knees at the frigid Nidelva's banks.

The Queen turns to bury her rimy petrified face into Hans' welcoming chest, her ice powers losing all control in her inconsolable despair as her innate cryokinetics begin to freeze everything within a two meter radius.

And that included the man who neither flinches nor sidesteps a falter to hold the ungovernably unrepressed emotional Ice Queen close in his warm arms. His pounding heartbeat was strong and rhythmically steady in her ears even if the cold bitter frost meant the end of his life.

Hans Westergaard vows silently here and now in this great moment of this earthly angel's terror and grief, he would endure anything _and_ everything for the vulnerable woman clasped in his arms as he pets her convulsing shoulders to be still.

"I swear to you before God Almighty that we will get Princess Anna back alive, Queen Elsa. On my honor, truly, I will not rest until we bring her back to your side again, even unto giving my worthless life up to Him in exchange." Hans pledges on whispered blue-tinged lips as he breathes hot breaths into her sweet smelling iridescent hair, tenderly embracing Elsa's icy trembling cold body fearlessly close with all the warmth he had to offer left.

Pressed tightly against his undaunted chest's heat, Elsa, through traumatized tears, faintly recalls in the back of her mind how each time this man spoke to her, in that breathtaking exquisite voice, even in her growing power's most undisciplined restless instances, every time the tranquil sea of his placid green eyes engulfed her ice stricken frightened blue ones with their warm expression of contrasting vulnerable strength, the lost little girl inside of Queen Elsa of Arendelle found a peace to hold back the forbidding storm of her ice powers that only Prince Hans of the Southern Isles brought to her.

Visions of they two in the past replay within just few ephemeral seconds: of the North Mountain Ice Palace her hands alone created, where his plaintive offered words of wisdom saved her from her petrified with fright maddened self; then his pleading eyes that were begging to extend straight to her startled insecure heart in Arendelle's lower dungeon cell; to the frozen ice covered gelid of the fjord where he alone was able to find and reach her with a voice that called for the madness of her unintentional 'eternal winter' to stop.

And then the endless haunting dreams filled with him for nearly every night in the past two years, were all surrounded by the soft sights and gentle sounds of his expressive eyes and remarkable voice that, she was just beginning to realize, touched her heart, calmed her mind, reached her soul in ways no one else's could.

Even now, living her worst nightmare, the platinum blonde's uncertain soul finds a strange solace again in his reassuring gaze. Elsa's consciousness believed in the words of the only other man, besides her dear papa, who could ever hold her tight.

And the turbulent frenzy of ice stemming from her, abruptly ceases, as her frightened panicked eyes, heeding his presence once again, normalize looking up into his tender gaze.

Hans' generous warmth encapsulates her weary heart with the building hot tears that finally fall, as the frosted glaze on the river's physical surface too ebbs away under each of her tear droplets' melting touches.

"Go ahead and cry. Just let it go…" He murmurs so gently in her hair as the lean bodied man lifts Elsa's lissome and graceful form from the chilled waters engulfed around them both. She was wearing his cloak tucked around her quivering body, so Hans, in the abstract, can't help but marvel at how Elsa fit so perfectly in his arms as he carries the young woman sobbing hot tears on his neck back to the river's edge. There, an embracing Rapunzel and Eugene were sadly looking on, with a funny stick-finger twiddled Olaf and desolate deep blue Pascal watching at their feet.

Just then, a sputtering up blood Kristoff comes to from his latest pounding, as he staggers over to the river's edge to meet the solemn faced group.

"Where's Anna?" His first and foremost thought was always for his girl as he rubs his groggy eyes to consciousness and holds the side of his aching head where Job had pummeled him squarely that was throbbing intensely.

But from the downcast looks on Eugene, Rapunzel, Pascal, and even Olaf's countenances, plus the added disquieting scene of Elsa's uncontrollable weeping in Hans' arms, an apprehensive Kristoff assesses what had occurred when he had been knocked out.

After scanning from forlorn face to forlorn face, through disbelieving eyes, he realizes that his adored dearest, most cherished and brightest sunflower in the pasture had been plucked from his care, his protection that he promised her for a lifetime that was just at its beginning together…

_Not end, never an end for the two of us_—

"**ANNA!"** Kristoff releases a primal scream that echoes across the river as the soft-spoken man freely breaks into a manic run. He splashes into the river until he was soaked up to his neck. But the quick-paced steamboat was long out of his reach.

"What good did this damn thing do?! I've failed you, Anna…**DAMNIT!**" Crying relentless tears through clenched teeth as he throws his useless '_legendary'_ bow down hard. Kristoff swears wildly then slams the surface of the water with his angry fists.

There, his golden wedding band that his sweet girl had just put there not a week ago, glimmers upon the sun-glanced gleaming water's crests as he again pounds the waves in a fuming rage at himself especially. The splashed up waters streaming down his cheeks disguised his unabated tears…

And the waves of the historic Nidelva River, beyond the holy Cathedral, suddenly rush in then change their tidal course to bring the discarded curved golden tan wooden archer's tool to float back to its despondent owner standing in the river's midst, where Kristoff's yearning eyes were searching the horizon, with prayerful hope for his love's return …

_Please God, bring my bright sunflower back to me…_

* * *

This is the end of Act One of "Frozen Again: But the Greatest of These is Love"

We've finally reunited Eugene and Rapunzel, but what's going to happen to poor kidnapped Anna now?

How are Kristoff and Elsa going to rescue her from those pirates?

Is Hans going to confess his awakening new love to Elsa?

And what **is** that wicked Captain Peg-leg scheming with Arendelle's holy treasure now!?

All that and much more adventure, romance and unraveling enigmatic mystery is in store for our Disney heroes and heroines!

Is there a fairytale happy ending for _any_ of our 3 couples?

Please stay tuned for Frozen Again: Act Two to find out, coming soon!

P.S. Olaf would love to hear what you think so far of this half of our Frozen story! ^_^

Please kindly give us your reviews of your favorite parts thus far!:)

Thanks for reading and God Bless! We all have **Frozen Fever** today!

HarukaKou

* * *

*meisje = 'little girl' in Dutch

*terreur = 'firebrand/terror' in Dutch


	25. Chapter 24 - Act II: A New Mission

We do not own "Frozen" nor any of its characters.

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act II:**

**Chapter 24**

**"A New Mission"**

The brilliant sun that had been glimmering on the waters from its lofty place up in the sky abruptly takes a bow behind some dark, foreboding clouds that had mysteriously gathered over the Nidaros Cathedral.

Extending a hand that soon balls into a useless fist, and feeling utterly wretched that the result of his salvation came at the price of that sweet little firecracker of a pixie, Eugene Fitzherbert hugs his uncontrollably weeping wife all the tighter.

He looks up through his swollen eyes, fighting tears that probably would fall for the first time in his adult life, to where Hans Westergaard was similarly embracing Elsa.

Hans was gazing down at her with utmost anxiety in his sorrowful green eyes as he holds the distraught, heartbroken queen up in his protective arms, as if she were but a weightless snowflake.

But the weight of the entire world seemed to have fallen upon the slumped shoulders of the devastated golden blonde who was yet standing some dozen feet from where the others were on the shore. Kristoff Bjorgman was ensconced in the river rushing all about him, with not a thought to self.

How could there be? Every single second that was still pounding in his ears was for her. For his Anna who had been stolen from him.

"Anna…I didn't watch you close enough, I'm sorry…! I have to bring you back home…" Only the winds could hear the whispered murmuring on his trembling lips between his tears as Kristoff sinks to his knees beneath the river's currents.

What seemed like the distant roar of rolling thunder makes Eugene look up, disoriented, to the threatening sky. With a heavy heart, the guilt-ridden thief had been about to go to Kristoff to stop the young fool from drowning himself in the waters, but a permeating sound coming from the throbbing ground behind them caught his attention instead.

This 'thunder' was emanating from the hooves of a cloven-toed hero, for Sven had broken free of where he had been tied to the post (for appearance's sake for any hesitant churchgoers.)

Upon hearing his best friend's heart wrenched cries, the empathic reindeer swiftly galloped past a surprised Hans, still with Elsa, and a shocked Eugene and Rapunzel—just to reach Kristoff as fast as he could.

Sven, with forlorn eyes, nudges his broken-spirited pal with a comforting nuzzle. But the stunned Kristoff didn't respond to his furry friend's prodding. With a big, doleful gaze and a sorrowful begging grunt at the look of complete, lost despair that was inscribed all over the big man's speechless face, Sven takes the initiative to lower his neck and head into the water to scoop up and roll on his back, like second nature, the despondent blonde from the river that Kristoff was drowning his sorrows in.

After instinctively looking around for Anna, his beloved second passenger who was nowhere in sight, the grey-brown reindeer's eyes seem to zero in on the now growing tiny in the distance steamboat departed far down the River Nid's bends. Without a single word passing, Sven takes a deep breath into his flared nostrils, and closes his round eyes that were steeling with determination. His furry brown ears prick up, as if listening to some unknown voice on the wind while he carries Kristoff, the reindeer trudging to the riverbank.

The durable rangifer crooks his neck to ensure that his unaware-of-the-world-around-him rider was firmly astride, then Sven's four sturdy legs take off like a shot past the two wide-eyed couples at such a rampaging sudden speed that the vacuum of high-velocity blows a standing nearby Olaf into several parts, that a side-stepping Pascal avoids being avalanched by. The snow mounds, stick branches and carrot all scatter upon the bank in the reindeer's speedy wake with a numbed Kristoff automatically clutching onto his fur, trusting his childhood friend to help him retrieve his stolen true love once again.

"We must give chase." Recognizing the reindeer's full gallop speed of nearly 80 kilometers per hour versus their horses', even driven hard, at only 45-50 kpm, the logistically minded Hans urgently calls the order in that superior, princely voice as he immediately spins on his heels to race back towards their parked sleighs near the church front.

He was still carrying his clingy queen to his chest all the while.

"Get it together, snowball." Feeling responsible for this entire, unlucky mess and its resulting tumult, Eugene springs to action. With pumping adrenaline, he ignores the throbbing pain in his right arm and wholeheartedly launches into the 'team spirit.' This former loner gathers up the remainder of Olaf's wriggling, escaping appendages—along with his quickly rushed and plunked back together incorrectly body on top of head—and tucks the rest under his one good arm.

He then pats his shoulder for Pascal to jump aboard while, with his other bloodied, bullet ridden and frostbitten arm, he holds out his hand to Rapunzel, who grasps the wearied, scraped and cut limb with a look of gratitude for his strength to return to her side, though both had hoped the privilege of being together again, wouldn't have had to come at so dear a cost…

* * *

"What do you STUPID pirates think you're doing?! Kidnapping a princess of a European Royal House is a major illegal offense! It's punishable by…uhmmmm…hanging! **Yeah, hanging!** I can just see you two losers dangling by your sorry necks from the yardarm back in Arendelle! You'll be begging my good sister for leniency for your wicked crimes or a pardon of amnesty from justice—or to give you parole from your rightful penalty of death in commo—commut—Oh, beg her to grant you mercy, anyway! As if! You'll still swing! So there!" Once Princess Anna had managed to wiggle her freely loose lips from the snug gag around her spirited mouth, the feisty girl lets it spill out—all this past hour's pent up venom with self-righteous indignation.

Even if she couldn't quite remember how to say or spell some of the big, book words that were just on the tip of her vehement tongue!

"I t'ought I told ye to gag ze talkative wench, Job. She gives yer Captain a monstrous headache somezing powerful. Zough she be a pretty little missy…" Lecherous Captain Houtebeen, with his roving one eye, slowly drags his pegleg across the wooden deck of the 'borrowed' steamship craft he had called in some underhanded favors to parlay his greedy hands upon.

Hearing her loud and annoying voice all the way from where he was on the foredeck to the bridge wheelhouse where Job had tied the squirming girl to the center compass binnacle, the bent and twisted old man reaches one his gnarled hands to touch the bound Anna's angry pink cheek.

But the peppery Arendelle sister was no slouch when it came to the self-defense against a man's unwanted attentions that her parents had taught her.

_Yes, they did!_

_**CHOMP!**_

Anna comes within millimeters of viciously biting off the unpalatable pirate's wandering digits, but the crusty old man yanks them away, just in time, so as not to sustain yet another handicapped body part.

"You just stay away from me, you ugly old man!" In much more anger than fearful retaliation, Anna yells unwisely loud in Houtebeen's now ringing ears. The bitter, bad-tempered aged pirate raises his arm to backhand the insulting young guttersnipe, but wise Job's gentle and patient palm comes to rest on Houtebeen's fiery shoulder, causing him to stop just short of striking the closed-eye and fully-prepared-to-be-hit young woman.

Job then signals to him that something was amiss with the ship, which begins to slow, sputtering for coal, diverting their attention.

Anna peeks open one eye after a few anxious seconds, when the harsh expected blow never comes to her expectant face.

"Huh?" She glances around the enclosed wheelhouse to see the pair of pirates had simply chosen to abandon her. Job had returned to attending to the engines below deck, beneath the main mast.

As for the pirate Captain, he had managed to collect his composure enough to silently stand at the navigation controls near the bridge's windowed viewscreen with his back to her.

"Hah! Scared ya, didn't I?!" The yet restrained Anna boldly proclaims to herself with a broad, narcissistic smile that only begins to fade when Captain Houtebeen's white-streaked red bearded chin pointed at the wheel steering the craft, curls up with a smirk at something gleaming gold clutched in his hand.

"Oookay…I'm sorry about calling you names before. Kristoff keeps telling me I've gotta work on '_keeping my inner calm'_. So how about turning this boat around and dropping me back off at that Cathedral? Or any near port will do. Don't worry, I'll find my own way home, if that's more convenient."

'_You catch more flies with honey.' Mama used to say._

Trying to now sweet talk her way out of her nervousness, Anna starts rattling off. The innocent little girl in her still half believed in the innate goodness of others, if you just said the 'magic word' with a pleasant, winning smile.

"Please…?" But the politeness 'magic' doesn't seem to have any effect whatsoever on this churlish old rotter. "And if you just give me back our kingdom's Orb of Saint Olaf's that you've got there and let me go, I promise we won't prosecute you or charge you with any crime. Hey! There might even be a finder's fee reward for you if you return it and me within twenty-four hours or something. And we'll just forget anything ever happened. How's that sound?" Anna displays her friendliest, hopeful-est, toothy-est smile from where she was strapped and secured to the brass, wooden binnacle.

"A reward for zis little golden beauty, ye say?" Houtebeen continues to lovingly pet the golden Orb he was admiring in his hand, as if it was his most cherished possession. It sparkles in the late afternoon sunlight, penetrating the due west glass viewscreen. "No, meisje, I have waited me whole life for her. She is mine…and ye too will remain me little pawn. So, I'm afraid Job and I will have to risk yer unnerving sentence of death by hanging—as unpleasant as ye make it sound, Princess—mercy or no." Houtebeen's previous anger flare was appeased by his level-headed first mate's greater wisdom to follow their new plan. Instead he ridicules Anna's pitiful attempts at intimidation.

"A pawn? Like in chess?" Anna quizzically wonders at the odd use of the term that she knew from days of youth playing the ancient South Asian intellectual game with her sweet, unassuming Mama, who had been a brilliant strategist at the chessboard who could always out jump her little girl's pawns and knights, protecting her king easily before guileless young Anna could bat an eye in checkmate to the Queen.

_Oh, Mama! I just wore your wedding dress, but I wish I could be half as clever as you to get out of this! You always knew the right words to say..._

Anna remembers most of all her kind mother's ability to sing her Papa's worried brow away each time he came down from Elsa's locked room in great anxiety for his eldest child's woes. She recalled the nights her mother would sit her distressed husband before the roaring fireplace and serenade away his disquieted shaking concerns with her lilting soft strains, in loveliest song.

_Now I understand your worries over Elsa's solitary condition—but you don't have to worry anymore! You should see how strong she is now! _

"Yes, yes, very good, Princess. Houtebeen likes zat. Ye be quiet and he will be ze one for ze ultimate 'chess checkmate' zis time. Har hah har…"

The evil pirate's chortles of laughter were unsettling to say the least. But Anna would never give in to defeat—even as the old captain receives Job's signal to set all the steering machinery to full steam again, now that the Caribbean man had reloaded the coal chutes for utmost steam pressure again.

The screw propeller near the tailshaft roars to life as the small steamship surges the waves on course again for its unknown destination.

_How strong we both can be…_

Anna's eyes try to scrutinize something of the compass dials she had been strapped to. Though she never did pay much attention to her father's wide collection of his lifelong naval tour's nautical souvenirs, his compass on the library shelf always did intrigue the little girl who yearned to travel beyond the castle's walls.

Whether it was pointing N, S, E, or W or any of the half-increments in between, small, lonely and sheltered Anna of Arendelle dreamed of traveling to each far off destination someday. The bright eyed youngster would fill her empty day with imaginary travel spent lion-taming on Africa's high plains to the Deep South, climbing China's Great Wall to the Far East, or exploring by railroad America's frontier of the Wild West. Each exotic location was excitingly depicted in the new collection of Encyclopaedia Brittanica that Mama had imported, especially for her intelligent girls.

Even if they couldn't visit them, Queen Idun's girls would at least be educated to see the world through the periscope of these informative books, full of important up-to-date data and thrilling real life stories of actual heroes and heroines making history—not just living through it.

Back to present day harsh reality, straining her eyes according to the compass aboard this steamship she was an unwilling passenger on, Princess Anna assesses that she would be traveling—barring a few westerly ticks—mainly towards magnetic North. It was the one direction, for all its cold barrenness, not much interesting animal nor plant life, nor modern invention, that had least fascinated the girl who had lived in Norway's already fairly high in the Artic Circle northern spot on the spherical globe.

_But I'll keep you warm here with me in my heart. It makes it easier when life gets hard like this…Oh Kristoff! I know you will be so worried sick because you love me so much! And I love you so much that I'm worried sick about you worrying yourself sick over me…_

_Please watch over him while I'm gone, Elsa...And I love you too..._

* * *

Sven's thundering hooves cross the Trondheim lowlandsregion's gentle valleys and rounded hills into the more rugged mountain terrain north of Skogn, Hylia and Straumen without stopping for rest in some 10 hours now since they began this continuous run.

But Sven understood his best friend's aching heart so thoroughly that the compassionate reindeer gave his absolute special all to race across the plains at full throttle.

Though, climbing upon the Scandinavian Mountain ranges that naturally dominated the country's eastern interior in this blind trek North, even sturdy Sven was beginning to feel the intense muscle strain in his pounding legs.

It had been ceaseless kilometers since the pair had left Trondheim and Kristoff had not yet uttered a single spoken word to him. Only a hand would signal the reindeer transport forward along this mad dash North, for everything in the landscape was telling Sven to.

But no verbal speech ever need be transmitted between the close pair as Sven instinctively followed the adrenaline driven course a silent Kristoff and the whispering whipping wind through his unruly hair seemed to be conspiring together to chart.

Still, the Midnight Sun flavor of a Norwegian mid-July made it pretty hard for a tired-eyed Sven to gauge the actual time of day, other than that of the count of the raging, swiftly crossed kilometers on Sven's mental odometer.

The reindeer's cloven hooves did not let up from his ultra rapid 75 km gallop, though Sven, every now and then, would steal a glance back at the quiet man clinging to the fur on the creature's back, riding him. That is, until they come upon a long fjorden cutting vertically across this craggly stretch of land.

Sensitive and sweet Kristoff had been holding back a cloudburst of tears for a great deal of the trip, kicking himself mentally the entirety of the night that never would grow darker yet.

'_To love, honor, and protect.' That's what I said I'll do. But I didn't. I just didn't…_

_I didn't protect you, Anna. They were all right about me. I am such an __**idiot**__!_

The heartbroken young blonde squeezes hard in punishment his lifelong companion's furry shoulders that he was hanging onto until both felt about to pop. But Sven's empathy recognized Kristoff's agony for Anna's loss. It hurt the reindeer deeply as well, for he loved the sprightly girl almost as much as his buddy did. Their mutual affection for this precious imp was one of the only things either male owned in this world, beyond one another's friendship.

So with teary eyes, both males rush headlong forward, until Sven wakes up enough to come to an abrupt stop near the edge of the Namosfjorden's bedrock shoal.

"Don't stop, Sven!" In a desperate yet commanding voice, Kristoff finally breaks his silent, introverted rebuke as the cautious reticent pack animal carefully pauses at the glittering fjorden's shore.

**"**_**HOMMN!"**_

Sven's deep-throated bellow questions his normally level-headed responsible partner's unwise order to try to sidestep over the freshwater estuary blocking their path. After all, this body of water's shallow end near the shoals sill varied from the unpredictable fjorden's main sill which could possess a depth of merely 2 meters deep to, oh, say, a 400 meter drop at any given point.

Sven personally, after all these long years traveling together, knew that Kristoff usually saw the unassuming waters' perhaps treacherous dangers. But could Kristoff see it now through his clouded tear stained eyes?

Perhaps the throbbing pain stabbing a Kristoff's head as well as symptoms of a broken heart made the sane young man lose nearly all his sensibilities and reason. The only thing he was certain of was the overwhelming need to keep traveling North to find her, as sure as if he were reading a compass' dial directing him so.

Kristoff's pointed booted feet kick into Sven's shocked sides as if he were no more than a pack animal merely to ride and haul loads than a very dear friend.

**"**_**HOMMN!" **_

A disgruntled Sven lets out another deep deterring call, shaking his affronted head as he does so to warn off Kristoff's uncharacteristic stubborn high-handedness. Sven's behooved legs back away from the rushing churning waters that Kristoff was urging him yet to recklessly cross.

"Come on, Sven! We can make it! Crossing this little fjorden here will shave hours off our time!" Kristoff loudly raises his voice in complaint of his reindeer's recalcitrance with angry frustration for the first time since they were together.

"Anna needs me to save her from those pirates, Sven! Please, Sven. Please help me. She's in terrible danger and needs me to rescue her." Kristoff was pleading by now. Kristoff was openly weeping amidst his heartfelt begged pleas as he leans his throbbing head down close to Sven's soft neck, burying his face in the reindeer's furry neck nap as he did when he was a scrawny little kid needing a warm hug when he was trying so hard to fit in as a big man Ice Harvester.

Remembering back on those times, Kristoff never felt lonely, despite growing up with no kin, no family, because faithful Sven had always been that one constant companion at his side to talk to, work with, play with, eat with, sleep with, to hug and hold onto when things got too rough.

The wind suddenly picks up around the pair of them.

"Anna needs **US**."

And for the first time, though his adult realist mind always tried to convince that believing little boy in him that his 'conversations' with Sven were but figments of his fertile imagination, Kristoff can plainly hear the vacillating deep timbered words spoken directly to his now receptive brain finally in tune with nature through the nostalgic memories of their past together.

A voice that he had always heard, yet never acknowledged, that, as the tall blonde man glances around at the vast nothingness surrounding the two lone figures, could only belong, up here in the desolate section of country to—

"Sven? That **was** you, wasn't it? Maybe I'm too exhausted, Or got hit on the head too hard one time too many this morning and it's got me hearing things, or—" Kristoff, ever the logical, down-to-earth skeptic, attempts to reason this inexplicable through, as the whistling winds around him swirl, and the tears stinging behind his eyes are abated, his cloudy vision cleared.

"It's always been me, since the beginning, Buddy. You just didn't want to understand me when I talked that way, sometimes."

The grey-brown reindeer with the baritone wobbly voice that Kristoff's subconscious at least was mimicking, now was definitely smiling up at his old pal who was hearing the world through new ears more and more since his destiny had been revealed to him.

With a smiled chuckle, despite his great troubles and sorrows, Kristoff swallows the dry lump in his throat with sheer wonderment.

"All these years, I knew I was never alone." The rugged man whispers gratefully as he presses his head down to his sentient beast's affectionate muzzle and they both close their eyes in a warm snuggle, innocent kids alone in the world together still.

"Now, let's go save Anna!"

Kristoff and Sven, now in nodded full agreement, back up before taking a running charge forward in complete unison. As reindeer and man fearlessly take a flying leap over the narrowest twenty foot section of one of the landscape's thinnest fjords, Kristoff is reminded of that first crazy leap of faith when he tossed Anna onto Sven's back over the gorge on their first adventure together being chased by wolves.

But this time, as Kristoff's clearing mind vows, he would be the one chasing that old Sea Wolf now.

_To the ends of the earth, I'll hunt him down, until I get my Baby back safe and sound…_

"Wow! Reindeers really _**DO**_ fly. Who knew? Glad we caught up in time to witness your 'reindeer games,' Big Fella. You Norwegians sure know how to put on a show."

Kristoff and Sven's heads both swivel back to the other side of fjord's steep bank where a battered and broken, yet noisy, Cousin Eugene was standing up in the passenger's seat beside his capable wife who was in the driver's side, of the Official Ice Harvester's sleigh that its master had left behind at the Cathedral.

Rapunzel, who was pretty good with horses, even the bad ones, had put her talented hand to the helm of the speedy craft, pulled by Guddy.

_Sorry you missed this fun jaunt, Maximus…Ha ha_

Hans had had to split up his 'horse team' since Sven had gone after Kristoff. He and Elsa shared the driver's bench of the Vis-à-vis sleigh with Iriserende and shortly arrived not far behind.

"Kristoff! Please listen! We must talk to you!" A shaky voiced Queen Elsa had gathered herself together over the past few hours of the frantic trip. She takes a deep breath after having used all the control her distraught heart could muster on the road, focusing on creating ice between the two sleighs, to make up for the horses' lesser speeds to run faster and catch up to Sven.

She shouts across the small fjorden's rushing currents to Kristoff, her wide blue eyes darting to Hans beside her, for his support.

"Please, Mr. Bjorgman, it is essential! We must speak!" Hans' tenor strains project across the moving waters but Kristoff turns away, not interested to have the 'teamwork' pep talk. He was masculine enough to want to be left alone to solve his own struggles and track down his beloved wife.

"But, Kristoff! Please wait!"

"No. She's my responsibility—not yours anymore, Elsa. And not anyone else's concern, either." He gives Hans a challenging glare. "I'm the one supposed to take care of her! I'm her husband and Anna's **my wife**. I'm going to find her. I can't let her down again!" Kristoff hotly screams out across the chasm. The Norwegian young man was old-fashioned to hold onto the set conservative inveterate tradition of man protecting his mate—at all cost to himself, even to the point of going it alone.

"Anna may be your wife, but she's still **my little sister**." Anna was all the family she had left in the world, and a choking Elsa was on the verge of mental breakdown again at the thought of her sweet little sister at that wicked pirate's mercy. She recoiled in despairing remembrance that she had been the one powerless to stop him while Anna had been at his knifepoint.

Fortunately for both agitated parties concerned, observant Hans seemed to have a sixth sense for when this emotionally deprived Queen needed some outside stability as he rests a warm palm over her already frosted over shaking left fist.

"Elsa. Use this fear inside to your advantage to get us across this fjorden to Kristoff." Prince Hans softly, yet succinctly, commands the shivering young woman.

"What?! How can I…?" The scared look crossing her perturbed glowing eyes, with her ice powers already riding on the edge of lawlessness, prompts Hans only all the more.

"Here. Like this." He breathes in her shocked ear as the red-haired Prince boldly extends one arm over her right shoulder in order to be able to have both his fearless hands lift beneath her two sleeves' purple forearms to extend her ice ability brimming digits in the direction of the narrow freshwater fjord below.

Elsa's wild eyes spin to meet his becalming unwavering ones as she vividly recalls being the wayward cause of a frozen fjord closer to home, what now seemed a fractious, undisciplined lifetime ago.

But Anna needed her now, more than ever, to be in full control of all her faculties. And this time Elsa would overcome each of her emotional frailties to rise to the occasion for her baby sister.

_**ZZZZSSSTTTT!**_

The contained ice magic freely expelled from Elsa's controlled hands, held up in their aim by Prince Hans, coats the roaring summer waters with its opalescent sparkle until the entire Namsosfjorden freezes stock-still in an early induced frost.

"_Whew! Whew!_ Where's your bell and wand, Christkindschen Angel?" Using the name of the young feminine gift giving angel who traditionally was purported to visit good children bearing presents throughout Prussia's Christendom, orphan boy dreamer Eugene Fitzherbert still had his irreverent wit in multitude, intermingled with the pain and guilt on his heavy conscience as he lets out a low whistle to this Ice Queen's crystallized marvels.

"Although, I'm sorry to say, I haven't been much of a good boy this year." He sighs, displaying his conciliatory arms.

"Eugene!" Nagging wife Rapunzel slaps her husband's right upper arm in reprobation, not realizing it was the exasperating teasing man's bullet-ridden one until it was too late and a squealed moment of unadulterated pain escaped his lips.

"**OWW—OWWY!**" His yelped scream echoes across the frozen iridescent fjorden.

"Oh, sorry, Honey." The sheepish lip-bitten brunette smiles up at him in apology as she drives the sleigh onto the ice, following Hans' lead with the Vis-à-vis.

"No prob, Blondie." The afflicted man bites his femininely connected high-pitched whimpering lip as his deft opposite hand reaches over the back seat to rip off Olaf's icy head to use as cold compress for his smarting discomforted gunshot wound to his pounding arm that his gentle wife had just whacked.

"How's the weather up here, Flynn-er-Eugene?"

"Of course. Just my luck to pick the talking part." Just coming short of tossing the snowman's animated noddle to vindictively snow-in Pascal who had been sitting pretty between man and wife in the front sleigh seat. The swarthy man decides he would rather go through the trouble of exchanging Olaf's disattached head for his lower snowmound rather than put up with the snowperson's inane chatter.

"But, is this end safe?" Holding Olaf's butt end at arm's length (until his throbbing appendage truly required some downtime with the ice) and displaying to Rapunzel the unflappable Olaf's posterior wrong side up just to make her smile, Eugene only receives his wife's straight unamused lip. The normally jovial man was trying to reclaim some of his old humor, but he was afraid to admit, he was uncharacteristically falling short of hitting the mark.

Guilt always had a way of doing that.

"Poor Kristoff. He looks so devastated, like he really truly loves her to bits. I hope we can find Anna soon." She whispers to him as they cross the recently formed iced fjord to traverse to where the dejected burly blonde young man was slumped against his sad-eyed reindeer.

"Good thing Hans is so awfully smart to know Elsa could do this to get us across. He's very brave to always be there to endure her icy touch." Rapunzel's voluminous green eyes look over to where the Vis-à-vis was crossing the frozen fjord, adjacent to their open sleigh. Hans gave her a small smiling nod of acknowledgement in return, which only cemented her husband's own green-eyed mistrust.

"Yeah, _'awfully._'" Eugene rolls his eyes at the way women threw compliments at every guy with a pretty boy face. "That dandy fop is full of surprises." Giving his drooling wife a crooked brow of suspicion, Eugene murmurs beneath his breath in the passenger's seat as he gives the other covered sleigh driver a one fingered salute (_We won't specify which exact one). _As the Vis-à-vis passes ahead of them, Rapunzel's eyes in Eugene's purview, seem to trace the handsome figure in the driver's side all the while with an unhealthy pride.

_Hmmm. While the cat was away? I wonder…_

Flynn Rider lets out another small yelp in his painful attempt to sling careless arrogant arms over his cynical head.

* * *

"So, you're here now. What did you have to tell me that's so important? Hurry it up, I've got to get moving to find my wife." The usually relaxed and even-toned Kristoff Bjorgman rudely states in an irritable voice, just itching to get back on the open road. The responsible driver in him knew that after today's long stint, his overworked reindeer he was currently watering could use a break for the night, though the disorienting light made it appear to still be late afternoon.

For the further North they went towards its Arctic Circle location, during the time of this mid-July midnight sun, it seemed continually daytime with the sun disc constantly yet above the horizon for all but five hours a day here in the mid-north country.

"Kristoff." Elsa purposely walks towards the kneeling down man after Hans extends to the elegant Queen a gentlemanly helping hand down from their sleigh. "Thank you for waiting." She says with emotion building in her apprehensive voice when the tall blonde doesn't even glance up to meet her wary eyes. Elsa then looks to the confident man standing beside her, who takes this uncertain hesitant pause as her cue for him to speak.

"Mr. Bjorgman." Hans swiftly utilizes his long legs to take him to the side of the fjorden's bank where Kristoff, despite his best efforts, upon finally meeting Elsa's quivering eyes up close, can't help his distressed balled fists from shaking in helpless fury at this horrible situation of losing his dearest girl too.

"—Kristoff." Hans crosses many distances to lay a brave hand on the taller man's bent over shoulder.

"WHAT?!" Shaking off Hans' friendly hand, the mild-mannered man nearly growls up at his former rival who had wronged his Anna once upon a time.

Not dissuaded, the Danish Prince gives him a look of stoic resolve.

"It would be unforgivable of me to deceive any of you good people at such a difficult moment, and I wouldn't have mentioned it to Elsa—_er_—the Queen, if I didn't think the smallest hope was better than none, had I been in your understandably unenviable place—" Hans forges on nonetheless in his address to the fiercely angered mountain man. "—But from bits and pieces I had gathered on board the Pearl Lady, in the previous past few months of my service there, I believe I may have a rough idea of where Captain Houtebeen could be heading with your wife."

But in the moment Hans finishes talking, Kristoff jumps to his feet, a wild crazed look springing to his eyes as grasping hands grip the redhead by his shirtfront.

"You know where they've taken Anna?! Where?! **TELL ME NOW**!" Kristoff turns ferocious in a split second as he harshly grabs Hans shoulders to shake the knowledge out of the thin man violently.

"I only can conjecture an approximate location, merely overheard from a dropped muffled word here and there whilst I was serving their midday repast. The Captain and Job, his First Mate, always tried to keep their navigational rendezvous point close to the vest, so I never did, regretfully, discover the precise area demarcation on their Mercator projection chart. Though from the distance I glimpsed the map once, your instinct, I believe, is quite correct that the target is undoubtedly in this North Sea hemisphere—" With compassionate emotive eyes, Hans answers honestly of everything he knows to this point that might illuminate the pirates' destination course. Hans was truly saddened that he had only a well-pondered slew of 'maybes' to offer the desperate husband, as Kristoff's hopeful eyes rise and the fall at the former naval man's semi-uncertain declaration, until—

"Latitude North by 67 degrees 44 minutes 52 seconds. Longitude East by 12 degrees 45 minutes 08 seconds."

Kristoff, Sven, Rapunzel, Pascal and Olaf's jaws all drop upon Flynn Rider's deadpan serious monotone recitation of these numerous numerical and measurements of some kind foreign, as if he were the mythical elfish Nisser befuddling them with his pranks.

But not to Elsa. Creasing her brow in confused anxiety, the studious girl was her Naval Father's daughter enough to immediately recognize—

"The exact lateral coordinates of a small uninhabited island in the Lofoten archipelago located in the far Northwest of your country, situated between the munincipalities of Vaeroy and Moskenes. And if I recall my Academy studies correctly, that particular sector of the North Norwegian Sea contains—"Intellectually studious Lieutenant Hans Westergaard was a virtual encyclopaedic fount of all things seaworthy, until his verbose explanation is cut off from his definitive insights by another lifelong naval marine enthusiast who studied the ocean well in days of youth.

"—the Moskenstrauma." A thoroughly dazed Queen Elsa completes the well-educated man's sentence, fear evident on her face as she suddenly clutches his arm.

"Whoa. You've got to be kidding me! Those coordinates I picked up in that pirate's cabin that I've been carrying around in my crazy photographic memory of a head were heading for the 'Maelstrom'? The ship swallowing, boat capsizing, man-eating bottomless whirlpool vortex, black hole graveyard feared by pirates and Navy alike?" A gulping wide-eyed Eugene interjects incredulously.

"If that's where they're taking Anna—then, you're **DAMN RIGHT** that's where we're going!" 21 year old Kristoff angrily barks out as he towers his full 6 foot 5" strapping height over the scoffing thief, who had knowledge of this legendary marine phenomena. Perhaps not from the love of the sea as Hans or Elsa, but rather from his quick calculating coin-clinking con-man's love of sunken treasure to be found upon the High Seas in days gone by.

"It's where _**I'm **_going, anyway. Come on, Sven." Physically elbowing past the former criminal who got them all into this mess, a frustrated Kristoff grabs up with a grunt a few supply bags and ties them to Sven's colorful straps. The tall restless blonde sighs as he brushes off the rest of the team without so much as making eye contact as he mounts his tired from racing all day, yet still steadfastly dogged partner of a reindeer with the newly mapped out goal in mind.

_At least he came up with that. _Kristoff's final stray thought for the good-for-nothing scavenger was mostly kind as he prepares to sprint off with Sven again.

"Hey, Kristoff. I'm sorry. I know it'll never make up for my mistakes—plentiful they may be." Eugene approaches the reindeer's rider with a truly remorseful look on his chiseled features.

"Whatever it takes to get that precious little sunshine sprite back, you can count me in all the way." The swarthy man of action makes a quick-footed detour, despite the stabbing pain of his open wounds and intense muscle strain from all that digging this morning—

_Was that just this morning? Wow, time flies when you're having fun…_

Flynn Rider defies getting trampled under the rangifer's solid hooves, to stand directly in front of a dumbfounded surprised Sven, stopping their momentum completely.

"Please, Kristoff. Anna would want us to do this together. You know she never wanted anyone to be alone." Elsa, using all of her mental prowess to control her own cold sorrows and frozen fear for her missing sister's sake, takes a place at Flynn's side to also stand in front of Anna's husband on his reindeer.

After a tense minute, Elsa breaks the ice by petting behind Sven's grateful fuzzy ears with loving affection. Making him flinch, Elsa then lightly touches Eugene's frostbitten extensors on his left forearm with a tentative absolution for his obviously repentant soul full of past wrongs that inadvertently caused this calamity, this grand adventure that was now filled with heartache and pain, in the first place.

"Because she loves us all so much in that big huge heart of hers, Anna would want us to stay together, like a proper family should in times of troubled crisis." Elsa's beautiful blue eyes glisten with the tears of thinking of her very best friend in her sister's sweet disposition to connect with Kristoff. The stoic man's attempts to remain steady and resolved all this while crumbles, as his eyes begin to quiver again with the unquenchable tears again in the truth behind the blue sky of Anna's big sister's startling blue eyes.

"You're right. We have to bring her back to her family." Thinking expressly of his bright-eyed girl and her friendly smile that could light up the room—_no the night sky itself_—Kristoff's untrammeled stubbornness dissolves as he clambers from Sven's back to give Elsa a big brotherly bear hug.

"Anna will be waiting there for us, you'll see. God will lead us to her again, I'm sure He will." Whispered on Kristoff's sobbing neck, the once cold as ice Queen indulges in her hard-won emotions of warmth with her stanch devout belief and loving tender compassion.

The tears were dripping down both their faces, as the Queen and the Ice Harvester find common familial ground in the mutual adoration for the spunky young girl with the indomitable spirit that brought their hearts together.

* * *

"Well done, Sir." Hans asides to Eugene after the darker man returns to the sleighs, leading Sven along with him.

"Sure, Good-lookin'. I've been good at patching up family spats since I was a little kid. Not that I had much of a family to spat with in the first place. But that's just semantics." The double black-eyed thief quietly chortles to himself at his own inside joke, totally unaware at just how 'inside' the joke was on him, until he notices the uniquely familiar stolen glances passing between the snazzy younger man he was conversing with in the falling dusk and his own beautiful-to-behold-in-any-lighting-wife.

"I consider myself an expert on families now, due to the fact I have a SUPER BIG family of little snowgie brothers. What are semantics?" A curious Olaf wanders by in his inimitable discomposed responses up at the humans who had a hard time getting the whole family thing down pat.

Eugene shakes his head at the annoying snowball, dismissively ignoring him.

"Look, I know I've been a little off the beaten track, with all the plotting pirates and gross gravedigging that I've been up to of late. And I'm aware that I certainly do require a bath, and a shave pretty soon if I want to live with myself, nevermind other people, however—" Eugene pauses in his tirade to rub his overgrown beard in choice of his next low-spoken words.

"—is there something going on here I should—or probably should not—depending on your point of view—know about you and Sideburns here, Blondie? Or should I call you 'Brownie' now, since you seem to want a change from horrible husbands."

Eugene's two black eyes, grown further darker with the furtive thought, vacillate in open-minded curiosity between his chocolate haired Rapunzel and red-headed Hans who had been giving one another high signs since the suspicious husband had met up with them again. The latter had been attending to the tired reindeer Flynn had brought to them, once he retrieved a carrot to feed the nutrition starved Sven after his long nonstop all day journey to get here.

"Oh, yes. How perceptive you are, Mr. Fitzherbert. There is something of keen interest that your wife and I have been discussing—"The innocent eyed Prince displays a disarming smile amidst his posh language, that only strengthens Eugene's vague allegations with his choice of too polite terms when—

"Prince Hans? Is there someplace you could direct our party to where we could take camp nearby, please?" Exerting her royal rule, Queen Elsa, with Kristoff's head leaning on her shoulder in comforted support, calls over to the always attentive to her every whim Dane who indeed drops all—including confusing conversation with the troubled married couple—to scurry at the Queen's beck and call to her side where Elsa was steadying the exhausted body and soul, of the large man who had obviously been using the delicate lady's welcoming shoulder to cry on.

"You got some stiff competition for that one there, Darlin'" A skeptical Eugene murmurs to his quizzical wife beneath his breath, his worldly mind considering how Hans had jumped at the leggy blonde's mere whim. But Rapunzel was so happy to have him back, she didn't quite get her smoothtalker's envious insinuations of herself and the dashing young prince. Both watch Hans spring to action, tethering Sven to Guddy in a swift sailor's knot to the Ice Harvester sleigh as he and Elsa usher the dazed young mountain man into the back seat bench.

Hans then returns to apprise Eugene of their immediate itinerary.

"What do you think, Sir? There appears to be a thicket of tree cover around the edge of that last bend around this fjorden. We can head there, since it's still freshwater and the animals will be provided for to rest, once we've scouted around the area. This is wolf territory, though the late night sun has kept the grey wolves that travel in packs at bay, thus far. Although I am by no means an expert in Norwegian topography, from what I remember in my book-learning, the sun may be setting soon in these parts. So we must keep torches lit all night to ward the ravenous creatures off." Hans digs inside the Vis-à-vis sleigh's cargo hold to bring out a pair of torches, one of which he lights to rest in the carriage's holder as he was speaking. He then pats a nervously giggling Rapunzel on the back of her hands over the reins she takes up as sleigh driver.

"Wow, And I thought _I_ could talk the hind legs off a donkey." Eugene breathes in a jealous sneer, poking fun at Hans' lengthy paragraph of instruction. The older man was never good at taking them anyway.

"Yup, I think you have all the finer points covered, Handsome. And I wholeheartedly agree it's a **good idea**to keep **hungry wolves** away from **our women**." The indignant thief states snidely with one eyebrow raising at each purposeful term directed at the younger man as the green-eyed monster in him twists a sarcastic lip at this overt display right before his eyes.

"Yes, keep an eye out for the speckled grey and white wolves. They hunt in packs of six or eight, so please try to have your sleigh remain close to mine. That too will discourage the creatures." Hans responds, unaware of Eugene's suspicion.

Hans gives the wide-eyed scared looking girl a deferential smile as he turns to leave. "I don't mean to worry you, Princess. But an ounce of prevention—"

"—is worth a pound of ICE CREAM CAKE!" Olaf adds his sweet-toothed flavor to the conversation as he hops up into the sleigh's back seat, his childlike innocence never daunted by anything life had to throw at him.

"Right. Let's get this nutty popsicle stand on the road already. Ouch." Eugene sourly rolls his eyes, his palpitating arm pounding with hurt as he sucks in air. "This is a pain in the ass."

Hans eyes shoot up at his rough language, especially in front of his lady wife. But there had to be allowances in vulgar speech for extreme pain circumstances, he supposed. "Don't worry, Sir, there'll be a respite soon and we'll see to that, too."

"I bet you will." Eugene always had to have the last snide word as Rapunzel merely smiles at his strange behavior when she signals for Guddy to get ready to move as Hans leaves their sleigh to go to the other he would be at the helm of.

* * *

"Anna… I'm coming, Baby. I'm coming."

In the back of the Vis-à-vis that Hans signals Iriserende to pull into a cantor towards their decided campsite, Kristoff Bjorgman whispers to the wind incoherently as he finally physically collapses. All the emotionally tumultuous pent-up anxiety and restless 48 hour plus cycle and the harsh beating at the large wrestler's hands he had taken, were finally taking their toll. The normally rugged young man's pure adrenaline driven rush in racing nonstop, his thrashed body and thwomped bashed head worrying himself sick all the while was completely spent, until he was weak as a child, just as Anna across the miles knew her love would be taking this hard.

Brushing the golden hair plastered to Kristoff's sweaty feverish head back with a soothing cool touch, Elsa glances up to Hans in the driver's seat with a fretful look of uncertainty. She was grateful that his steady hand's stability was at her frightened side as they all journeyed forward together as unlikely partners into this terrifying unknown.

The sun that had been keeping them company all day finally begins to wane as the weary travelers move beside the northwestern side of the Namsosfjorden. Though the far-off eerie whirlpools surrounding the far North's mysterious Mosken Island loom on the dusky late night horizon, the one fervent dream of reuniting with their beloved little Princess Anna swirls hope against hope in each aching heart…


	26. Chapter 25 - A Shot in the Arm

We do not own "Frozen" nor any of its characters.

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act II**

**Chapter 25**

**"A Shot in the Arm"**

Into the thicket, Guddy's Ice Harvester sleigh along with a complacent Sven, goes along without incident, with Iriserende's torch-lit Vis-à-vis not far behind. As Hans had warned, there were indeed wolves come a-prowling nearly as soon as the sun conceded its reign, causing the skittish Friesian mare to fearfully glance this way and that with her icy blue eyes.

But Rapunzel's comforting humming in song as she too had learned from Mr. Westergaard, calms the frightened white horse, as the flames of the torches keep the wolves at bay while the group journeys along.

"Haven't heard you sing in a while, Blondie. It's kinda nice." In a tender voice reserved just for her alone, Eugene decides to be the 'better man' and breaks the awkward silence with a tentative smile and sideways glance at his wife as a frail darkness descends over the land.

"I guess I haven't had much to sing about lately." The carriage sleigh moves along and Rapunzel answers truthfully, in mumble, but biting her lip in the next second, wishing she hadn't said it after all when Eugene's offered smile turns upside down instantly in his own regrets.

But he turns it back into a rueful grin.

"I know, my fault again." With a forced smirk at the sorry man he'd turned out to be, Eugene looks down and away, feeling pretty small, knowing he deserved every word of it.

"No, Eugene! It's not you…I just meant…this…I…you…we've been so distant, that I haven't been able to tell you about—" Rapunzel's built up, practiced courage to say the next important words is sapped away by Olaf's loud mouth suddenly coming to life from where his head was resting against Flynn Rider's injured arm.

"Hey! That's a great idea, Flynn-er-Eugene! Oh, oh, oh! Let's have…a sing-along! That always cheers everybody up! Ready? I'll start!" The oblivious snowman's body bounces up in clapped glee in the back seat as his giddy head innocently breaks into mid-song.

"_If someone wants to hold me back, I'd like to see them try!__  
_I'm on the birthday plan attack! I'm giving you the sun, the moon and sky!"__

Olaf's loud crooning grates likes ice cubes in a breaking glass in Eugene's way-too-close-for-comfort right ear. The snowman's animated body in the backseat demonstratively dances along in an unsettling headless horseman, Sleepy Hollow, kind of way.

"Come on! Sing along, guys!" Olaf urges to Pascal's rolling eyes at the magic ice creature's freakish break dance in the back bench beside him.

Iriserende seemed to be the only one in this sleigh to 'appreciate' Olaf's happy singing. She lets out a whinnied laugh at how a camouflaged in the darkness, big 350 kilogram brown bear leaning against as nearby tree takes one earful of Olaf's ear-splitting rendition of Anna's birthday song before the massive creature scampers away in disdain.

"_We're making today a happy day, for you!_

_We're making today a happy day and no feeling blue!"_

The silly snowman was too naïve to realize that this may **_not_** have been tactfully the best time to sing this particularly uplifting ditty, created in celebration of the missing girl in danger. He pauses when he realizes that he was singing the chorus all on his own.

"Psst! Psst! Here's where you interject **'I love you, Baby'** and shake your mop of cool hair around like a music hall revue star for effect, Flynn-er-Eugene." Olaf's whispered crooked mouth comes out the side of his face, thinking Kristoff's impromptu declaration of love for Anna was how the song was designed to be sung. He gives the annoyed Eugene, who was holding his slugged, painful arm, a heads up, so to speak.

"No, no, no. I don't sing." Eugene stubbornly retorts, but he couldn't help but envision the 'fond-ish' memories flooding back of the Snuggly Duckling incident, and the ensuing adventure alongside the girl with the magic hair and even more mystical eyes…

Rapunzel must've been reliving those moments as well, as her green orbs leave the road ahead to connect their wide landscape of illumination with his.

Oh, how Eugene Fitzherbert longed to say those three special little words to his one special little woman, when a sudden voice abruptly cuts into the tender scene of husband and wife about to make up their argument.

**_His_**, _of course._ _You've got some ace timing, pal…_

Eugene interprets his wife's flustered, reddened cheeks as meaning something more in her relationship concerning Prince Hans Westergaard, setting his jealousy aflame again. His pounding arm being in extreme pain didn't help his attitude one bit, either.

"Whoa…Iriserende…" Hans had already parked his vehicle beneath the cove of a pair of tall birch trees. His limber body easily leaps from the driver's seat to halt the incoming Vis-à-Vis' inattentive female driver.

"Ohh, Hans! I'm sorry…I wasn't…paying attention." Rapunzel apologizes for her bad driving skills with a blush down at him.

"Not at all. This appears to be a choice spot to sojourn for its clear vantage point of the fjorden." Hans calls quietly up to the pair, as he lovingly strokes Iriserende's pleased muzzle. The young mare nuzzles against the side of his red head, licking at his gentle touch with a horsey kiss.

_That devil has a spell on every female here! Hmph!_

"We didn't wish to distract Mr. Bjorgman, so I didn't call out. He finally dropped off to a fretful sleep—poor man." Hans says softly as he begins to automatically lead the willing Friesian to her place beside Guddy and Sven on the already situated Ice Harvester's sleigh. There, Queen Elsa was kindly covering a thin blanket over the sleigh's master in the backseat before exchanging a look with Hans.

"Since Mr. Bjorgman is currently unavailable, and someone must stay with the ladies, shall you or I scout the area for predators before we set up camp?" Hans most respectfully offers the older man the preference.

"I think the 'ladies' don't require constant supervision by us 'big, strong' men. I'm sure Kristoff can be roused if some scary wolves or bears or lions show up, don't you? Shall we start 'scouting' then, Sideburns?" Combatively, Flynn taunts Hans' words, awarding a dubious glare to Rapunzel as he carelessly leaps from the sleigh to take a place beside the wide-eyed redhead.

"Ouch…that smarts…" He whispers to himself of the jumped impact's jarring effect shooting up his injured arm.

"Eugene…?" Rapunzel lurches across the sled's bench to try to reach out to his hurt.

But Flynn rather callously brushes her off with a standoffish "I'm fine."

This deflates her expectant look down at him completely.

"My Queen?" Hans leaves the decision to Elsa, bowing to her superiority of rank, as well as her intelligent beauty, when she joins the conversing trio after attending to Kristoff with a dose of sleeping powders to ensure his much needed rest.

"Yes, please do. Cousin Rapunzel and I will be fine seeing to the horses and Sven. We'll even prepare an evening meal for you both when you return." Elsa responds with a capable determination that Hans finds entirely…

_Charming_.

"You two just be careful out there. Wolves and bears and foxes tend to be hungry at sunset, too." The girl raised in a secluded tower still was a bit jumpy when it came to exploring the wild outdoors, especially at night. Large vicious game was not exactly native to the Corona Kingdom's populated town and village region that she had become accustomed to living in. The covered forests she enjoyed visiting there were rich in wildlife more akin to small scurrying creatures around the meadows and waterfalls of the Prussian countryside than carnivorous predators.

"Don't worry, Honey, I think I can handle a wild **_fox _**or two." Eugene baits in a ridiculing tone. "I'm not as debilitated a milk sop as you imagine. Although good ol' Schmidt would appreciate it, too, if you lost me out here in the wilds of Norway, wouldn't he?" Flynn tosses that last barb, including Corona's Captain of the Royal Guard (aka Maximus' pet human) in the list of people who probably most likely would like to do away with their princess' poor choice of husband in trade for a more ritzy upgrade—title, sideburns and all.

Totally confused, Hans immediately races after Eugene, giving Rapunzel a sympathetic shrug as he runs.

"Oh, Eugene…why do you say such heartless things…?" Rapunzel whimpers in between the droplets of tears that begin to cascade down her face like a sudden storm burst. She grips her upset, queasy stomach even more so now, not being able to withstand such emotional anguish.

* * *

"Mr. Fitzherbert! Please, sir! Slow down!" Hans calls forward as he gives chase after the driven, older man's silent, sullen trek on quick legs through the thicketed forest.

"Why? So you can overtake me with all your suave charm and impressive smarts? Making me look like a worthless fool in front of my wife?" Once the pair of men were deep enough into the forested area not to be heard from the campsite, a red-in-the-face against the lamplight Flynn lashes out, banging a defenseless tree trunk with his fist in futile anger.

The excruciating pain shooting up his bum arm from the move was nothing compared to the feverish chaos devouring his questioning heart.

"Sir, that has never been my intention. And it may not be any of my business, but I must say that your wife has been incredibly brave and courageous to take on this monumental journey in all anxiety for your well-being, especially in her present condition." Hans knew that he was no expert on relationships of any kind, so he could not honestly judge this man and his wife's situation competently, but a woman's tears had a powerful effect on even an inexperienced-in-matters-of-love young man's heart.

"What 'condition?' What the _hell_ are you talking about?" Stopping in his wandering tirade with an unbalanced stagger, Eugene's brown eyes slit at the slighter man's inference.

"Oh, dear. I suppose that blank look means that Princess Rapunzel hasn't…told you…yet. Do forgive my…presumptive mutterings." Hans guiltily wishes he could retract his statements, unaccustomed to being tactless, especially in such a delicate, private matter.

"But **_Princess Rapunzel's_** told you, hasn't she?" A suspicious, near delirious with pain Flynn Rider was both more than a little hurt and more than a little envious of the dashing young man more her age who seemed to be a closer confidant to **_his_** little woman.

"No…not in so many words…" Hans admits, thoughtfully as he resumes their supposed scouting mission, knowing the others would worry if the two of them didn't return to camp soon.

"Then how the hell do you know her '_condition_,' you little ba-?" His head hot with anger as he brushes his loose bangs of hair back, Eugene swears in confusion and frustration—neither a good combination of emotion's agitated passions.

"One can tell." Hans answers guardedly as he satisfies the perimeter. His eyes scan the darkness to the edge of the tree line by his held up lamplight.

"Oh, can '**_one_**?'" The red-faced, jealous husband retorts saucily as he swiftly retraces his steps instinctively to lead back to the camp. He stomps into the campfire area and ends by staggering forward, nearly crashing into Elsa, who was tending to the fire. The queen stands quickly, steadying the man's 'drunken' gait.

His concerned wife, who had been crying as she chopped up turnips and onions, jumps to her feet from where she was sitting on a log, drying her tears with the back of her turnip-y hand.

"Rapunzel, what's wrong with you?" He grasps her shoulders hard, confounded and upset as he chokes the spat out words. "And why did you feel the need to confide in **_him_** before even telling me? Are you sick, Blondie?" Eugene's fevered mind was rife with equal parts worry and fear now more than anger or jealousy.

But this loner of a man with the sentiment deprived youth, still had a hard time connecting to the honesty of his true emotions.

"Well…no, not sick…exactly. Well…sometimes I am…but Mother says that's to be expected." Rapunzel mumbles in her cute way, looking away from her husband's eyes maddened with anxiety with a concealed half-smile of her own.

"What?! Arianna knows about this jerk, too?! What's 'to be expected?'" The driven insane man demands, beginning to shake her shoulders, even though every sudden move caused the inflamed clot found on his arm to begin to break open again.

"Just being ill…and quite often! I try to fight it off, especially now with all this going on. But I can't help it sometimes! I wish I could be stronger…" Rapunzel bites her lip, though a bewildered Eugene didn't think that she looked too devastated by the fact that he found out she was cheating on him, while Pascal proudly nods in understanding on her shoulder.

"No, you've been absolutely amazing." Hans pipes up as he stokes the fire, in more ways than one, that Elsa had already started up with some kindling brush he had gathered in the wood to make the flame even hotter. Elsa wisely and quietly serves tea and stirs the turnip leek stew she and Rapunzel and Anna had purchased the ingredients for in that mercantile just a few days ago.

_Oh, Anna…_

"Stay out of this! You're not involved in this argument, pal." Flynn snaps at the other man dismissively.

"Yes, Eugene! Yes, he is—!" Rapunzel, sharing a look with Hans, begins to smile, enigmatically pleased, totally sending Eugene for a roller-coaster ride jealous tailspin again.

"I'm afraid to ask..." Eugene steels himself for what he supposed was the sordid truth he'd have to swallow like a man to keep the woman he loved so dearly. In this terrible moment, he'd already decided to forgive her anything—even an amorous dalliance with this skinny rake.

"…because he's your brother." Still naïve in some simple ways, Rapunzel never did comprehend that her husband was of the singular opinion that his now revealed 'little brother' and his wife were having an affair.

"What…?!" A shocked Eugene Fitzherbert's dropped jaw couldn't have fallen any further, nor could he have imagined in his wildest dreams that **_that _**was the explanation for all this strange, secretive behavior between his wife and this puffed up Prince.

Flynn's eyes widen to dart between the two smiling faces looking somewhat eagerly at him over the crackling campfire.

"…And ever since we met, just like a brother, he's been there to help me—so much, when I needed his strength to survive this without you." Rapunzel turns from Eugene's astonished eyes to portion Hans a grateful smile.

**"…What…?!"** Just trying to wrap his head around this extraordinary supposition, some weird bits and pieces of uncanny familiarity and rivalry both characteristically akin to brotherly siblings, did jive together in a blurred bond of their past encounters.

Eugene stares at the young prince questioningly, letting it all sink in slowly.

"Because…" Rapunzel continues on, biting her quivering lower lip again adorably.

"Because…I'm going to have…a baby." She finishes the well-rehearsed sentence rapidly. She was actually physically beginning to shiver and tremble all over with the anticipation of how her husband would respond to this life-altering news that he was partly responsible for.

_Yep, actually, all responsible for! Mother thinks you're a dreamboat, too! Although, Father thinks it took you long enough because he wants to see grandkids already—they're both so happy!_

Rapunzel's jumbled joyful familial thoughts were even mumbling incoherently to herself.

"Yeah…all right…a baby...That explains everything..." In a high-pitched, girlish voice, Eugene's gaping open mouth finally closes as his eyes widen, drinking her in. Every other emotive feature on his frazzled, expressive face looked like he just got quick slapped and sucker punched.

"Congratulations are in order, I believe…_Storbror_." Prince Hans cordially extends his hand in respect to his now acknowledged—at least by him, _Big Brother_. Though King Herbert Westergaard's illegitimate son, Eugene _Fitzherbert_, might not be so popular back home in Denmark's Southern Isles with his father and other brothers, Hans was only too happy to add Eugene to his already dozen collection of big brothers. His mother had requested of all her boys try to do so. On her deathbed, she begged each to find the poor, lost child—to treat him just as equally as if he were raised as he should have been with them in their massive 66 room, 200 window, outside-looking in Egeskov Castle, some twenty-five years ago. And it is uncanny that this final son, who never had the advantage of even meeting that sweetheart of a red curly headed Scottish mother, would be the one to fulfill her dying wish.

"Cousin Rapunzel! God knew we needed good news such as this! Felicitations to both of you." Elsa gives her regal compliments. She was also well pleased that this royal Prince of the Southern Isles wasn't too proud to welcome an illegitimate former thief into his family ranks, as Hans rises yet another notch in the Arendelle Queen's estimation.

"Oh, Blondie…And here I thought, all this time, you'd grown tired of keeping a good-for-nothing like me around! Just turns out we had our signals crossed in misunderstanding one another. And now you're stuck with me. Guess there's no refunds on us anymore." Eugene marvels at how bad things could be turned around in the flash of a reclaimed moment. He rubs his bearded stubble-grown-out face in wonder. "Wow…me, a daddy. Not bad for a two-bit thief who owned nothing before but his good looks and deft fingers…and this Roman nose. Gee, I hope our kid gets my nose. A-and nothing else of me—all the rest is you."

The elated young wife, well pleased at how he was acting now, pitches forward to grant her thankfully smiling overwhelmed double fold hubby with a whopping kiss on the lips.

To which Prince Consort Eugene _Fitzherbert_ sincerely joins in the ecstatic excitement of the moment.

_Maybe a Westergaard…? Oh that's a kicker! Married title, plus a bit of my own royal back story now… Wow…I just knew I always wanted a castle!_

The reeling man puts all the love he had for her in this make-up kiss that Rapunzel had been longing for—warm and real and bright, and world-shifting. His little lady was going to bestow upon him an irreplaceable, priceless treasure that this loner of an orphan boy never dared dream could happen to an undeserving, insignificant lout as he had grown up to be.

Giving him a child of his own—as well as now a growing family coming at him from every direction, it seemed crystal clear to him right now that Eugene Fitzherbert is where he's always been meant to be.

Vividly recalling their own passionate osculation on their thrilling first encounter, Hans and Elsa's bashful eyes both gaze upon Eugene and Rapunzel's rather spicy, long and luxuriant liplock, then meet one another's over the heat of the blazing fire each were separately attending to.

At the impropriety of such public display of private functions, some other manner of heat causes both reticent spectators to blush even more violently at her kissing cousins who seemed to be resolving all their past lonesome months' of cold shoulders and heartache with now divulged secrets, unveiled announcements, and passionate kisses.

And this hot mouth-to-mouth was just the start of the 'forgive and forget' side of Rapunzel and Eugene's marital reconciliation.

"Oh, Blondie…or Brownie…or whoever the heck you are today—I love you." Running his fingers through her short cropped cocoa hair, the giddy, lightheaded man also forgets his serious injury when the extreme pain lets up all during this moment of heartfelt revelation. That is, until Eugene enthusiastically, with reassured love renewed, lifts a giggling Rapunzel straight off the ground to spin the small girl up in the air. Since that fateful day he met her, Rapunzel had become his whole world's revolving sunshine, who was now about to add another sparkling ray of her light to clear the dark fog that had settled on his wandering soul again.

"Argh…!" His arm gives out totally, as a sweaty, red-faced Eugene grunts in pain loudly. He was just about able to land Rapunzel, swinging through the air, back on the ground—with just a bit of his 'little brother's' attentive help to carry her the rest of the way down.

Long past his stamina's breaking point, stubborn Flynn finally collapses to his knees.

"Eugene! Eugene! He's bleeding again! When did it start?! Why didn't I notice?! Oh my gosh! He's bleeding!" She looks down in frantic panic at the crimson moisture coating her hands, and running down his forearms that she was holding onto. She dizzily drops down to his level, lovingly petting his heavily creased, shuddering brow over his obviously pain-anguished face.

Rapunzel throws herself bodily over him as Hans comes immediately to his side. He kneels in her place and none too gently pries the brown-haired woman from her febrile husband to evaluate the condition of his wounds.

"What's wrong?!" Rapunzel cries out as Elsa places a comforting arm around the girl's trembling shoulders, taking her, while Hans inspects the ballistic trauma beneath the soaked, bloody bandages that had been applied earlier.

"I was afraid of this. The clot has given way—that bullet wound must've become infected." Hans announces, a grave look overtaking his handsome features.

"**_Noooooo!"_** The concerned wife cries in horror of what that terrible word, here in 1851, usually entailed when it came to a severe, open trauma wound.

Elsa was doing her best to hold Rapunzel back.

"We must stop the hemorrhaging before he loses too much more blood. I'll have to find a way to sterilize the wound to prevent further systemic toxicity." Trained for leadership in the face of adversity, the Royal Naval Academy officer takes charge of the situation, learned as he was in military first aid techniques.

He lifts Eugene's right arm so that the entrance wound was elevated above the man's heart, utilizing gravity to reduce the flow of blood.

"Olaf!" Born to be a crisis manager, Hans barks the snowman's name over his shoulder, knowing the little guy was just wandering about somewhere nearby, as he always was.

"Yes, Sir!" The eager ice creature swiftly scoots up to his commanding 'admiral' with a twig fingered salute.

"Take Princess Rapunzel to Sven and the horses and stay with her there, please." Hans motions his head towards the girl in shock and the tethered horses near the tree line.

"Come on, Cousin Rapunzel! Let's go see how Sven, and Guddy, and Iriserende are doing. Don't you **_love_** her name—Iriserende? Just rolls off the tongue like a song…" Olaf reaches up to grab the brunette's hand in his branch but—

"**_NO!_** I'm staying! I have to help Eugene, too!" Frantically glancing between Hans and Eugene, Rapunzel argues in protest of being ordered away from the husband she just retrieved, as she tries to shake away her hand from Olaf's tight grip.

She only succeeds in detaching his 'arm' from his body in an eerie comparison to what may have to happen to the wounded man, should the infection become gangrenous.

"Princess Rapunzel, you're in no condition to stomach this. There'll be a great amount of blood loss. And I only require one nurse for this operation. Queen Elsa…?" Hans' eyes look to a startled Elsa, who soon recovers to answer calmly.

"Of course. I'll be only too glad to help Eugene in any way I can. Please don't worry, Rapunzel. Prince Hans knows what to do." Elsa reassures the frightened looking young woman.

Hans, amidst his worrying mind's apprehensive anticipation of what was to come, hears the queen's supportive, bolstering words on his behalf. And for once, she was the one to bring a certain calm to his own racing heart.

"Please go with Olaf and rest, Princess. I have had extensive naval medical training. Your husband will be fine." Hans extends one more glance to Rapunzel as he lifts the larger, unresponsive man onto the blanket that the women had laid out to serve the evening meal upon earlier.

Rapunzel, who indeed was feeling rather ill at the sight of the blood squirting openly from Eugene's arm, bows to Hans' discretion and plants a kiss on her love's troubled brow before going off with Olaf.

"Pascal?" Hans knew, as a good leader always did, to delegate to expedite urgent tasks, so he turns to the chameleon who leaps from Rapunzel's shoulder to assist.

"We must move in all haste if there's any chance to save this arm. I've seen wounds like this on my naval tour and the victims didn't fare well unless they received quick medical procedure. Please bring me that small flask from beneath the Ice Harvester sleigh's front seat. Elsa, there should be a medical kit in the Vis-à-vis' left side passenger door, hidden under the corded velvet. Push the button in the center to release the cover…please." Hans emerges from where he was rooting around the food basket, coming up with tins of salt and some spices before he purposefully stokes the fire, adding some fresh kindling to ensure a higher heat point.

He flattens out, with the heel of his boot, a bed of spent ashes in the burning fire. Then, near the thicket path, chooses two dry, flat stones and places them directly on the ash pile in the fire—with just enough space apart to support the edges of the new metal pan they'd secured at the general store, with an inch to spare for proper air flow.

Producing the sharpened dagger from his boot cuff, Hans, with a grim look on his face, places the blade upon one of the flat stones in the roaring to life fire.

He then rushes back in a swift gait to the freshwater fjorden to wash and clean his hands thoroughly in the swaying waters up to his rolled sleeves. He had taken up his sleeves as far as he could, past his elbows, scrubbing himself with clean gravel from the fjorden's bank until his forearms and hands were pink and raw.

All the while he had been purifying his hands, his devout mind had been offering supplications of prayer to the God who not only gave him this chance to fulfill his dying mother's wish of finding this lost brother—to love and embrace as family—but also, as Hans fervently hoped and prayed, to grant him the ability of knowledge gleaned from years of textbook learning, to save his new brother's life.

Despite his haste, Hans pauses to make this important petition for God's Hand to do a good work through his meager ones this night.

* * *

When Elsa returns with the wooden medical kit from the sleigh to the makeshift field surgery theatre, she sees a hotly emblazoned fire and interesting stone pile formation with a dagger upon its crackling, heated center. She does wonder where Prince Hans currently was.

Eugene was just beginning to stir and she rushes to the injured man, wiping his brow as gently as possible. The poor creature looked so terribly ill, with pain evident on his face as he was lying on the blanket on the ground in the dark, silhouetted by a nearby lamp.

Eugene smiles gratefully, sensing a tender hand near him, even through his delirium. Elsa strokes his flushed hot cheek with a frosty cool touch.

"…Water…" Eugene just manages to choke out as Elsa grows alarmed at how intense his fever had become.

"Yes, I'll fetch you some." Elsa whispers to the man whose arm was tied upward to a branch, though she had a feeling that Eugene, slipping in and out of consciousness, didn't even hear her anymore.

Her fearful eyes glance around for the water pail, only to find it empty. Elsa puts her queenly hands to the task of going to fill it at the nearby fjorden's edge with only the moon's emerging beams to light her path on this ebony night.

But the sight that greets her eyes, straining in the darkness there, uplifts her own tense state of mind. For Prince Hans, with his back to her, was kneeling at the edge of the fjorden with his head bent and hands folded, lips moving silently in a fervent prayer.

The rushing sound of the waters in the stillness would've disguised her quiet arrival in the dark night, but observant Hans was always aware of this particular young lady's presence—even without 'eyes in the back of his head'.

"How clever of you to ascertain to fill the pail—we'll need as much water as we can obtain." His melodic tenor beckons to her, and Elsa was able to overcome her stiff shyness to join him at the water's edge. He takes her pail to fill it to capacity as he turns to the delicate woman, gingerly crouched down beside him.

"May I be honest with you, Queen Elsa?"

"Always, sir, please do." She answers succinctly, with her eyes glowing at him in the moonlight.

"I don't wish to unsettle you, but I would greatly value your advice—" He begins, looking directly at her.

"From what the map says, we are at least fifty kilometers from the next well inhabited area, where a hospital that could handle a procedure such as this would be available. But from the look of how much blood he's already lost, I doubt my brother will be able to make it to the next outpost's medical facility. If we don't stop this bleeding and evacuate the wound to the degree that must have brought on this infection, I'm afraid…he could lose his life.

"Oh, dear…!" Elsa breathes, though trying to remain calm and objective in order to answer the prince's serious question, not yet posed to her.

"I've seen men in my time in the Navy with such a feverish infection who didn't survive the night in this state." Hans says with a grim look darkening his gorgeous features by the lamplight they were sharing in the settled dusk.

"Frankly, I'm terrified."

Elsa's enlarged eyes recognize how much humility there was for a grown man's ego to admit his failings and fears. She continues to listen in rapt attentive silence to his heartfelt confession.

"Because, although, I've given extensive study and reading the latest periodical literature on modern sterilization and triage techniques, and have seen some rather bloody, gory operations without anesthetic onboard ship firsthand, I personally have never had any actual experience as a surgeon." He looks up at her in all honesty.

"So, it comes down to basically two choices. We either attempt to cut out the infection and clean out the wound of any growing bacteria in a process called 'cauterization' to mitigate any further damage by rapidly burning off any existing pathogenic infection and minimizing rancid growth. During this process, we also have to prevent any exsanguination—extreme blood loss, caused by accidental probing that, if left untended, could be fatal. But this procedure will certainly result in irrevocable muscle injury of localized nerve damage…and there is a high chance of further infection if not well attended to and…the success rate is very low, often resulting in…death." Hans prattles on nervously, putting before Elsa the book learned practices spinning around his educated cranium.

"And the other option?" Elsa prompts when the unhappy thought of Cousin Eugene's life hanging in the balance brings a deep frown to the naval officer's face.

"Amputation of the arm, so there can be no infection left that could spread gangrene to the rest of his body…It has the greater success rate, though a more drastic procedure, with obvious permanent unpalatable consequences." Hans swallows the terrible truth down as he stands with the filled water pail and starts to walk back to the camp towards where Eugene lay, awaiting their verdict.

Following stiffly, Elsa too by now was frowning at the unpleasant imagery of that vital young man being debilitated for life.

"It pains me to have to say it, but, though she is an extraordinary woman in many rights, I do not consider your cousin Rapunzel, in her delicate state, to be competent enough in presence of mind to make this dreadful decision."

Elsa traces the gaze of his eyes to where he was glancing as they walk over her shoulder to where Rapunzel was lying atop Sven, hugging Olaf to her like a fluffy snow pillow and uncontrollably weeping on him in worry for her love.

"So I will leave the choice up to you, Queen Elsa. I bow to your sagacity. Please tell me what to do." Hans' eyes were so pleading for her help and sincere with mind-wrenched indecision that Elsa's heart goes out to him.

Once they arrive, both kneel to settle on the blanket beside Eugene's feverish, tossing and turning body, though the arm sling upwards that Hans had put him in earlier was still firmly in place, gravity staving off the blood flow.

"I believe in your abilities to save his arm. I believe in you." The blonde Ice Queen reaches a cool hand out to smooth the rutted wrinkles deeply creasing across the naval prince's forehead. Hans' wary eyes close for a few seconds to lean his pounding head against the strength of her soothing palm before reopening with a new sense of purpose.

"Thank you for that…Elsa." He familiarly whispers in gratitude, bringing a smile to Elsa's lips as his long thin jaw sets in determination for what he must do—with her genuine belief in him to back him up.

"Please open that first aid case and hand me, one by one, the metal instruments."

Elsa passes him each medical tweezer, small pliers, forceps, clamp, bent scissors and scalpel as Hans' hands securely hold each of them over the open flame's hottest point. He then lays them upon the dagger that had already been well sterilized.

He leans down to feel Eugene's rapidly growing pulse and checks his erratic breathing and feverish temperature.

"Queen Elsa, please, if I may ask you to use your vast ice powers to merely numb the wound site, the operation should go considerably smoother for Prince Eugene. And don't worry about my hands in there. I thrive in the cold." Hans' assured smile rallies Elsa's concerned eyes to the idea of keeping a constant extra cool iced temperature to Eugene's upper arm without risking further frostbite damage.

"It's a 50/50 chance to operate and potentially zero to one leaning that my brother won't survive to the next medical stop. So I do concur with your decision, and very much appreciate any aid you could render me." Slicing off the remainder of the bandage with a scalpel blade to reveal the full extent of the infected bullet wound, Hans begins to irrigate the bloody, pussy entry area with a leather pouch he had been boiling to sterilize both it and the water.

He pokes the pouch's side with one of the sterilized scalpels, creating a small hole to which he aims the thin stream of water to hit the infected area each time he squeezed the full pouch back. The boiling water knocks out much of the dirt and debris on the surface of the wound, but Hans knew from experience there would be more foreign debris driven further into the wound by the bullet.

"It is fortunate he wasn't wearing any clothing over his arm at the time he was shot. Each fragmented fabric particle would have had to be removed as well, for the body would have rejected any material in it as an infected agent." Hans may have been speaking aloud, but Elsa knew he was more referring himself to the difficult task at hand than striking up conversation with her as he peers into the raw wound.

She nods nevertheless at his intelligent words as he hands her the depleted leather pouch.

"I'm going to have to ask you to keep firm pressure here, on his brachial artery, so there won't be a sudden rush of blood while I'm probing."

Remembering himself, Hans offers a small, motivating smile to which Elsa nods in return. She allows him to place both her hands and press them down over the prone man's shoulder and armpit area to keep the blood flow minimalized.

"Do you think you can keep this up, as well as retain Eugene numb with your ice?" He asks softly. Elsa nods, feeling here, in this trying situation in concern for another, under Hans' commanding presence, far more in control of her powers than anywhere else before.

Hans then gets up to reach the boiling water pot. He nearly scalds his hands in the hot, hot water as he retrieves a small pair of bent scissors and starts to carefully snip out the dead tissue that was turning purplish black around the edges of the wound all whilst Elsa was keeping tight pressure on the artery—her hands placed strategically precise, closer to the heart than to the wound.

"You're doing a fine job." Though his own nerves were frayed, Hans still has the compassion to encourage the trembling Queen kneeling above the men on the blanket as he pauses to steady his own tensed fingers with the scalpel now between them before cautiously slicing into the discolored clotted together infected tissues. Concise hands carefully use the sharp medical knife to make a wider incision into the cold numbed epidermal layers to open up the expanding bullet's entry for examination and further decontamination.

By the difficult to see swaying lamplight at his side, Hans' keen eye strains to slowly pick out from the wound he was digging through the stubborn bits of infection causing dirt particles and other foreign matters with the medical tweezers. He next bravely uses his cleansed fingers to gently pry apart the super cooled flesh of the wound so he can get the tweezer pliers into the hidden crevices to remove all intolerable foreign materials.

With the steaming, boiling waters again, Hans irrigates the now cleansed lesion in Flynn's ample muscular arm. All the infectious rot was either cut or boiled away, made easier to see and navigate by Elsa's numbing freeze.

"His breathing is becoming less erratic—and his fever is down a bit." Elsa offers after studying the fluctuating rise and fall of respiration on the dark, bearded face close below for a few moments.

"That's good. Thank God there wasn't a dissection of the main artery vein. I've seen many good men lose the battle to a slipped knife." Hans gives praise for his steadiness of hand not to nick the all-important brachial, so close to where his intricate tweezers were performing their task in intense industry.

"Is the bullet very deep?" Elsa asks, shakily, her ice prowess tested as it escapes puffs from her lips as she speaks, though she never fails to keep up her mission duty set before her by Prince Hans for Cousin Eugene.

"Yes. I believe it is ill-advised to attempt to remove the projectile at this time, without proper anesthetics or instruments. It would take a surgeon far more competent than I to extract that and leave some hope for the recovery of his tricep muscle that it's been lodged firmly within. Have no fear—men live for many years with a bullet still in their flesh as long as it's not infected in the healing process." Hans lifts the removable tray from the wooden case of surgical instruments that Elsa had brought from the Vis-à-vis to reveal a small compartment beneath the horrifying looking capital saw, whose teeth were just itching for an amputation.

From the fitted shallow slits to hold all the instruments in place, Hans takes out two items—one rounded metal large mattress needle and a length of suture material, which he hands to Elsa to hold after a quick sterilization of the needle by flame.

He returns to the fire and, removing the remainder of the surgical tools back to their wood case slots, swiftly extracts his dagger, which had been lying flat against the stones, engulfed in the hottest part of the fire until it was actually glowing with a reddish, orange light in the dark night.

"He may involuntarily react violently, so please stand back." Hans orders Elsa while wielding the flaming hot dagger in his hands.

"Forgive me, Storbror…" Hans, in one fluid motion, lays the flat of the dagger's blade tip to the wounded arm that was just starting to bleed, now that Elsa and he had let go of their stoppage of the vein, as well as the Ice Queen's focused cold numbing effect on his injured upper appendage.

"**_AHHHHHHHHOWWWWWWWWWWW! DAMN!"_** Eugene comes to with a loudly deafening wailed curse as Hans pulls the red hot blade away from the writhing man quickly so as not to cause further injury.

Olaf and Sven are unable to keep hold of Rapunzel as she immediately leaps from the reindeer's back, like a young gazelle to her lover's cry. She falls to her knees at his awakening side, tears streaming from her eyes.

"Why the hell are you branding me, you clap-Dickens redhead!? I'm not a side of beef!" It didn't take long for Flynn Rider to find his profanity laden tongue as he sits straight up, knocking an off-balanced Rapunzel away as he does so unexpectedly fast, getting on his feet in a matter of seconds.

"I am glad to see you awake and in such fine spirits, Brother." Hans smiles from ear to ear, glad that the near comatose man had enough energy to rise and stand on his own so quickly after such a surgery—albeit waving fists at his 'doctor.'

"You wanna see spirit, _Brother_?!" Eugene, mocking the title, angrily takes a swing at Hans, who doesn't even bother to duck. He already took into account the man's uncoordinated right arm's woozy infirmity, as his right fist flies blindly through the air.

"Eugene! Stop it! Hans just saved your life!" Rapunzel hugs her hubby's other good arm, pointing him to look at the fruits of Hans' surgical labors upon his other. "Your wound was infected."

"Huh?" Though the arm was still painful, Eugene remarkably felt that the burning, feverish throb it was giving him all the latter half of the day was abated as he looks down at his scorched skin. The blood beneath had coagulated to stop flowing to dangerous low levels.

"I would like to finish suturing your wound so as not to allow the forming clot to be dislodged again, so this time, we can control the bleeding and risk of infection that led to your collapse." Hans proudly requests, as Elsa dabs his sweaty brow of her own volition, causing the hardworking redhead to take notice.

He threads, in the lamplight, the large rounded needle with the natural suture material that Elsa gives him and he smiles appreciatively at his lovely eyed field 'nurse.'

As for Elsa, she saw this 'doctor' as more than competent, beyond courageous and above all, positively heroic in her eyes.

"You're gonna sew me up with **_that?!" _**_Gulp!_Eugene swallows hard. The self-presevationalist in him normally preferred no body invasion whatsoever—and certainly not to be stitched together like an old rag doll.

"Since I cauterized the wound just a few minutes ago, the rapidly heated nerves still shouldn't feel too much pain, if any. Though I am sorry we have little by way of topical anesthetics, beyond..."

Hans mulls over his words after quietly conversing with Elsa and Rapunzel, in instruction of how to crush and mix together for a healing anti-inflammatory salve some of the spices they had luckily picked up at the general store for cooking, kilometers back.

They pestle together the black pepper, turmeric, rosemary, ginger, cloves and honey, until the girls could make a paste with it.

Hans quietly offers Eugene the flask of Akvavit— Norwegian vodka—that Kristoff had secreted under his bench chair—for medicinal purposes, of course.

_All men do it…_

"Fine! Go ahead and make a doily out of me, you dandy fo—I mean, _little bro._ Whew-whee, there's a load of hooey to swallow! You are gonna have to deliver some good backstory, _big time,_ to make me believe that a girly chit like you and a manly man like me have any common lineage—OUCH! I thought you said that wasn't gonna hurt!" Eugene squeals out in a high voice, making his audience wonder which one was more the 'manly man.'

The pair of girls, with Olaf who had come to join them playing 'smash the cloves', begin to smile at the life and death crisis of Prince Consort Eugene of…Corona, that Prince Hans of the Southern Isles masterfully averted with a nimble fingered quick wit, decisive application of learned knowledge—all put together with a clever, dauntless fortitude that panned out successfully.

But Hans was giving more than a share of the credit to the unseen Hand of God, who blessed him with all those abilities—and a young woman who believed in him, too, in the face of fragile odds.

"If you were listening carefully, big…_bro_...My actual words did have the minute stipulation of that small description with the comparative degree 'much.'" Though a foppish gentleman by appearance and fancy language, Hans had proved to be a rugged man, by all means, who had a tougher stomach than most when it came to skin excoriation, blood loss, and flesh incision.

He was relieved to be trading barbs again with the older man, who, though rough around the edges, was inexplicably charming.

Hans peers upwards under his breath slyly with his intentionally slighting, laughing words, as he rather deftly begins to stitch the sutures into Eugene's skin for final closure of the wound, in the expertly interrupted method ideally accomplished by eversion of stitch depth and width roughly kept equal.

"You and all your high falutin' terms, showoff." Eugene was amused now. "I think I **am** gonna be needing that drink." His nerves were not as steady as the younger prince seemed to possess to see himself stitched up. He bites off the corked stay of the flask, downing a much needed thick gulp of the fortifying alcohol, though Hans had intended its original usage to be _poured_ over the wound. However, his uncertainty as to its unknown purity rejected that thought.

Although, from Eugene's quick reaction to the fairly high, eighty proof Akvavit vodka, that Kristoff had stashed away—_for medicinal purposes_, mind you-must have been pretty pure and potent.

Eugene flagrantly puts it away while his little brother continuously sews up his no longer feverish older brother with a bemused smile.

"…I had a dream…I had a dream…Now I know my wife is having our baby…!"

Both Olaf and a giggling Rapunzel start to hum along with Flynn Rider's drunken song. They soon abandon Elsa to finish the paste that Hans had asked for all alone, as the two dance a happy round with a giddy color-changing Pascal and a toe-tapping Sven in celebration of Eugene's recovery.

But the reindeer soon recalls his best friend's heartache as the big, furry brown-grey creature quietly backs away from the group to return to the sleigh to nuzzle his welcomed nose against Kristoff who was murmuring though a sleeping powder induced repose.

But he was being 'entertained', if the word could cruelly be applied, by the nightmare of his bright-eyed girl's hand slipping away from his fiercest grip into dark swirling murky waters. His world plunges into a pitch black darkness as he hears Anna's distressed screams go 'round and 'round the whirlpool sucking her into the deep abyss until they fade into a dark, dull spiraling maelstrom nothingness, leaving him all alone, shivering with a tormented fear he never felt before in the bitter cold…

* * *

_*Storbror = Big Brother (Danish)_


	27. Chapter 26 - Your Voice on the Wind

We do not own "Frozen" nor any of its characters.

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act II**

**Chapter 26**

**"Your Voice on the Wind"**

_**YAWN!**_

"…So, nice weather we've been having here, on the …umm…Norwegian Sea. Hasn't it been…umm…Mr. Job…sir?" Anna stumbles over her tentative wordings, not wanting to rock the boat with her dark skinned captor, but the silence around here was just too darn boring!

"Is it all right if I call you that? Since I'm not really sure if 'Job' is your first name or last name, or even if it's just a nickname or something! If it is your first name, I think your Mom chose a really good one for you. I mean, what's better than having a name that everybody knows, but have absolutely no idea how to pronounce properly unless they're really into the Old Testament, like my sister Elsa is. Whew! Can she rattle off Bible quotes like a preacher, or what?! Hey, am I talking too much? If I am, you can just say, _'Come up for air, Anna'_ or _'Time out, Anna', _or—"

"Enough!...Anna." Though begrudgingly growing accustomed to the small mite's effusive speak, once she had gotten bold enough to let go of their earlier tussle and find her tongue, the tall dark man quietly erupts from where he was steering at the navigation controls. Job had been attempting to focus on the plotted course of the small steamship as it cuts a path across the deep night sea, but the talkative little princess wouldn't shut her mouth long enough for him to entertain a coherent thought since she woke up ten minutes ago.

"That works, too." Anna comments, blinking away the sleepers from her eyes in the darkened bridge wheelhouse. She must've fallen asleep a while back on this monotonous ride after the stressed young girl had pretended to sleep, but had vigilantly stayed awake for tense silent hours while '_mean old Captain_ _Ugly' _ was the one prowling at the steamboat's controls.

Somehow, though the Caribbean was bigger and brawnier and far less comical in appearance than his erstwhile short and stout red headed captain, Anna wasn't as wary of him. In fact, Princess Anna wasn't frightened of Job at all, despite his fearful—at first glance—threatening appearance.

Soon after he relieved Captain Houtebeen of the helmsman bridge duty, observant Job was kind enough to sit the tired girl, fastened to the built-in center binnacle housing of the ship's magnetic compass, atop its wooden waist-high stand to give her spindly wobbling legs a seat to rest.

"Kristoff never says I talk too much anymore, even though I know I do tend to jabber on sometimes. Okay, most times." Anna pauses with the happy thought of her handsome patient hunk in her head.

"He thinks it's because I grew up so alone, with practically no playmates that I kept it bottled up inside for so long that I just have to let it all out now that I'm not." Anna cutely puckers her lips at the philosophical theory that went a bit over her head. But she believed her rationalizing Kristoff was an expert at everything.

"I could just be prattling on about how beautiful the fresh cut green grass smells, or what on earth are those busy bees doing in their hives to make honey so sweet, or why God takes all the trouble to make each and every snowflake different and unique if they're all only going to melt before they hit the ground. And he'll—that is, Kristoff—will just answer: '_I love the sound of your voice._' But does that mean he really wasn't listening to my questions?" Finding thoughts of her best boy grounded her from going stir crazy, Anna asks in the darkness with an almost indignant quizzical voice.

"My Kristly must be going crazy right about now." Anna ends her rant sadly, as she hangs her useless head with closed weary eyes in the pitch darkness with the noisy whirring engine as the only sound reverberating in her head.

She bangs it against the side of the one of the colorful iron correcting navigator's spheres on either end of the binnacle in total frustration of not being able to wring her tied up hands for the dreadful predicament she got herself in as a source of her love's worry.

"Muma named me Christian name 'Job' 'cause she say she wanted me to be 'patient in adversity' when I growed up. Hmph, I sure seen me share of adversity, Muma." Job's deep baritone from ahead at the steering column breaks the silence after some long uninterrupted moments go by.

Anna raises her depressed head that was lying against the mounted compass' gimbals used to keep the delicate instrument level while the ship pitched and rolled. Her dulled eyes grow bright again at this, the longest personal sentence Job had disclosed in years, in response to her earlier query that she didn't even think he was listening to either.

"Oh, wow. That's nice to know your Mama was a woman of faith, too, just like my Mama. My Mama named me 'Anna' because…Gee, I never got a chance to ask her why. But there are a lot of things I never had the chance to ask her that I wish I could now—"

This was the closest Anna had come to tears in a long time, but the boisterous girl snaps out of her melancholy mood soon enough. She peers out the side window of the enclosed wheelhouse where a small, yet significant light from a distant isle's lighthouse shore was blinking back at her.

"Are we stopping there? Where are we? What's the name of this por—" Peeking at the readings on the compass and sand timer estimating the speed stored in the binnacle between her legs, Anna inquires in curiosity as she watches Job's massive hands pull the engine dial to 'half-speed' to turn to 'slow' as he eases the insular steam powered boat towards the quickly approaching shore.

"Hush, girl. Da Capt'n be comin'. Better if you be sleepin' sound-like when he be gettin' here. Maybe he not notice you. Savvy?" Job's low warning comes just in time, for Captain Houtebeen's familiar peg-leg's _clip-clop clip-clop _disturbingly signals his arrival back on the upper deck from his cabin below.

"We be requiring refuelin,' Job?" Houtebeen's question may have been directed at the other man, but his attentions were on the little lady who appeared to be soundly a-slumbering from the way she was loudly snoring, her mouth quite unattractively hanging open in a drool on her slumped central pedestal at eye level.

"Yeah, Capt'n. Leka Island be our fueling stop." Almost purposefully stressing the port of call named _'Leka'_, the dutiful first mate answers his superior as he capably sails the steamship into the island's dark dock.

"Ye keep it down, ye scurvy bilge rat! Our leetle firecracker be sleeping so peaceful and nice-like…" But Anna's over-played convincing wheezed snore would have to have drawn anyone's attention.

And the greedy-eyed pirate, chuckling with a sweet dripping voice, drags his wooden leg over to where Anna was desperately trying to keep up the pretense of deep slumber balanced precariously upon the flat of the center binnacle, even though the strong scent of the foul-stenched old sea-devil drawing closer to her could almost make her feel like chucking-up.

_Yuck! Rotten seaweed and old mothballs!_ Her cute little nose wrinkles in disgust.

_Kristoff's rich scent is so much more rugged…and earthy…_Anna's attempt to stay cool under pressure by keeping her true love close in mind is dashed the moment the dirty old monster reaches a wandering hand to lift her long green skirt—

And the delicately refined, ladylike little panicking Princess utilizes the only weapon she had at her disposal in surprise retaliation–

_**POOT!**_

Princess Anna of Arendelle may not have been elated, but her underfed, nervous, topsy-turvy tummy certainly could be gassy on command…

"Acht! Disgusting child!" The repulsed sea captain recoils several feet back from his peek show, thoroughly uninterested now in this unexpectedly rude and repellent royal daughter blowing her southern trumpet at him.

"Sorry, Sir. I was just about to take the girl to relieve herself on da shore while we refuel." A quick thinking Job swiftly moves in to hastily untie and lift from her perch the unromantic, yet effective young woman over his shoulder to avoid the hot-tempered Houtebeen's wrath until the pirate cooled down (and got some fresh sea air back out on the open deck.)

"Take the stinkin' Vloekwaard meid away from my ship! Where were ye raised?! In a barn?! Damned Vrouwtjesh—!" Houtebeen's fowlest curses in many offensive languages echo across this deserted section of Leka's southern port late in the night as Job hefts himself and a winded Anna over the boat's handrail to wade to the shore he had docked them at.

"Dat be a close call for you, little Princess. Though, Job not be so sure da Cap'n be in a kind mood to ye da rest of da voyage now. I try to keep ye clear of him best I can, Missy Anna." But the dark man's warning was holding back laughter at his captain's expense that he'd not entertained for years as he puts the culpable girl down onto the rocky seashore.

For there was something about her indomitable lively spirit that brought about a strange fondness for this unpredictable precious child to take hold of this brusque brute of a big man.

"What? It's perfectly natural. Besides, I don't think I like his _'kind mood'_ anyways!" Not embarrassed one bit by the drastic (albeit gross) tactics taken in self-defense, a nettled Anna huffily retorts. But as Job gives her hand signals to tone down her ferocity of volume, Anna wisely relents.

"That dirty old coot deserved it!" The high-strung girl concedes to a whisper with a quick pasted smile up at Houtebeen, who was on deck flashing a lantern to glare at her over the ship's forward capstan like an angry one-eyed hawk with ruffled feathers on the deck.

"He still be da Cap'n, Missy, so ye watch ye're step." Job's almost-smile fades back to business.

"Dere be no help here on dis isle for miles, so don't even look for anyone to rescue ye, gyal. If ye promise to be good and don't be runnin' from Job, he let ye wash and relieve yerself in private by dat hidden cove over dere, den ye return to da ship here." The gargantuan of a Caribbean former pro-wrestler points Anna towards a darkened inlet indented on the island's craggly shore as he gives her back a sharp forward thrust along with one more cautionary threat.

"Dis be da singular road to town and I be watchin' it real close-like. Remember, my Muma said I be a patient man, but only to a point. Ye got it?"

"Okay." Like a berated 8 year old, Anna stomps off into the cove entrance in a sour mood herself, though she was truly grateful for the man's intercession before.

And yet…

Some minutes into the refueling of coal into the firebox via the supply valves, Job washes his coal dusty hands off of all the emptied ashpit's spent filth. He then looks around, fully expecting the orangy haired waif to have returned by now.

Just at the cusp of letting a small amount of trust's light sneak into his dark jaded world, Job's black eyes squint towards the one and only road leading to the civilization of fishing villages on the rural island of Leka's sparse society. He was fairly certain all during his work retrieving coal and cleaning the below deck's hatch, that his keen eyes would have spotted the conspicuous princess if she broke her word and attempted an escape.

Just about to lose every last shred of hope in his wayward soul and give chase to the missing girl, out of the corner of his eye, another penetrating light begins to break over the Land of the Midnight Sun after its short repose. In the fresh sunlight, Job catches a glimpse of the slight figure of a small girl who had somehow snuck under his 'radar' in a mad dash to the farthest edge of a rising cliff peak near the hilly shore.

Her melodic voice, defying all sane bounds of reality, was enthusiastically shrill and plaintively screaming upon the harsh whipping winds all about her small body as she calls out the name of her dear friend, her manly hero, her true love as if he could hear her if only she yelled it loud and long and soulfully enough—

"**KRISTOFF!"**

"**KRISTOFF!"**

"**KRISTOFF!"**

As the early morning sun rises fully, her big yet small voice lost to the swirling winds and the crashing waves upon the tussled shore, her expended voice all but depleted, Princess Anna sinks to her knees. Although, a single tear would never fall from her eye, for this girl of trusting optimism believed with every inch of her big bold heart that her beloved '_Reindeer King'_ (as Olaf so dubbed him) will come for her. She was as absolutely certain that her Kristoff will not rest until he saves her from this wicked pirate's clutches and take her in his strong arms again to hold onto her tight again as she was sure the sun will rise high in the sky to light the world with His warmth—

And never—EVER—set on the luckiest love this world has ever seen between Kristoff and Anna Bjorgman's forever bond.

Ever the optimist, her windpipes exhausted, Anna closes her eyes with the prayer that her deepest faith and absolute trust in their love would bring the two of them together again. Somewhere, someway, somehow, Anna's destined happiness with Kristoff couldn't be so cruelly snatched away as they had only just begun to live…

Her sore throat was raspy and constricted from all that screaming and her gale force tossed hair was a mess. As if in an out of body experience, her mind still reaching to her love on the winds, Anna feels Job's massive grip bodily pick her up and carry her back to the thralls of a yet unknown purpose to her captivity…

* * *

Anna's voice crying in the wilderness was not lost to all the winds that the Spirit Whisperer could hear. Somewhere in his induced slumber subconscious the tossed and turned young man indeed heard his wife's call through that bottomless chasm of the heart where reality and dreams converge on a plane seen only through the eyes of a trusting, profound love. And it was breaking Kristoff's heart to still be so far away and powerless to save his Anna, as the nightmares persist…

* * *

Sometime, in the deep of the night, after that harrowing life and death in the balance operation of a desperate new medical procedure had just taken place, the exhausted party rests.

The survived patient and his reconciled wife had soon fallen asleep together. Rapunzel cradled Eugene's injured arm most assiduously with tender touches as the beyond pained, tipsy with drink man had readily dozed off under her gentle care on the comfortably ample blankets and pillowed sheeting assembled for the injured hero.

But the real hero of the night took some convincing before he would lay down his proven brilliant in a crisis head for rest. Although an eager "_We're wide awake!"_ Olaf and Pascal offered their 'vigilant' watch over the camp for the few hours' long nap, they and Elsa had a hard time insisting the hesitant to relegate his duties, yet extremely spent, body and mind, young 'doctor' to take a well deserved break…

_**Two hours ago…**_

"Prince Hans, please listen to reason. Your nerves are too worn after that heroic surgery you undertook for Prince Eugene to not take a justified rest." Elsa had greeted Hans after he returned from a tour of the grounds with this anxious ultimatum. The caught off-guard young man had paused, not quite knowing how to contradict without sounding too disrespectful of the Queen.

"And may I say? You were amazing back there." The platinum blonde then smiled up at Hans proudly, befuddling the blushing fellow even further as how to respond to her compliment.

"Nothing more than a brother should do for a brother, after all." Hans finally reemerged from the seascape of her beautiful admiring blue eyes to find his voice again.

A dazzled Elsa had gazed upon him, even more impressed no end by his generosity of familial expression.

"Please, Prince Hans. All the lamps and torches have been lit, your patient checked upon, and you've just re-scouted the immediate area for any threatening prowling creatures. So now, you yourself must sleep for a few hours before we begin our journey again in the morning." Nurse Elsa, back in her cool leader mode, had insisted of her Prince as she had gone to the Vis-à-vis to retrieve one more set of blankets and the small pillow she herself had been using in the carriage to lay out a bed for him on a choice soft knoll of grass near the roaring fire.

"Queen Elsa, your kindness in troubling yourself over me is sincerely appreciated. However, someone responsible must remain awake to keep close watch of the camp—"

The heavy lidded man had glanced over first to the sleigh where Kristoff was tossing and turning, then to where the passed out drunk recuperating Eugene was snoring peacefully beside his smiling wife snuggled close in his grasp like a child would his security teddy bear.

Hans had then given Olaf, who was, at the time, tickling Guddy's horsey tummy with a cattail stalk, a sideways glance before at last looking at the down to earth chameleon, who had been shaking his green head in total agreement with the Naval officer's assessment.

But the Ice Queen's most persistent demanding eyes had given the selfless Danish Lieutenant orders otherwise.

"Olaf, Pascal and myself can be responsible to hold down the fort for a little time, I'm sure." She stated almost haughtily, brushing her luxuriant loose blonde locks back to her forehead.

"Yes, of course, Queen Elsa. I must apologize, if my…ill expressed words led you to believe…That isn't what I meant at all to say." The cute way the great orator Prince Hans of the Southern Isles stumbles over his words brings a smile back to Elsa's lips.

"You must rest so you can be fully alert to face the road ahead tomorrow. We three will keep vigilant watch the remainder of the night. It will be sunrise soon enough, up here in this region of my country." With a controlled wave of her hand, Elsa had motioned to where her ice magic formed a long club for a now ready to serve snowman to wield as he begun pacing the South end of the camp in back and forth guard duty. As for the North edge of their 'barracks', Pascal had taken on patrol in green battlement camouflage to expertly blend in with his surroundings.

"See? Piece of ice cream cake." The flirting with danger way she had blown on her enchanted long nailed fingers after showing off a display of her ice powers to be unleashed on any rabid lawless intruders, turned Hans _**on**_ more than gave him good reason to turn _**in**_, as the Queen of Ice sent a quick frozen dagger volley at some poor unsuspecting tree on the east end of the camp she'd be in charge of watching, opposite the fjorden.

"But perhaps I, too, should—" He gave one last stab at a protest, but Elsa's cool finger silencing his warm lips was all the persuading Hans Westergaard needed.

"You will sleep. That is an order." Queen Elsa seemed to enjoy exerting her new power over the delirious eyed young man now under her command.

Elsa had even deemed then to indulge in her own weariness of stiff non-tactile conviction as she actually had pressed both her hands to Hans' rebellious chest to squarely push the by now stunned and compliant man down to the soft bed of blankets and personal pillow she had laid out for him.

She even had gentle laid a soft cover over him. At first unwilling, but then pleased, his thin prone body being pampered by this gorgeous Queen's intimate touch and sweet caring, Hans finally submitted to Elsa's whim.

"I am but your humble servant…my Queen…" Whispered in a soft tenor on his parted lips, having not slept for days on end now with all the danger and trouble presented, Hans then soon dropped off to a comfortable repose under Elsa's humming her Mama's favorite church hymn she often sung her oldest girl and Papa both to lull to sleep after a long day of training.

"…_Let the water and the blood _

_From Thy wounded side which flowed_

_Be of sin the double cure_

_Save from wrath and make me pure."_

After a while amidst her soulful humming, as her Mama did for her weary Papa, Elsa's tender hand had begun to smooth the mussed red hair strands back from his noble brow. She then, without thought, started to soothingly stroke his soft bristled, mahogany red sideburns for the first time. They were a tad unkempt in all the past days' excitement, but warm and inviting like the poignant lines of the ageless melody she murmured low about the selfless Savior whose pierced holy body would forever be extended to shield the rest of the world's pain, for He even gave His life in exchange for the promise of their Eternity…

"_Nothing in my hand I bring_

_Simply to Thy Cross I cling..."_

"_Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in thee."_

Silently considering the strange upside down mercurial circumstances as she lightly caresses his handsome face, Elsa of Arendelle had marveled then and there at the capricious turn of events in their uniquely unforeseen relationship…_ Somehow, Prince Hans, you have become my rock here on earth, whom I can always depend on. Though, I still don't understand why._

"Yes, you can sleep now. We'll be fine." In a small voice, Elsa had reassured aloud encouragingly more to herself than the already slumbering prince in the still summer night's darkness.

But there were uncertain, frightened tears forming behind her eyes when her thoughts then drifted to Anna's safety in the quiet of being alone. _Please, Lord, I ask for nothing but to watch over my darling until we meet again…_

And all Elsa could do from breaking down was cling to Hans' steady warmth and the words of the touching holy song echoing in her heart…

'_Not the labors of my hands,_

_Can fulfill thy law's demands._

_Could my zeal no respite know?_

_Could my tears forever flow?_

_All for sin could not atone_

_Thou must save and Thou alone_

_Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me hide myself in Thee…'_

* * *

_**Back to present…**_

The sun slowly escalates its way up into the sky at nearly 4 in the morning, some two hours later.

Vigilantly keeping her alert eyes peeled for as long as she possibly could, the slender blonde woman had sunk into a restful sitting position. Just intending to rest her stressed eyes, Elsa leans her thin cool back to Prince Hans' warm body where he lay on the blanketed ground. And the Queen of Arendelle falls as contently asleep in his presence as he was in hers.

But the stability of Hans' warmth, nor the midnight sun rising over the peaceful, still treetops were enough to keep the sudden chill from pervading Elsa's heart as she shivers awake from the few minutes of dozing, a cold intangible fear gripping her soul.

_Anna!? _Her beloved sister's name was at the forefront of her mind as frigid blue eyes snap open, the Ice Queen carefully slips away from beneath the long fingered hand that had mysteriously fallen into the crook of her elbow in their little guiltily intimate nestled cove.

A bit anxious for the bluish tint of said hand that was alighted upon her bare skin, Elsa pauses to afford Prince Hans' cute face, his long lashes lowered still in closed slumber, a momentary glance to assure herself he was neither injured by her pervasive ice nor disturbed from his much deserved sleep.

Satisfied that his palm was now returning to its normal tanned apricot shading, Elsa's light feet trip over to Sven's sleigh to check on Kristoff—

Only to find neither reindeer nor man inside the empty sleigh present.

_Kristoff!_ Coupled with the confounding apprehension she had awakened with still gripping her icy insides, Elsa's racing mind begins to panic. Frosted ice particles hang in the air of her puffed breaths as she runs blindly to the far end of the camp where Olaf was merrily humming to himself as he marches back and forth as guardsman.

"Olaf! Kristoff and Sven are gone! Why weren't you watching him?! You were supposed to be on guard!" Her voice barely above an audible whimper in flustered trepidation as she passes the blame along, though feeling peerlessly responsible for those few stolen minutes of rest, an alarmed Elsa derides Olaf for his inattentiveness.

"Yeah. I was, but—" Olaf begins to mount a defense, but her shrill whisper cuts him off.

"He could be kilometers away by now! Oh, Olaf! We can't let him do this on his own! "

"Yeah, I know, but—" His big innocent eyes blink blankly up at her distress, but the nerve-wracked young female continues to verbally rampage over the slow snowman.

"We have to save Anna together! She wouldn't want me to let him go off by himself!" Elsa's cold breath exudes from her exasperated mouth until the heavily saturated air collapses the accumulated thin ice sheet onto Olaf's carrot nose.

Crossing his eyes at the slick coating, the snowman wiggles his frosted orange veg on his face until it finally erupts in an irritated high pitched sneeze.

Elsa's lustrous blue eyes dart around the camp that the sun was just bringing to the light where she spies Cousin Rapunzel and her husband stirring on their blanket, Pascal just leaving his duty post at the other end of their encampment to join the frisky couple, and Hans still where she left him in frightened alarm.

But no sign of the tall blonde Ice Harvester, nor his faithful rangifer, for that matter, as quick eyes scan nearer the fjorden to the west where the pair of horses were yet tethered.

"Wow, you really are worried about sticking together, aren't you?" Speaking sanely and quietly cool and collected as compared to her frazzled state, Olaf looks up at Elsa in that condescending way again.

"Don't you fret, Elsie. I know where our favorite pungent reindeer king was headed with Sven." Olaf answers in a similarly conspired whispered tone, waggling a knowing finger to the side of his patronizing carrot nose.

"Where did he go, Olaf?! What direction?!" Elsa demands information from the sluggish snowman, kneeling down to shake his shoulders until his head nearly wobbles off.

"Let's see…Kristoff went…" Olaf takes his own sweet time in finding his compass direction as he spins about on waddled feets in such a slow and plodding way that an impatient Ice Queen could nearly pull her hair out. The trying snowman swings his branch arm around the circumference of the camp until it finally comes to an abrupt pointing stop mere meters from where they were having their discussion.

"In there! That Kristoff and Sven tried to sneak by me into that thicket. They even pretended they didn't hear me when I said 'Good Morning, Kristoff and Sven!' And I know they heard me, silly guys, up to tricks." Olaf chortles in his clicking tongued method under his laughing breath.

"But be careful, Elsa! I think he went in there to play with his—"

But as graceful as a deer in flight, Elsa was already off and running before the snow friend could finish his long-winded warning.

Into the darkened heavy overgrowth of thicket the Queen of the land of the midnight sun dashes in a headlong manner under the tall cover of trees…

* * *

_**T'chi! T'chi! T-chi!**_

As Sven quickly rushes forward through the meandering forest of trees, one by one the arrowheads embed themselves into the hurriedly crafted, somewhat circular thick target of an axed down trunk of a tree affixed to the reindeer's colorful strapped side.

_**Bullseye! Bullseye! Bullseye!**_

Vented anger plus dead-on focus aim hits the center of the spherical ring of the flattened wooden piece until each of the pointed projectiles were practically millimeters apart on the rounded board already dotted with arrowhead markings.

Elsa watches Sven pause and cock his furry head to direct a look at the relentless archer whose raised longbow doesn't falter from its perfectly held limb position.

"No, it's not good enough yet, Sven! Don't just go in a straight line this time. Dodge and weave like I'm chasing you. I need to master plugging moving targets!"

The platinum blonde woman, maintaining her seclusion in the shadows, notes how the empathic reindeer seemed to acquiesce a nod back to the gruff voiced, shirtless man sporting only the leather bracer along with his cache of quiver, bow and arrows.

The four-legged creature then makes an encircled erratic rush through the thicket, in and out of bushes and trees all amongst the flying arrows whistling through the air everywhere about him. Most hit their target with a stunning precision as Kristoff lets loose his drawn bow string over and over with near flawless results. Watching in awe, Elsa had no idea of the extent to the proficient skill of which the young man she thought she knew fairly well over these past 2 years now possessed in this foreign field.

_**T'chi! T'chi! T-chi!**_

As another volley is masterfully set to fly with deadly accuracy at an almost frenzied speed, the man's rough voice begins to rumble lowly.

"It **is** my fault, Sven! Anna needed me to save her and I let her down!"

_**T'chi! T'chi! T-chi!**_

"Yes, I could have! I should've followed her down that hill instead of sticking around to help those two losers!"

_**T'chi! T'chi! **_

"No, Sven, you're wrong! She'd be here right now if I wasn't so soft and sorry a husband. And I love her too much not to get tougher and harder, be a better man than I was back there, if I've got any chance to rescue her."

A confused Elsa didn't quite understand how, but it was obvious that her tormented brother-in-law and his reindeer were able to have some sort of silent sentient communication.

But she did know her dear sister well enough to speak on Anna's behalf here.

"Anna wouldn't want you to change!" Elsa's soprano voice breaks into the one-sided conversation, taking a totally in the zone Kristoff so off guard as he was loading his arrow's draw length into its bow string's nocking point that the startled man lets the shot fly loose a second or two prematurely…

_**~~T'chi!~~ **_

"Sven! Watch out!" But the overtired reindeer who had been taking a break to munch on his particularly favorite meal of forest lichens that he had spotted and sniffed out beneath some hidden foliage, didn't see the arrow coming until it was too late. His mournful eyes grow wide and frightened as he looks up at his best friend's warning call with a gulp.

_**Zzzttt!**_

The Ice Queen finds composure in her own fear, recalling the lesson a certain red-headed man had begun her study of, not so long ago.

She zaps the mid-motion, sharpened bone projectile with a powerful ice surge blast, freezing the arrow in midair, until the perfectly balanced shaft weight and off kilter vane fletching causes the arrow's spine to plummet to the ground, mere inches below Sven's terrified wobbling muzzle.

"Oh, Sven, that was close, buddy. I'm sorry…I'm such a lunkhead to put you in danger, too." Wind Whisperer or no, the tall, blonde man runs forward, proving that his 'sensitive and sweet' side wasn't yet ready to be relinquished into tough and hardened, truly, in his tender, loving hug of his forever friend's relieved face.

Sven licks Kristoff's in return to quell all fears and self-recrimination.

"My sister told me, the last time we were in chapel together, that she is so proud that '_God made Kristoff just as he is—utterly good and absolutely true_'. These are the perfect qualities of the ideal man she fell in love with. And I trust you just as you are, to save her, Kristoff. I believe in you, too." Elsa completes her compassionate thought, putting a hand to each of the young orphaned males' (man and reindeer) cheeks, which were still squeezed together adorably.

"She really said that? You're right…I will. Thanks, Elsa." Kristoff's cracking voice at the first statement showed his youth; while the second, more adult attitude, showed his resolve, as with one arm around Sven's neck, the 6 foot 5 inch tall man picks up his dropped quiver and longbow, slinging them over his broad shoulder as if he were an old pro at the craft that usually took years to hone to such a high level.

"Now then! That's enough practice for you two. Let's get back to camp and I'll cook us up a quick breakfast before we get on the road." The now, hands-on, capable cook in Queen Elsa smiles her most convincing smile, though, when they pause to look in one another's determined eyes, the two people closest to Princess Anna of Arendelle both still sensed, deep down, there would be no true rest for either of their broken hearts until their precious girl was back in the arms of her family again.

But the bright sun that was finally fully up in the sky was once more showing God's shining face of hope to the brave world again as they stride out into the clearing beyond the trees when they exit the thicket's shading

In the light of day, Elsa offers a sympathetic smile up to the big man whom she trusted implicitly in all matters concerning Anna, for she knew Kristoff had her sister's best intentions first in his caring mind. He pats her pale cheek as he passes her upturned face when Elsa pauses to soak up the solar rays streaming through the blue sky, just as Anna taught her to do, to clear the cold icy cobwebs from her littered mind.

"When I woke up and didn't see either you or Sven there, I panicked, afraid you left ahead of us on your own again." The slender queen admits her fears, letting them '_get air_' as her buoyant little sister always prescribed to the young woman who would rather shrink back behind her closed doors some tough days than speak openly. But the revitalizing sun reminds Elsa of Anna's special brand of therapy as the two blondes walk back to the camp, side by side.

"I made a promise, Elsa. And a promise I make, is a promise I keep." There was deeper meaning behind the brawny man's words as Kristoff tugs his shirt and vest back on that he'd removed for intense archery practice earlier.

It was the vest his new wife had had made for him as a birthday present, the one she had significantly pinned her own favorite sunflower brooch, that Elsa had given her, when Anna was dressing him back up the morning after their first night of sweet love-making back in his childhood home in the Valley of the Trolls.

Kristoff lightly touches the effeminately youthful piece of bright yellow sculpted metal jewelry with a sentimental smile. It glimmers back up at him with the streaming sunlight that would remain in the sky for the remainder of the hours of today.

_Just like my Anna—glowing and bright and clear-eyed and undeniably radiant. No matter what it takes, I will stand by you, I will live for you, I will keep my wedding vows to you, Baby…Please, God, take my voice to her on the winds. Tell her, I'm coming._

As he moves purposefully towards the horses with Sven to get them ready, Kristoff Bjorgman, too, closes his eyes solemnly. His ruggedly handsome features bathe in the fresh sunlight with the soft spoken prayerful message of his undying love to carry upon the summer breeze…

"Anna, I love you. I'm coming to save you, Baby..."

* * *

_Speaking of lovemaking…_

"Ouch!"

"Am I pushing too hard? Did I hurt you? We haven't done this in a while. I guess I'm a little out of practice."

"Nah. What's an extra nick or two when my barber's got such a cute little—OWWY! You're a dangerous woman with that razor, Blondie." While most other men who had downed that amount of 80 proof Akvavit spirits would be still soused and suffering from the ill effects of drink, Flynn Rider only had a slight hangover. His head may have been a tad woozy, but the lifelong thief could pride himself on at least being able to hold his drink.

In reality, with his flippant attitude and roguish style, one could hardly tell the difference anyway whether the irreverent man was ever completely sober or flat out drunk.

Eugene Fitzherbert gazes over the sharp cutting blade held at his slightly blood-let throat under his chiseled chin jaw to give his wife a rueful smile and one-eyed wince.

"So sorry! But your bouncing Adam's apple was moving up and down so much it threw me off and—" A sheepish Rapunzel makes excuses for her slip of the sharp knife that she was giving her one arm incapacitated hubby his first proper clean shave in…well, let's just say in a very, very long time.

After the pair had awoken to the revealing light of day, Rapunzel's suspicions that her lover, top to bottom, was absolutely filthy were abundantly made clear, once she had checked his operated on arm was no longer 'infected'—a terrifying little word in the 1850s—that Prince Hans had chased away.

_Thank God!_

The previous week's worth of being punched and beaten to a pulp in dingy cells aboard pirate ships, grave-digging, rolling around in the dirt in scuffles, being shot to the ground by some peg-legged madman all added up to one grimy, mucky, dirty Flynn Rider.

And after she had painstakingly taken great pains to keep his wounded, freshly sutured arm and its applied herbal ointment under the bandages she'd wrapped, perpendicular to the water, Rapunzel had sedulously stripped down her husband to bathe him—and herself in the splashing process—in the fjorden's cleansing fresh waters.

Next, the spunky brunette had secured an extremely sharp razor from Hans (who had been awakened by all the couple's splashing waterside noisy antics and was already seeing to his own morning whisker removal by the fjorden's banks to show a presentable face to the nation, especially its lovely Queen.) Prince Hans was innocently unaware that his now primped and trimmed sideburns were a subject of Queen Elsa's molesting in his sleep in the night.

Rapunzel had gone to work in relegating Eugene's famed facial hair—way too long and dirt encrusted to be deemed sexy—with the borrowed blade, Pascal and a bar of soap at the ready.

"Just be a bit more meticulous on the face. I find I've grown attached to it." A witty Eugene says to his artful wife with feigned pursed lips as he was enjoying her tender ministrations over his entire yearning body in the fjorden's waters, despite the blood loss here and there.

As for Rapunzel, she was discovering how deliciously vain and sarcastically humored her lover was. And she imagines, right now in this moment, that's what she'd missed most these past lonely months that they'd barely been giving one another acknowledging glances.

"So have I." The multiple kisses shared throughout the night may have made her a second-hand drunk on love, as the still head-over-heels young woman coquettishly broadcasts while she pets her husband's yet hirsute lathered cheek. She still was sure he was the most devastatingly gorgeous man to walk the earth, shiners and all, despite the excess plumage grown along his tanned manly jawbone.

"Glad to hear it, Blondie." His throaty words drip raw desire from his crooked mouth up at her, which then delivers on her wanting lips as desperately passionate a morning greeting as she had ever known. The months of cool separation and near death experience seemed to have given this regretful man a renewed vigor to prove his love, especially now that his conscientious wife had most convincingly ensured his cleanliness to be free to push a giggling Rapunzel down to the fjorden's bank beneath him…

"Have you finished with my shaving razor yet, sister Rapunzel? May I call you 'sister', Princess? I do hope it wasn't too sharp for your tastes, Brother. I prefer to keep it exceedingly sharpened for a close cut. Good morning. How is the arm? We do want to give it ample time to heal before any overexertion that could...penetrate last night's sutures."

After giving himself and the clothing (that would have to dry on him in the all day sunlight, _unhealthy practice, alas_), a quick dip in the fjorden on the opposite bank divided by a concealed hanging tree, Prince Hans had kept his eyes averted long enough to be discreetly observant of the flirtatious dealings between the married couple at the water's edge where he was gathering dry wood to start a fire as well in the camp.

"Damn interfering skinny twit." A rolling double black-eyed frustrated Eugene remarks of the red haired, dripping wet younger man who Pascal passes the razor blade to, for one last presentable-to-the-Queen detail—

With a skilled slash, Hans swiftly relinquishes the thin ponytail he had been sporting for almost these past two years in one swift motion, then just as offhandedly finishes pulling a shirt on over his bony yet muscular frame after returning to the water's edge to clear up the rest of his clothing and tools of ablution.

With wide eyes upon her new brother in law's awe inspiring panache and distinct take on good-looking vanity, Rapunzel guiltily, yet carefully, pushes her own breathtakingly sumptuous husband back to roll from atop her onto the bank.

"Eugene! After all Prince Hans has done for us. Your brother's only watching out for your health." She shushingly reprimands her grumbling love's ill temper towards his concerned younger sibling.

"He's only being a royal pain in the ass." Crass Flynn Rider cheekily smirks up from the sand bank he was laid out upon. With a smarmy grin, the competitive man is at least able to be proud to show off his self judged more manly physique from their alleged shared paternal gene pool before his adoring gal's interested eyes.

That is, until Rapunzel wipes the smug look off his soapy face when she again produces the gleaming shaving tool Pascal hands back to her with a hissing chortle at the thief's discomfort. There was a mischievous look in her green eyes as the brown haired girl industriously goes back to her enticing job of playing barber-ette to her muscle-bound dark hairy-chested love.

"Oo-kay...I'm at your mercy, Darlin'" Giving in to the pleasured torture, Eugene closes his eyes and indulges Rapunzel to get some thrills out of her little loving wifely task of shaving his stunningly gorgeous face again.

* * *

"Oh, Prince Hans! You're up too early! I wanted you to rest for at least a few hours." Directing Olaf, who had been holding the hand of the young Queen as they strolled across the field, to aid Kristoff in tending to the horses and Sven, Elsa walks up to where a damp Prince Hans was already busy cooking at the campfire. As she approaches closer, a bedazzled Elsa can't help her perfectionist hand from unconsciously completing the picture by tucking a still wet stray lock of his hair back, causing a surprised Hans to blush as red as his wet hair, minus his pirate-y ponytail, caught fire in the sun again. Though growing admittedly more enamored of his neat and tidy appearance, Elsa gasps at her own boldness, as her cheeks and his have a bashfully shy blushing contest.

"Forgive my dampness, I just bathed. _A-hem_" A by now crimson-faced Hans, embarrassed at his brazen declaration of a subject taboo in the Victorian era, clears his throat, but seeing her in the morning sunlight quite baffled him at times. Elsa too was mystified at how she was unable to take her eyes from drinking in Hans Westergaard's attractive moistened visage in the new morning glow.

"I am quite accustomed to only taking short sleeping cycles and wished to confer with all of you an idea I have been turning over in my head for our next course of action. I do recognize that time is still of the essence." Hans looks up from the pan full of wedged potatoes sautéed in various herbs (that had not been pestled by the women into Eugene's antibacterial arm ointment that the versatile Prince of the Southern Isles conjured up) the expert galley chef had tossed together to braise as the fire was starting up.

"But I do thank you for your concern, Queen Elsa—and please pardon my uncouth rudeness in speaking out of turn. Good morning." Hans smiles, suddenly remembering his manners, with all the due niceties befitting a royal Prince to a fine Lady. "And thank you again for benevolently volunteering for last night's watch duty. For your sacrifice, I can assure you I am quite well rested, all due to your thoughtful efforts."

Elsa timidly smiles back guiltily, finally able to wrench her gaze from his eye-catching, picturesque countenance, ashamed she was still vividly recalling the cherished warmth of his body heat pressed against hers in the cool still night. She was startled to find that she actually liked the feeling she once never thought to ever consider in the disinterested past.

Hans and Elsa's similarly conscious-stricken eyes meet over the now roaring fire once again, his inquisitive innocent eyes locked in her lost ones melting another layer of ice shielding this retiring Queen's heart.

"If I could ask you to set the breakfast table—_er_—picnic blanket—I will present my humble logistical suggestion to everyone over the meal. And then we can be forthwith on the next leg of our journey, now that our destination is imminently in sight." Hans reveals to Elsa in that lofty, high-minded, yet urgently sincere voice she was both impressed and titillated by the responsible leadership qualities the young naval officer imbued through it.

Chasing that disarranging thought away, elegant Elsa of Arendelle sees fit to kneel to the ground, unrumpling the blanket near the campfire as she does. She then digs into the basket Hans must've set out for her to dispatch the dinnerware, which she attentively sets out accordingly. Though a heavy heart hung over the solitary plate she leaves safely tucked inside the basket's wickered folds, the one with the golden crocus of their kingdom of Arendelle's crest along the fancy rim.

The newly inscribed initials of K&amp;A were scripted in the center of the fine wedding porcelain dinnerware Elsa gifted that her missing little sister was so proud to own.

Her own specially crafted china with the names of '_Kristoff &amp; Anna'_ forever entwined in gold…

* * *

* _Muma – Caribbean for Mother_

* _Vloekwaard meid_ – _Dutch for 'damnable wench'_

_* gyal– Caribbean for 'young girl'_

* * *

_Happy Easter, Frozen friends! May our 'Rock of Ages'- God's Redeeming Eternal Love bring peace and joy to your soul._

_From His miraculous birth, to His__ blessed life, to His selfless death and transcending Resurrection, _

_Our Sacrificial Lamb's Love is **"The Greatest Story Ever Told**"!_

_**"Jesus Christ is Risen Today! Ha-a-a-a-a-llelu-ujah!"**_

_God Bless!_


	28. Chapter 27 - An Essay on Man

We do not own "Frozen" nor any of its characters.

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act II**

**Chapter 27**

**"An Essay on Man"**

"Amen."

Over breakfast of the well-received roasted herbal wedges of potatoes seasoned by culinary artist Prince Hans Westergaard, the skilled chef/expert strategist brought to the floor a new plan.

"May I suggest, the most expedient way to give chase to a seabound small steamcraft would be via a similarly accelerated vessel of a higher pedigree?" Hans casually had begun to introduce his well thought out idea.

"I had a sinking feeling we hadn't seen the last of pirate ships with Captain Kidd here in charge." Sarcasm revived two-fold, Flynn Rider comments, still a little sore at his 'kid brother' for earlier unwarranted interference in matters of making love to his wife.

Besides, Eugene was decidedly not a 'morning person' if there wasn't a grand heist to get the adrenaline flowing at this ungodly hour, especially not after he had been deducted of his trademark stubble by dawn's early light, though his close-shorn barber was so adorable. She had made it worth his while though, washing and bathing him as if he were a newborn babe in the fjorden.

Right now however, Rapunzel shoves a potato wedge into her husband's clean-shaven, yet naughty mouth, with a warning pair of flashing green eyes.

"You are wrong on two fronts there, Storbror. First of all, the era of violent privateering and open piracy is blessedly at its time of closure, with only this final unpalatable remnant of an enervated aged mariner as an unusual aberration on the now civilized Naval populated high seas." Hans corrects his 'big brother' in his proudest voice of a sea-faring Naval officer after the well-mannered young man finishes swallowing some of the tasteful potato fare that Elsa had served to the late-to-the-table-chef personally with a smile.

The Ice Queen had tried to keep the covered food as hot as possible for him.

"Wait. Is there a lecture that comes free of charge with your second point, too, 'little Bro'?" Eugene says with a droll pair of rolled eyes across the breakfast blanket he was lounging lazily upon to his _(I still need proof)_ younger sibling.

"Oh. Did that come across as…I hardly meant to be…Forgive me, please." Hans stumbles over an embarrassed apology, his face reddening at the ungentlemanly accusation of being a common blowhard.

"I'm joking! Sheesh! You're way too uptight, Sideburns, with all those high-faluting fancy terms and big ideas! Just try to act like a normal twenty-something virile young kid, and live a little once in a while." Eugene prompts rather expressively with flourished hand motions. _(Ouch.)_

"Yes, a-hem." Hans finds he did not like being called out on matters concerning his…virility…especially in front of a young lady whom he was growing uncommonly fascinated by the enchantment of her mesmerizing blue eyes.

So much so, the still remorseful penitent was finding it hard to meet those beautiful glowing orbs by the light of day and honestly be able to look back without chastening himself for his fanciful impulse to even entertain this overwhelming proclivity of his illicit attraction for pure and virtuous, beneficent and charitable Queen Elsa of Arendelle.

_Anyway…Focus on the subject at hand, man!_

The deeply crimson-faced 25-year-old, yet inexperienced with these new surging emotions redirects his wandering mind as he stands to get a new perspective when Eugene speaks again.

"Okay! Okay! Lay on me the 'second thing'!" The blustery berated by wife man gives into greater demand to ask for court to be held.

"Well…yes. The second issue was—I am not 'in charge of anything.' Here or anywhere, sir. It is entirely up to Her Royal Majesty, Queen Elsa, to make every final decision. After all, it is **her **country, and the welfare of **her **sister at stake here. While we can offer our best attempts at level-headed support as a team for this worthy cause, I personally have nothing to give but the totality of my meager, yet unconditional insight and whatever application there is for the utility of my hands in the Queen's service and under her intelligent judgment, I bow completely to in every matter."

"Wow. He really speaks well, doesn't he?" More accustomed to the ironic sarcasm of her own irreverent boy as she nudges with an elbow her tall blonde cousin, seated beside her on the blanket, Rapunzel was rather moved by Hans' open expression of humility before Norway's sovereign. Hans meets Elsa's now wide eyes with a reverent respectful bow of his red head and sinewy torso both to the Queen as he symbolically squeezes her two hands in his warm ones and easily lifts the willing girl to her feet up with him.

"Yep, yep! And he cooks really good, too." Olaf answers the brunette, as his big single toothed mouth was happily munching away from the potato plate he was finishing off.

"Hey, why isn't she answering? Do you think she doesn't know how to answer?" The naïve snowman whispers 'discreetly' behind his perforated sticks for hands to Rapunzel when Elsa's bewitched eyes upwards search for a proper response to the munificent man standing face to face directly before her.

"Yes, he does speak…extremely well." Shaking herself awake, Elsa finally murmurs in response to Rapunzel and Olaf's question. "But I **want** you, Prince Hans—I want **all **of you—" Elsa pauses with the addendum to include everyone into her statement when Kristoff reappears after seeing to the transportation was fed, watered, and hitched up ready to get back on the road.

"—to know that I greatly appreciate whatever helpful input and advice you have to offer in this terrible affair. It is a blessing and a comfort to me to know that each of you have my little sister, Princess Anna's, best interests in mind and that I am not alone in this heart-heavy struggle. Without Anna here to ground me, I would be going crazy, if not for all your warmth and support to help me find her in this crisis. Thank you." The Ice Queen gives each upturned face around the breakfast blanket a grateful nod and smile, until she finally rests her gaze upon the Danish Prince, whose eager eyes could not tear his mesmerized glance away from Elsa's exquisite ones that seemed to be communicating directly with his soul.

"Please consider my small contribution the very least I am able to recompense to yourself and Princess Anna, Queen Elsa." Hans says to her as he gentlemanly kneels at Elsa's surprised feet. He takes her hand and presses it to his closed-eyed lips for a softly brushed kiss to the back of her delicate palm.

"Wow." Rapunzel repeats in awe of the sheer romance as her more down-to-earth, at times anyway, husband rolls his eyes to the heavens.

Remaining silent all this while, Kristoff warily glances up and down between the two, wondering if the once villainous Prince had truly altered his ways.

_Or is this the same song and dance routine of a masterful fraud again?_

The tall blonde realist only could hope that Elsa would possess the calm composure to know the difference this time 'round. He had his own set of troubles too much to be dealing with this wandering-eyed heartbreaker of a Don Juan again.

"Okay!" Eugene claps his hands together, at last ready to leave his comfy headrest-ful position on his wife's spoiling lap to stir himself and leap up like a teenager again as he tugs his petite pretty up with him from the blanket. "So what's the name of the port we're heading to in search for a ship to hire?"

"Salsbrucket is the next closest seaport some 60 kilometers north of here in Nord-Trondelag country." The well-traveled of the land Ice Harvester tersely imparts this vital information in answer to Eugene's flippant question. But Kristoff's slitted eyes were more upon the redhead who was just getting to his feet again to be greeted by the larger man's cynical gaze.

"Yes, Port Salsbrucket on the Kvistenfjorden that melds an outlet into the Norwegian Sea would be most ideal. There must be, I dare hope, a ship in that port we can board passage on to take us swiftly to the Lofoten archipelago faster than we could possibly span on land." With a thought-provoking vow, Hans replies. The former Naval officer from his years of youthful training on the ocean, was more at home on the sea than the skeptical mountain man who had been born and raised on the land, by the land and for the land.

But if that wide ocean was separating him from his Anna, Kristoff Bjorgman would readily take on all of its unforgiving vastness, and then some.

Elsa looks to Kristoff who gives the slender Queen a slight nod.

"Then it is agreed. Thank you all for your input and your sensible idea, Prince Hans. We will obtain a vessel in the Port of Salsbrucket, in order to find Anna and bring her home. Please, let us be on our way." Politely, yet firmly, Elsa makes the final decision and the group rapidly move to clear up the campsite and then load into the two sleigh vehicles that Kristoff already had hitched up to the horses and Sven, who were rearing to get moving on the road again.

* * *

With Kristoff at the head of Sven's sleigh carrying Elsa and Olaf in the lead, and Hans at the helm of the Vis-à-vis with Rapunzel, Eugene and Pascal taking up the rear, the rescue party travels forward and North over lands dominated by pointed white-capped mountaintops and numerous fjords in the valleys of their ominous shadows.

In the summertime beauty of the lush green mountain landscape, crystal clear bubbling waterfalls spring naturally from the sides of the mountains they pass. The breathtaking romance of which is not lost on Rapunzel who give silent thanksgiving in praise to the God who created these glorious mountain ranges and also the brilliant new little brother Eugene never knew until he had to save her husband's life and return the wayward man back to her alive and whole.

As she peers up through the forward peephole at the solitary man keeping his own lonely council offset by the beautiful mountains surrounding, Rapunzel wonders what the kind, handsome young man could have possibly ever done so irrevocably wicked in his relationship with Elsa that he was always severely guilty and repentant about. Anna was involved in the sordid tale somehow too, but it was Elsa that empathic Rapunzel could plainly see that Hans was still in love with from all he's said and done accumulating in this look of utter longing on his face.

And Elsa, though she was denying her obvious tender emotions as best she could, was still deeply in love with the man. So why couldn't they try to rekindle that flame now, when they need one another's emotional support so desperately?

Rapunzel felt she was close enough to either lovelorn subject of her scrutiny to put a hand to the proverbial paddle here in the ever twisting and turning flowing river called 'romance'…

"Hans looks so lonely. Why don't you go up front and talk to him?" In a soft whisper, Rapunzel does what wives do best in such situations—she nudges awake her lowered eyed, lulled-by-the-back-and-forth-motion-of-the-horses-into-a-nap drowsy hubby in the aching side.

But Eugene Fitzherbert had absolutely next to no interest in gazing at the idyllic mountains' beauteous heights.

_You see lofty grandeur to inspire, Blondie? I see a big hill 'o dirt to cross. And boy, have I had my full share of dirt digging to last a lifetime! _Eugene snorts awake with an incredulous raise of one of his eyes, but Rapunzel wasn't backing down.

"What about?!" He then sighs a grumble, giving in to the inevitability and sitting up straighter in his slouched seat.

"Elsa, silly! Maybe he'll explain why they've broke up like this, now that he has a big brother to confide in. I tried before to get him to open up, but…it must be kinda hard for a guy to tell another girl. But since you're his brother…" Rapunzel whispers close to his ear, though Eugene also never found much curiosity in other people's unlucky romances.

"Oh, yeah. My new little brother…Now, _t**hat **_I could be _**fascinated**_ to discover the reason this fanciful prince wants to include me in his heraldic family tree." A sardonic Flynn Rider was far too world-weary in his 31 years of life under his fending for himself belt to accept offhand such an improbable bonanza of prominent wealthy familial ties.

Not that he wanted for it anymore, the former thief already counted himself lucky for striking it rich in his Rapunzel in every way imaginable…

With a pecked kiss on his lady-love's cutely puckered lips, the feeling revitalized (despite the slug still embedded in his upper arm) self-proclaimed agile 'master thief' steals his way through the front opening as deftly as possible, until the broad shouldered man just manages to lumber out onto the crowded driver's front bench.

"Hi there, Sideburns." Eugene begins his teased greeting with a smarmy smirk once he gets himself and his achy arm settled on the right side of his carriage seat.

"Oh, hello, Storbror. How is the arm?" Hans' viridescent green eyes unhappily tear themselves away from their entrancement of witnessing Queen Elsa let out and re-braid her mussed hair in the backseat of the sleigh in front of them after Olaf had clumsily gotten his branches stuck in her blonde tresses. The giddy snowman had been extolling the sucrose sweet Jordalsnuten mountain rising in the far eastern horizon for its "Sugarlump" nickname due to the snow-white 'powdered sugar' look atop its high altitude peak that he had been hounding poor driven to distraction Kristoff about for kilometers.

"Fine and peachy, Doc." Eugene shows off by manfully flexing his muscle, then biting the edgy pain back with a one-eyed smirk.

"So…_Storbror?_ That means 'Brother', right?" Eugene asks quite congenially striking up the conversation at his eavesdropping wife's prompting pinch as he glances back at Rapunzel, who was swinging her hands up and down in her own brand of sign language.

Pascal gives Eugene a droll look at the virtues of being hen-pecked from where the chameleon was seated on the man's shoulder at ear level.

_Sigh. What we men do for love…_

"Yes, '_Older_ Brother'." Hans answers succinctly the exact Danish translation as he maneuvers the unmatched pair of horses around a particularly treacherous stretch of rocky land between the parallel center country fjords, as Kristoff was leading Sven carefully the same way. Olaf had been sent flying through the air off the edge of the cliff but quick thinking Elsa yanked him back in just in the nick of time with a lassoed ice rope back to the safety of the sleigh before both men's astonished eyes.

"Even worse than apron strings. Your choice of poison is different than mine, Handsome…" Eugene mutters under his breath at the life-controlling wonder who was _woman_, as Rapunzel huffs at the inlaid insult to her gender as a whole.

"Anyways..." Uncomfortably shifting, Eugene gets back on track after his own bit of fluff pinches his saucy tush rather hard in punishment.

"Never had a brother before. Heck, this runaway orphan boy never had a family of any kind before the little missus shared hers with me. Great folks, Arianna and 'ole Fritz. A little clock cuckoo, but fine people to take in a no-good lout like me for a son." Eugene skates on thin ice for a while there, but he ends it with a fond humored smile thinking about his home for the past pretty amazing five years made with Rapunzel's sweet, yet bossy Mom and fun nut of a kooky Dad.

"They sound wonderful. You are a fortunate man to have found such a rare jewel as Princess Rapunzel, Storbror." Hans says with a sincere almost envious smile.

"Yeah. Don't I know it? Great gal in a _**pinch **_too." Eugene's sincere comment turns cheeky as his posterior was still smarting, though the gooey-eyed lamb gazing up at him adoringly in the back seat hardly looked capable of such rough-necking.

Until Rapunzel suddenly remembers what she sent her husband up there for to discover in the first place and motions for a threatening Pascal to give him a jab in the ear as a prodded warning of the tongue lash yet to come.

"What about you and your icy diamond? That should be a walk in the park with no fear of parental preference leaning one way or the other anymore. God rest their souls." The worldly thief just goes with the norm it was familial disapproval that must've busted up the pair's young romance in the past.

"King Agdar was indeed a Godly man and also one of the most respected Naval officers of his time. I only wish I was able to meet he and his wife, the Queen, before their dreadful accident at sea. Although, I do doubt, as 13th in line to my Father's throne, I would have been their top candidate to woo their eldest daughter, even if I was fortunate enough to make their acquaintance." Hans elucidates with a touch of sadness in his voice.

"So you never even met the folks…Hmmm…Hey! Did you just say '13th in line'?! That can't mean there's twelve more '_Storbrors' _back home, does it?! Whoa! Our Dad's been a busy fella. Wait! Thirteen…Are there any aged between you and me, Sideburns?" Eugene suddenly asks with a suspicious glint rising to his jaded eye.

"No, I am quite a few years junior to my other siblings. And in consideration that the time my Father's mistress was rumored to be with child came about at the time my Mother was said to be ill and bedridden, you and I would be the closest in age. Or so was transcribed in the letter I recently found amongst my Mother's papers, imploring her sons to seek you out. I, too, never met my mother, for she died in childbirth having me, her 13th unlucky boy." Hans relates his sad tale to Eugene seated beside him with a melancholy smile.

"Well look on the bright side, Kid. At least you're legit. That's gotta be better off than me. I'm actually the 13th unlucky _**bastard**_ of your Pops! So we're kinda even there in the jinxed realm—me moreso, I figure, and my sweet Princess who knows all about this hasn't disowned me yet. In fact, she's as pleased as punch to be having my baby. So what do you got to lose, you pure Blueblood?"

"It's not just that…How I wish it were just that…" Hans trails off, staring forlornly ahead with longing at Elsa who was innocently smiling through her anxious grief with Olaf's ever-entertaining help.

Eugene looks at the man's sad puppy-dog eyes upon her pining away with an unquenchable yearning, and he feels a foreign brotherly tug to try to aid his younger brother—_Whoa! Still gotta get used to the sound of that!_

"Hey, the past is in the past. Just tell her how you feel now—I've found it saves an awful lot of trouble in the end. And believe me, trouble's been my middle name most of my life." Eugene Fitzherbert may not have been an expert in the matters of love, but he's had his share of an unreal fairytale romance he didn't deserve enough to know when a poor blighter had it bad for a Lady Fair.

_And they don't come much fairer than that leggy Queenie. I guess we must be brothers, since we've both got a discerning eye for the finest of flowers of the feminine bouquet variety…_

"But it'll be the end of you, once she gets you roped and hitched to the post with those lovely long locks." He murmurs sarcastically under his breath, his own 'Lady Fair' knowing him well enough to sense his ironic smile as she jabs his stunning obliques with a snuck up hand through the Vis-à-vis' front opening.

But Hans, so absorbed in his own regretful thoughts, didn't hear the latter discouraging bit as his handsome mouth fixes into a sad smile.

"If only I could…" Hans emerald eyes shine as they trace every lovely line of the delicate young woman now seated primly coiffed in the back seat of the sleigh ahead. Elsa was just as beautiful and elegant and regal as if she were upon her royal throne, Hans fantasizing this, as the doleful smile never leaves his lips.

"So why don'cha? It's not as hard as it seems—trust me—I know. Been there. Done that." Eugene's expressive voice varies from quizzical to challenging to wise in the matter of a few seconds. He ends it with a placid, uninjured right arm that reaches back over and around his head for the hand of the girl he knew would be there almost instantly to squeeze it back with all her warmth of love.

"Because she is my Dulcinea." Hans' clear tenor speaks freely to the open air, though classically unfamiliar Eugene had absolutely no clue as to what or which or who the younger man was referring to.

"Huh?" The former thief asks, dumbfounded, as Pascal's long tail curls into a question mark on his shoulder, equally perplexed.

"Forgive me. It is a literary expression." Hans apologizes at being unintentionally too enigmatic and superior sounding to his audience. Eugene may have been scratching his jaw in total ignorance, Rapunzel knew her 'Don Quixote' sufficiently to recognize the well read young man's reference.

"—For a woman one is utterly devoted to and completely, hopelessly in love with. But that sentiment is to remain forever unrequited." Hans finishes his best expression of his first attraction, turned to deep feeling of respect, to now something even more…all with the depressing air of a defeated man.

"Come on, lil' Bror! You're selling yourself short! Sure, you're a bit foppish, but I don't see why you think in such extreme terms! Women are beautiful creatures, but they have been widely reported as being fickle enough to change their minds over a period of time. It looks to me like she's all for forgiving you now. I say, run with it while the getting's good! It's pretty obvious to anyone with eyeballs in their sockets that that little lady is head over heels—" In his quick talking, hundred words a minute way, Eugene starts to give his brotherly advice to the facts as he sees them, when Hans abruptly lifts a halting hand to stop him.

"Please. I do not wish to delve into the sordid details of my erroneous past concerning Queen Elsa and Princess Anna. But suffice it to say, for what I did…" At first fierce, Hans' uncharacteristically tense voice quiets into a small quiver. He shakes his head, as if to shake off the foul memory of his unforgivable deeds.

"For all I did wrong…It is impossible." Hans hangs his dismayed head, his every feature despondent and dejected as he folds up into himself mentally.

Eugene didn't need to be an empathy to know the discussion was closed on this matter—even for a brother, as the younger is heard to whisper just beneath the winds rushing over the fast moving sleigh:

"She could NEVER be mine…I ruined any chance of that long ago…"

"Okay, Kid. I'll…leave you alone now." Eugene relents that Hans wasn't ready to explain the inner workings of his broken heart.

"But one last jewel of wisdom from your new older brother, AKA former convicted to the death penalty criminal thief, AKA still confessing sinner who's done a bit of soul-searching in his dark days too:" Eugene preludes as he gets up to climb back into the rear compartment.

"Hope springs eternal in the human breast." Eugene quotes the one line that stuck in his head from Alexander Pope's stirring 18th century poem 'An Essay on Man,' based on the Biblical epistles of St. John, that he happened across one day leafing through that book of poetry he'd been given by his wife's mother last Christmas.

_You read it!_ Rapunzel smiles, with tears welling in her eyes for her Eugene appreciating her and her mother's efforts to subtly bring the message of God's Love into the orphan boy's starved for Faith's Anchor previous existence.

Rapunzel lands a smooch on his pleasantly surprised lips when he clambers back into the passenger car, Eugene just lapping all the extra attention up. He didn't have a clue what he did right, but he wasn't going to argue about it. How could he? His tongue was too busy at the moment.

Although equally enjoying her love's lavish kisses, Rapunzel was still confused by Hans' indecipherable statements as to the reasons why he and Elsa called it quits, for she had only seen this young man's striving to be righteous, fair and trustworthy side versus the dark, unseemly, grasping realm of avarice he blamed himself wholly for.

For all men have the capacity to sink to those rapacious levels if left unchecked by Biblical morals of principled goodness, just as the essay proved to vindicate the holy ways of God to fallen man.

And Hans Westergaard would certainly count himself among the fallen at that time of_ his_ darkest hour 2 years ago, where he lashed out against all that he knew was right in desperation to be Arendelle's champion when all his plans went wrong.

The evil plan of which was shaped by fear and doubt into the cruel plot to connive, deceive and claw his insipid way to a throne that would never righteously belong to him.

_It must be impossible…For she was the innocent angel of pure light who needed to escape the cold monster __**I **__had become…_

_Dear God, is there any hope left to spring Eternal for someone as undeserving as me?_

_Created half to rise, and half to fall;  
Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all;_  
-'An Essay on Man' – Epistle III

Perhaps the mortal man in self loathe did not realize the Hope he too was seeking had been waiting for him with open Arms all the while, patiently, as the poem his brother had referred him to before, plays in his well memorized head in turns.

Hans breathes in the fresh summer breeze and feels the glow of sunlight's warmth on his face as he mindlessly drives Iriserende and Guddy behind Kristoff's sleigh with Sven.

There, a certain young woman still glitters like a sparkling snowflake twirling down from Heaven to bedazzle his eyes with an inner radiance that was as untouchable as pure white snow cascading over his entire gloomy grey world…

_Meanwhile opinion gilds with varying rays  
Those painted clouds that beautify our days;_

_See! and confess, one comfort still must rise,  
'Tis this, though man's a fool, yet God is wise._

-'An Essay on Man' – Epistle II

* * *

The kilometers roll by quickly for the two rested horse and reindeer teams. By the time it was noon, the sleighs had already traversed from Namsos' valleys to the areas of Skogmo and Vasbotna, along the Vetterhusbotn River.

At the Sktoyvstadvatnat Lake running along the base of the similarly named fjellet, the two vehicles board a simple wooden slab ferry. It was designed for large livestock and cart passengers of all types and sizes for the twenty meter crossing in this rural neck of the largely unpopulated woods of the Trondelag county, where stunning mountain vistas and beautiful waterfall scenes were plentiful.

A few more kilometers of travel beyond the lake, and the group soon enter the municipality of Naeroy's port village of Salsbrucket. The quaint water town was situated at the end of the Oplofjord when it meets the mouth of the river Opployelva.

But it was what was stationed in the western side of the village in the Langnes Harbor that captures all the travelers' attentions.

There, in all her bowsprit, topsail and tall yard-arm glory, stood a 2-masted fore and aft triangular main-sailed Bermuda rigged schooner.

"There she blows!" Eugene lets out a loud bellow from the sleigh over the open port with cupped hands to enhance the sound in a mocking old sea-dog voice, to which Rapunzel gives his naughty mouth a stifling clamp over, as if her fully grown husband was no better than a mischievous child.

"Just as you projected, Prince Hans." Queen Elsa calmly states as the pair of sleighs pull into the dock wharf where a pier's raised walkway leads adjacent to where the mid-sized schooner was anchored offshore in the coastal natural port.

"Accompanied by a hopeful prayer, Your Majesty." Hans, quite formally again, responds with his head held shamefully down from making eye contact with her after the ride's introspective conversation with his brother.

Although, the gentleman in him can't help but still rush to help the Queen alight from the Ice Harvester sleigh where Kristoff was tethering first Sven, then Hans' Vis-à-vis to a weathered post on the wharf after the redheaded man had abandoned it to Eugene's questionable care of equines.

Rolling his eyes to the heavens after a quick assessment of the layout, Kristoff then swiftly clomps across the wharf's wooden plank deck until it leads him to the designated harbormaster's small office building.

The 'Harbormaster' was the county's Naval official representative, responsible for enforcing the regulations of this particular harbor of Salsbrucket. He also was in charge of ensuring the safety of navigation and security of the harbor and correct operation of the port facilities, all of which required a steady reliable hand in leadership.

"You stay here on the sleigh with Sven, Olaf." With a warning eye and pointing finger, Elsa informs her eager snowfriend, who was bouncing up and down to jump down from the sleigh he's been captive of for hours.

"But I want to see the Harbormaster, too…" Olaf whines like a child at being left out, as he pokes his opposable 'thumbs' together as he peeks over the sleigh's edge.

"Midshipman Olaf? The Queen's order is law in the Navy." With a raised brow and quietly commanding voice, Prince Hans knew how to charm this simple snowman into instant obedience.

"Aye-aye, Sir!" Olaf salutes both his 'Admirals' and settles back onto the rear seat, whistling a sailor's tune beneath his flurry as Sven looks back to chuckle at him.

"Thank you. You're very good at managing Olaf. He respects you." Elsa softly comments as she re-attaches her arm to Hans' offered one to walk along the rickety wooden planks of the pier.

"I can't imagine why." Hans softly responds, his mood still rather low after silent review of his past inequities all morn.

"Well, I can." Elsa says soberly as Hans finally looks up to meet her eyes with an unspoken mouthed 'thank you' passing between them as they stroll the deck.

"Do you have the horses, Storbror?" Hans asks Eugene as the pair pass by where the man, after scruffing Guddy's mop of hair back over his complacent face, was beginning to carefully approach the skittish pony, but for her, armed with gifts.

"Oh yeah! Who da man?! Got this filly eating right out of the palm of my hand." Mastering the art of handfuls of sugar cubes to feed Iriserende's sweet tooth, Eugene triumphantly pats himself on the back, he and high-strung horses previous to now not too 'simpatico.' "Wouldn't 'ole Maximus love to meet you and your soft lips on a dark night, sweetie?" He murmurs under his breath to the lovely Fresian mare.

"That goes for you too, Handsome." The teasing man insinuatingly gives the pair arm in arm a look that told volumes as he calls after them down the wharf.

Hans merely shakes his now crimson-eared smiled head as he opens the door for her to enter the cramped port representative's office.

* * *

"WHAT do you mean there's NO CREW for the 'Gler'?! WHAT kind of TWO-BIT backwater outfit are you running here?!"

Neither Elsa, nor Hans expected to enter the Salsbrucket Port Authority's Office to hear soft-spoken Kristoff's normally low-key voice be anything but. The 6'5" tall blonde, who barely fit in the low ceiling-ed building, was bending threateningly over the scrawny, timorous administrator practically pinned up against the back map wall's corner cowering.

"Please sir! I must take great exception to your tone, concerning the productivity and efficiency of this port. Though it is in the Northern regions of this great land of ours, out of the way of most Naval traffic, we here still see to many important shipboard refittings that are essential in putting the final touches on the Navy's newly constructed fleet." He retorts huffily in great detail. "

"Our Salsbrucket Sawmill is one of the most respected viable, functional establishments, widely known for the honed wood-working skills of the hardworking carpenters in proud, gainful employment under direct order of Her Norwegian Majesty's service." The pointy chinned mouse-like pencil-pusher transforms into a fierce lion when his official duties in his beloved monarch's name was being questioned.

The Harbormaster stands as tall as his 5'5" diminutive height could muster before the towering Kristoff, who was undeterred and still glowering down at him just as equally.

_The art is all in how you present your case…_

"It is excellent to hear such a rousing show of utilitarian patriotism contributed in loyal upstanding Naval service to your sovereign Queen, Harbor Master." Prince Hans was no slouch in the 'art' of the con, like his brother, as he swoops in to commend the ruffled feathers of the be-spectacled smallish middle-aged man with a few well-placed sympathized compliments.

"Ah, yes. We strive to insure that each and every ship that sails into the Salsbrucket Harbor upholds the highest standards of Naval regulations in due honor of our beautiful, exalted Queen." The Harbormaster, after pushing aside the flipped open section of the map Kristoff was hounding him about, snobbishly motions over his shoulder.

There, above the extensive oceanic maps of the fjords of this area that led into estuaries that would soon meld into the Norwegian Sea, a precious painting was carefully hung in all its gold-gilt framed glory not befitting this tiny, cramped and dowdy seaport structure that reeked of fisk.

And not just any picture.

"Why, thank you for your inspiring words and dutiful running of this extremely vital port. My country thanks you for your tireless years of service, Harbor Master—I am sorry, what was your name?" But when the tall blonde woman steps from behind polished smooth-talker Westergaard, the uppity government worker has to do a double take.

His beady eyes dart from beneath his thick rimmed glasses between his most favored portrait of his beloved sovereign and the real-life creature of royal elegant deportment actually standing before him in his little water closet of an office.

He stares for a full minute dumbfounded at Elsa before taking on and off his specs to rub them on his fluted tie to be certain his eyes weren't deceiving him—that he was literally standing in the presence of royalty.

He then drops to his spindly knees in head-bowed utter respect for his revered leader.

"Your Majesty. You awe your servant Alfen to deem my humble harbor worthy of a state visit of your gracious self. May I say? I am honored to be in your presence, Queen Elsa."

The nearly prostrate in subjugation man couldn't even raise his head, he was that enthralled at meeting his adored royal.

"Mr. Alfen, please sir, you may stand. We wish to speak to you on an urgent matter concerning a vessel under your command." Elsa touches the harbor official's shoulder, sending him to seventh heaven at her gentle welcoming touch.

"Of course, Your Majesty! Simply utter the word and it will be expressly seen to in your honor!" The overzealous man looks up finally with her permission, a great big grin on his face in awestruck enthusiasm.

"Thank you, sir. As this man, my royal representative, was instructing you—" Elsa gives an abashed Kristoff, who was rubbing his neck, a tad shamed by his rash behavior earlier, a smile. "Please, call in the crew right away. We require immediate passage upon that Naval schooner Gler stationed in your harbor to take us to the Mosken Island in the Lofoten archipelago." Elsa states with all the regal dignity, grace, and manners her 'Pappa' taught her to address her nation's adoring servants. She fully believed her royal command would clear up any confusion of red-tape restrictions the man was conveying to Kristoff earlier.

"Except that." But Harbor Master Alfen's pinched face sinks in monotone when he must deny his beloved Queen's first official supplication under his nautical jurisdiction.

"Why not?" Taken aback by his refusal, Elsa asks in surprise at having her Queenly imposed authority questioned.

"Your Majesty. The HnoMS Gler has come to dock here in Salsbrucket port for several months for the final construction of the interior of the cabins and some detail woodwork on the bridge, not to mention the deck flooring of the birch, mahogany and cedar ramps that our skilled carpenters at the Sawmill specialize in for Naval use." The Harbor Master begins to explain.

"Well, we won't mind traveling with a few detail work construction projects half done. Please assemble the crew as soon as possible." Elsa gives her most winning smile, reassuringly dismissive of any minor tasks let unattended on their ship that seemed to be troubling the nervous little man.

"But Your Majesty! It's not only that!" Alfen anxiously waits for his exalted Queen to finish before interjecting.

"See? The little creep's a brick wall! Let me deal with him proper to get some proper cooperation." Kristoff seethes, his impatient anger starting to get the better of him again as he stomps forward to intimidate on purpose the minute man.

"Kristoff! Please calm down! We must give due respect to the Harbor Master. I'm sure we can work this out, in a more sedate manner." Elsa berates the big man like the irate little brother Kristoff was acting like.

_GULP _"I am sorry to have to inform you that the Gler has been scheduled to be docked here in this port for three months and the crew has either been reassigned or granted shore leave in the interim." Alfen sheepishly admits under Kristoff's growling glare.

_GULP "_So there is no crew here in Salsbrucket for me to assemble. No Captain. The Gler cannot legally leave this port without official consent from the Admiralty, if there is no Kommander representing them." The by-the-book official knew all the ins and outs of the Naval rulebook that he read as bedtime stories since he was a boy.

But those rules couldn't help him from shrinking behind his desk piled high with fresh paperwork of the day, in cowering refuge from the large blonde man who appeared angrier with every Naval rulebook stipulation he'd addressed…

"**WHAT!? I AM THE ADMIRALTY! IF I SAY THIS SHIP MUST SET SAIL, THIS SHIP WILL SET SAIL! DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?! ASSEMBLE A SKELETON CREW, NOW! MY SISTER'S LIFE IS IN DANGER!**…"

But it was the other blonde in the room that Harbormaster Alfen should have feared. Queen Elsa virtually explodes as she outdoes Kristoff one in venting anger sufficiently well as she shrilly shouts the order at poor Alfen, shivering with cold in his tiny office behind his desk, where a strange gust of cold wind blows all the neatly stacked papers spinning through the air all about his frightened head.

"But…there…are no…officers around here. I'm so, so sorry. This is merely a ship building yard, with no naval officers based here to take the helm of that modern steamship's responsibility. Nor any I know of visiting in the near vicinity, Your Majesty. They've all been called in to the launch of the HnoMS Nidaros warship in the south, at the main naval shipyard of Bergin. I can't apologize enough for not being able to accommodate you better. I am so, so very sorry…"

The before blustery little man with the big bossy chip on his shoulder is reduced to a sniveling sycophant, almost on the verge of nervous tears as Alfen whimpers before his angry Queen, with a frustrated to get going Kristoff ready and willing to pound the uncooperative harbormaster into submission right behind the fuming woman.

Good thing there was a yet a cool head (with a warm, stabilizing hand) waiting in the wings for his chance to speak.

Hans had been deliberating over his next words carefully, as he walks over to place a calming hand on Elsa's icy shoulder, the Queen's arms wrapped around herself, trying to regain control from her anger lashed out fear and Hans' hand was helping her at that task amazingly well.

Prince Hans then takes a sure step forward to gaze down and address the port official cowering behind his desk.

"Is the Gler seaworthy, sir?" Hans, who had remained subdued all whilst Elsa and Kristoff had vented their anger at the by-the-book man, asks quietly and sanely, his query.

"Beyond a full refueling of fresh coal for the steamship that will take most of the night—Yes, the HnoMS Gler would be ready to launch at the dawn if I get my men to work overtime through the night. So, indeed, it is _technically_ possible, because I can order the men to even stay onboard to keep the boilers pumping on the steamship in place of the normal crew of stationary engineers below decks." Alfen starts to come around to Hans' persuasion. Being as open-minded as he could to the extraordinary idea presented, the bureaucrat was just about to give in to all but one final detail that the safety inspector **could not** forego for anything.

"But she still would have no Captain/ Kommander to run the ship's new modern navigation on the bridge. That would require an experienced, calm, collected leader's steady hand at the proverbial wheel with suitable nautical knowledge if your intended target is the perilous Moskenstraumen area of the North Sea…" The Harbormaster was doing his best to appease his Queen and be as accommodating as humanly possible, but there were restrictions of safety he had foresworn to uphold before allowing a single vessel under his purview to leave his port helter-skelter.

"But we do. We do have a lifelong experienced on the ocean, Academy graduate and extremely competent Naval officer, whom I have implicit faith in his dependability to command a ship of my Navy." Her inner calm found again within Prince Hans' level center, Elsa turns from the diminutive Alfen to look up at the tall, thin man whose hand was still lightly resting supportive against her no longer frozen cold shoulder, just as he had been there for her nearly this entire whirlwind adventure thus far.

_Yes, I do truly believe that the Lord has changed your heart back for the good it was meant to be had circumstances not led you astray._

_My Rock in whom I trust…_Elsa fluidly moves across the small office with a purpose. For just above the framed portrait of herself, a long steel Norwegian Navy sword was hung in its beautifully detailed leather scabbard on display. She uses a bit of her ice magic to easily unhook and frosted air levitate the exhibited officer's sword from its place on the wall, until its gilt brass Phyrian helmet decorated pommel hilt and gold gilt wrapped ivory grip was firmly held in her ladylike fingers.

_Elsa, no…Not me… _Hans mouths, shaking his irresolute head at the great trust she was about to freely bestow upon him, and intelligent enough to see the way the wind was blowing, yet still repentant enough to count himself unworthy of it.

The Queen of Norway strides back to where the open mouthed young man was standing, stunned and stupefied into submission by her implausibly incredible trust in the man who had held an elaborate embellished blade such as that once over her tender innocent neck menacingly.

"Please kneel, sir." Elsa orders in the serious calm voice of a nation's ruler as she now wields the blade over his vulnerable neck, but with a far different outcome in mind.

"Lieutenant Hans Westergaard, formerly of the Royal Danish Navy, Sovaernet, I hereby appoint you as Kommander of this vessel, the HnoMS Gler, as chief commander of this special Naval rescue operation to save Princess Anna and bring her home to safety, under loyal service to Queen and country, in the name of Norway, under God." Touching lightly the sword's blade tip to his right then left shoulder, Elsa repeats as much of the traditional language of the official swearing in she had watched her Father preside over many times in the past, though Prince Hans would be her first…

"Please provide the documentation to be signed in your presence, Harbor Master Alfen." The bureaucrat is sent scurrying for the proper papers for them both to sign to make it official.

Elsa somehow wanted this to be as official as possible, perhaps subconsciously to give this disowned royal son who had pride in his Naval service, a place in this world to hold his head high again…

Her cyan blue eyes lock with his emerald green ones with utmost trust in his proven abilities.

As for Hans, he was rendered totally speechless for once, as he witnesses, with stunned eyes, how the harbormaster puts his finger right on the correct form amidst the piles of messed papers skewed about the floor of his office, to wordlessly fill it out and pass it and a dipped ink pen to his still adored Queen as he finally bows to her brilliant solution and magnanimous judgment..

Elsa looks to share a nod with Kristoff as she takes the ink pen and inscripts her signature with a lofty flourish. She then re-sheathes the sword and turns to hand it and the helm of the ship symbolically over to Prince Hans.

Shaking himself awake from the sheer awe of Queen Elsa of Arendelle's forgiving generosity and trust in his skills, Hans gently pulls Elsa to the side of the small room.

"Queen Elsa, I cannot accept this." He quietly protests with pure shock evident on his innocent wide eyed features, gazing at the beautifully designed hilt of the sword snug within decorated tasseled scabbard she had placed in his hands.

"Are you refusing your services in Norway's time of need, Sir?" Elsa asks the baited question with one raised purple eye-shadowed brow as a challenge.

"No! No…Of course, you know I'd only be…delighted…to aid you in your search for Princess Anna, in any way I can, however—" He says in low flustered tones as his reddened cheeks trip over their words.

"'The Queen's order is law in the Navy'." Elsa flaunts his own words from just a few minutes ago to Olaf back at Hans, with a smirking lift to her lips at the irony.

"It is decided. Kommander Hans Westergaard of my _Sjoforsvaret_, Prince of the Southern Isles, you are officially drafted to serve in my nation's Naval forces, under my direct command alone, as ship's Captain of the Naval steam powered schooner, the HnoMS Gler." Cutting Han's reticent sentence off, Elsa almost pompously declares her sovereignty over him as she returns to the desk and finishes signing the remainder of the official papers that would make Prince Hans now part of her kingdom's Naval defense forces.

Elsa then hands Hans the dipped pen with a hopeful look in her exotically lustrous eyes gleaming up her confidence in him to guide their steam-powered craft to the North Islands for Anna's sake.

And Hans could never deny those sumptuous eyes a single thing again. Their fingers gingerly touch one another's as the pen passes between their hands, and the Danish Prince adds his distinguished signature to the official looking form that would enlist him as a commissioned officer into the Norwegian Royal Navy, as stoic Kristoff looks out the window to the steamship awaiting to carry them all to their fate beyond the dock…

_Kommander Hans Westergaard, Sjoforsvaret...How is this much magnanimity possible to be granted to a sinner such as I? And why by the benevolent angel, this unworthy man wronged most in this world, am I over and over blessed?_

"I will have your ship ready by dawn's light. May God go with you on your first mission, Kommander Westergaard. That sword gaining dust always longed for a fine Navy man to own it. It suits you well." Harbor Master Alfen offers with a saluted hand to his brow to first the newly appointed dashing young Captain, and then the gloriously exquisite Queen of the realm looking on behind him. Who, in her wisdom, had specifically chosen his destiny to serve her, with a purpose and an unfinished essay on the man yet unwritten…

_Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise: My footstool earth, my canopy the skies.  
Know, then, thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man.  
_-An Essay on Man, Epistle I &amp; II

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*_Storbror_\- big brother in Danish

*_Sovaernet- _Royal Danish Navy in Danish

*_Sjoforsvaret – _Royal Norwegian Navy in Norwegian

*_Kommander - _Captain of a sea vessel in Norwegian

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Thanks for reading this Easter vacation written installment! Hope your Easter was a blessing! ^_^

Whew! _Queen_ Elsa &amp; _Kommander_ Hans ^o^ are on the move in their budding romance!  
And there's more excitement to come for them in the next chapter's heart-palpitating developments!

If you have a moment, please drop us a line with your review on this week's chapter!

Olaf loves you! ^_^

God bless! ~HarukaKou


	29. Chapter 28- For the Honor of the Queen

_Greetings, Frozen friends!_

_And the Eupunzel portrait that my talented sister illustrated for me and this section of Eugene and Rapunzel's romance in the story takes place here at the start. _

_If you want to see the larger version of this gorgeous portrait that is both story scene and picture perfect, search the submission of SetsunaKou on DeviantArt ! You'll see her lovely Eupunzel as featured in this chapter of 'Frozen Again' there at full resolution!_

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**:**

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We do not own "Frozen" nor any of its characters.

**"Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act II**

**Chapter 28**

**"For the Honor of the Queen"**

"I hope the food here is at least decent. Taverns aren't exactly known for their fine haute cuisine." Flynn Rider says under his breath to his wife in his inimitable style. Rapunzel slaps his arm in punishment for his loud-mouthed rudeness as the couple follow Elsa and Hans into the hostel.

"Ouchy! Try the face next time. Everything else hurts! Okay, maybe not the face. What **did **you do to my delightful stubble, Woman?!" The vainglorious man pauses before the pride of the establishment's frosted glass mirror over the bar to inspect his deducted facial hair as they walk by the tavern side entrance of the hostel that the harbormaster had recommended the group stay for the night until the ship was ready on the morn.

"Sorry…!" Rapunzel apologizes to her handsome husband whose trademark smirk reappears at the thought of a real, actual bed awaiting his aching bones—and hers beside him, in the near future.

"No more 'sorries' for me, Darlin'-ever again. You just keep that baby of ours happy in there." Eugene Fitzherbert may not have ever thought himself to be a sappy, sentimental kind of guy, but something about being presented with the fact that he was going to be a new father brought out the protector in him as he winks and gently pats her full tummy.

She giggles at his touch, still relieved her husband was alive and well enough to enjoy these glad tidings, thanks to 'doctor' Hans.

Flynn then lightens Rapunzel's load of carrying the parcels of new clothing and traveling supplies that she and Elsa had just been shopping for in that shop they passed, before these five people came to lodge here 'luxuriously'.

Though Kristoff had already come and gone. His responsible yet distraught, one-track mind was expeditiously getting everything done before boarding that ship as soon as it was ready at daybreak before he would rest in a fancy hostel. Logically capitulating to the greater speed of the modern seabound craft Elsa had conscripted than his sleigh over northern Norway's multiple waterways' travel, Kristoff's total focus now was to set sail on that blasted ocean to chase those wacko crazed scheming pirates' tails to catch up ASAP. And then, once he got his big hands around them, he'd beat those bandit jerks to a mushy pulp until the blonde muscleman had his stolen Anna back safe and sound, no matter what it takes, before the poor man went totally stone crazy, not knowing what was happening to his new wife.

The group gathered in the hostel lobby were also minus the snowman and chameleon that they had stashed inside Sven's sleigh in the covered barn with the horses, so as not to bring undue attention, with as many carrots and sugar-frosted pepperkake, krumkake and panekake sweet cakes and treats that the mercantile had on its shelves.

"Eugene! Your arm!" The small brunette worries for her love's freshly operated on injuries.

But he was a man after all, and 'be careful' wasn't in his vocabulary.

"I've got it, Blondie. I'm tougher than my pretty-boy good looks confute." The swaggering blackguard in him was every bit as lovable as on that magical night they had first fallen in love under the magic lanterns.

Rapunzel smiles despite her woozy tummy attack as Eugene gives her a wink and a smirk, keeping his sucked-in-air pain under wraps.

"That arm will never heal properly if you persist in stressing it. Allow me, Storbror."

_Speaking of pretty boys…_

Eugene smirks as Prince Hans adds their parcels to his already overloaded arms after finishing settling the arrangements for the last three available upstairs rooms in the hostel, with an incognito Elsa hiding behind her new large hat at the front desk.

Now that his arms were deliciously free, Eugene immediately wraps his still partly functional appendages from the back around Rapunzel to massage her full with child -_his_ _child_, no less- queasy stomach.

And all the uncertainty and morning sickness effects are washed away in the tender rocking waves of her love's embrace, that she and he had missed out on for these past contentious months of doubt in his secretive wandering questionable fidelity.

The reconciled married couple pause in this endless moment to gaze up the stairs where Hans was carting up their multiple luggage and newly purchased bags of necessities and clothing supplies.

"Now, that's what little brothers are good for! Picking up the bags. And the tab, if need be. Who knew?" Eugene instills a giggle in his pregnant sickly wife, she happily caressing his tickling, fondling fingers at her Scandinavian dressed lover torso.

With a final companionable chuckle at his comedic words that always put a smile on her face, they climb the stairs in a trudge behind Hans taking the lead. With Rapunzel hanging adoringly on his arm, Eugene didn't mind so much the idea of having a little brother to pick up stuff and carry the bags, and generally kick around. It was actually starting to grow on the lazy bum of a daydreamer, instead.

_As long as he stays out of the bedroom tonight…_

Eugene gives the redheaded man an inhospitable glance after Hans carefully arranges their batch of parcels on the bed and desk of the inn's upstairs bedroom that was acquired for the married couple.

"We'll be departing early at 5 AM, sunrise, to board the ship. Please try to rest at an early hour after supper, at, shall we say, 1800 hours?" The ever polite gentleman of the Naval forces smiles at Rapunzel, though to her the mere thought of food intake was distressing, as she plunks on the bed quite wretchedly.

"Yeah, we'll do that, Handsome. Or should I be calling you 'Kommander?' Some guys get all the luck." Eugene teases with an insinuating raised eyebrow. "I wonder what services you _rendered_ to get that little title from our frosty ice queen." He continues to murmur under his breath, so as not to be heard.

Hans gives him a strange look, sensing something inappropriate said, though not quite able to make out the last part of his big brother's rude comment.

"Now, scat! The little lady's not in any condition for company—other than me, that is."

"Understood. My best wishes on your speedy recovery, dear Lady." Hans heeds Eugene's dismissive hand, and swiftly gives Rapunzel a sympathetic smiling bow before exiting the room.

He stops to deposit the remainder of his and Kristoff's clothing satchels in the accommodations they would be sharing, and Elsa's designated parcels in the room situated between the other two.

In this seaport town, where many rough men would likely gather, Hans would have preferred the solitary female not to be left in a room alone, but with Princess Rapunzel in a sickly state and just reunited with the comfort of her husband, and neither Kristoff nor himself a suitable roommate for propriety's sake, Norway's sovereign had assured him that she would be quite safe on her own. After all, the others would be just next door.

But growing up on the sea as a young man, Hans saw enough ill-mannered debauchery amongst men, particularly against the opposite sex, to keep a warning light aglow in his mind.

With that unpleasant sentiment in his head, Hans hastily trots down the stairs. He was aware that Kristoff may be awhile seeing to the proper stabling welfare of the pair of horses they were leaving here, again on recommendation of Mr. Alfen. The official seemed to have a finger on the pulse of this entire dock port town as he gave Kristoff a letter to authorize the storage and care-taking of Iriserende and Guddy, as well as the Vis-à-vis coach sleigh, until they returned to the mainland.

"Elsa?" The disquieted eyed redhead glances quickly around the hostel's lobby where he had left the incognito queen with the innkeeper minutes ago, only to see the large bodied hostel owner berating some impertinent young delivery boys for their tardiness instead.

Considering to himself that he would have seen Elsa had she gone to the second floor, Hans rather rudely interrupts the trading old man to ask his urgent question.

"Excuse me, sir, the lady who was with me is…where?" He asks as calmly as possible, but his heart was strangely pounding.

"Hmm? That blonde young woman in the fancy hat? I couldn't tell ye, sir. She was here one minute, then gone the next. Now, get back to work before I set yer mother on ye, ye roustabout scalawags I have for children!" Obviously a seaman once upon a time himself, the big and tall, portly hostel owner all but brushes Hans off as he yells at the pair of small boys ferociously.

But the youngest, similarly redheaded youth pauses in his scurrying to the barn to tug at the end of Hans' grey cloak.

"Sir, I saw the pretty lady go in there with some of those mean men a few minutes ago." The little lad whispers in Hans' kneeled to his level ear.

"Thank you, young friend, you have the makings of a gentleman." Hans hurriedly whispers back, mussing the grinning, pleased boy's already askew bangs in anxious perturbation as he rushes away, following the young lad's leading point.

As he enters the dining room area, Hans was gratified to see Elsa seated at the table, quite alone, trying to read some type of hand-inscribed map.

"Quee—I believe I should call you just 'Elsa' around here, if that's amenable to you, that is." Sitting down opposite her, Hans asks in a soft voice as he glances around the strangely overcrowded dining room, though it was neither dinner nor supper time yet.

"As long as you never call me 'Elsie,' again, I'll be happy with anything." Elsa smiles in a murmured tease, quite satisfied with herself for engaging some of the men waiting in the lobby with a few inquisitive questions as to the layout of the Mosken peninsula that several of weathered seaman seemed acquainted with.

The queen had been agonizing over her beloved little sister Anna's kidnapping all morning. If any chance presented itself as to exploring the remote island location to familiarize herself with those pirates' intended point of travel, her big sister Elsa was more than motivated to be enthused.

"There aren't many 'anythings' equal to describe you, but I will endeavor to try, in the future." Hans, in his concerned relief at locating her unharmed, finds his charming wit close at hand, able to speak on its own, even as his suspicious eyes continue to gaze around the room full of ragtag sailors or rough sawmill workers, either seated or rummaging about the area.

And he was fairly sure every one of them was eyeing the pair of them.

_Why did I leave my sword in the room?_

"What is it that you are poring over, may I ask, Que—Elsa." Hans corrects his own polite address as he mentally counts the number of burly men to five, in all shapes, sizes, ages—and nationalities—gathered in the small room.

_I can take four with my dagger…_

The confident swordsman pats the side of his lower thigh boot where a new and sharper trusty blade was always at the ready.

"This is a hand drawn map of the remote, off limits Mosken Island between Nordland and the Lofoten archipelago! It shows many hidden coves where seamen may dock and **_pirates_** have been rumored to obscure their treasure…here…or…over here where the skull and crossbones are markers. Though, to me, it appears just the rock face side of a mountain on this map those kind men allowed me to borrow." Elsa innocently nods her head in pleasantries to the pair of big bearded Englishmen glaring furtively at Hans.

"Yes, very kind of them." Hans answers her, though his alarmed tactical mind was already considering his best options.

"I believe this section on the western side could be of great interest to us." An enthusiastic for clues Elsa is surprised when Hans abruptly stands in the middle of her sentence and cuts her off by startlingly saying:

"Would you care for a drink, Elsa?"

_Make that six…_

"Oh, yes, a freshly brewed tea or coffee would do very nicel…" In her prim, regal way, looking quite fetching in her new fashionable pale blue lace hat, folded over to stylishly conceal half her face, Elsa calmly folds the map so as not to soil its already pretty filthy, dog-eared edges to clear the table for their pre-meal refreshment.

"I mean, a drink in the tavern…Darling. Shall we?" Hans suddenly claims Elsa's shocked, pale hand after relieving it of the folded map. With a pasted smile well disguising his worried features, Hans leads the lady by the hand from the room, as if it were perfectly natural for the pair to be so familiar.

…_Darling?_

Pausing by the center dining room table, Hans hands the map over to one of the pair of swarthy, big men seated there, staring at him.

"Thank you for the use of your map, kind sirs. My wife has always been curious about the mysterious seas to the north that she never will visit." Hans was as convincing a fibber as he was smooth on his feet, while he ushers a flabbergasted Elsa from the room.

…_His wife…!?_

The Queen of Arendelle's mind whirs at his staggering choice of title for her. Hans bodily presses her towards the tavern opposing the dining room.

"Two crème de Cassis, please." A suave Hans loudly orders when he and a stunned Elsa arrive at the bar, enough to be heard from the lobby where several of the men from the dining room had disturbingly wandered into.

The silently nodding barkeep, who had been polishing his glasses, doesn't blink as he goes to retrieve the ingredients for the high-class fare of a sweet black currant French monk-inspired liquor cocktail.

A shocked Elsa from beneath her wide brimmed Victorian millinery stares at Hans, astounded at his strange actions and even stranger words. She wisely keeps silent but looks at him quizzically, though Hans' observant eyes were careful to be glancing at the men milling about. The tensed Naval officer was sure they were listening to every word.

"Sit, Elsa…please." He adds genially, and she acquiesces, thoroughly confused. She watches the pensive man sit silently beside her at the bar for several minutes, keeping an eye out as the men in the dining room and lobby leave the hostel front door, one or two at a time, without even looking at them, until only three remained in the dining room to genuinely eat an early meal.

"Edgy…" A tensed Hans whispers aloud, softly to himself.

"Prince Hans?" Elsa softly asks in concern for his unsettling behavior.

"It's nothing…Queen Elsa…I must be imagining shadows that don't exist. Please don't trouble yourself with the dark anxiety of a tortured man's apprehension." He chuckles at his own, now thankfully over thought nervousness. "I always did have the tendency to severely explicate matters too much, according to the few older brothers who didn't constantly pretend I was invisible."

_I can't imagine what has my sixth sense so…on edge tonight. _Hans thinks to himself on the side, just then noticing Elsa's voluminous blue eyes in study upon him.

"Oh, and do forgive my presumptive…my _extremely_ presumptive…name…concerning you…Your Majesty." Hans glances to and fro before properly addressing the by now perplexed queen. "I was only trying to talk my way…through…a thankfully fanciful episode. I hope this lapse of perception doesn't lessen your faith in my nautical abilities to captain a schooner for you tomorrow, but I …" Hans trails off, shaking an apologetic head as he supposedly swallows a gulp of the said to be calming and heart-fortifying black currant liquor.

Absentmindedly adjusting the imported French chapeau on her head, a wide-eyed Elsa follows suit with her own glass in embarrassment.

Was it the unconscious quick sip or three of the crème de Cassis she had imbibed during the tense vigilant watch of those men exiting the dining room entrance? Or was it something more adorable about the way the normally composed and rational young man could stammer over his words when under the glaring spotlight of her gaze.

Either way, Elsa was amused enough to let a small giggle escape her parted glossy lips.

"I still prefer it to 'Elsie' any day." With a strange levity in her demeanor, Elsa lets that loose as well from her suddenly unchecked, giggling mouth until his shocked eyes make her completely sober again.

"—that is, perhaps I should retire to my room before supper." She says, with cheeks red and flushing, giving quite an attractive contrast to the one visible pale cheek beneath her summery chapeau.

"Ahem. Of course." Utterly perplexed and ashamed by this entire mortifying situation, Hans uncharacteristically clumsy, stands to his feet with his face as red as a beet, as he scrambles to help her from her barstool.

"Perhaps it is time I should be taking you upstairs, my Lady." He timidly offers her his hesitant arm to help her from the chair. Hans speaks in all innocence, though the gruff voice suddenly coming abruptly behind him was dripping with anything but.

"What's yer hurry, lad? Wouldn't we all like a go at this curvy bawdy basket of a doxy first?" The man's large fingers extend across the bar where the barkeep had mysteriously disappeared from, to try to touch Elsa's errant strand of hair, but she backs away.

The British accented, big thug from the dining room had sneaked into the tavern to lean against the bar's interior, across from where Elsa was still seated at.

He had come in this section of the hostel by the back service entrance that vigilant eyed Hans had been unaware of. His equally erstwhile dark bearded bruiser of a twin appears on the other side of the bar, chewing maniacally on a cracked walnut between his teeth beside a tense Elsa.

"We can show this lovely lass what a real man is like, better than this Job's turkey of a cock-robin toff." He says in the colorful rough sailor terms considered manly slang of the day, ending with a fiendish smile at the confronted young queen as he crudely spits out the nutshells on the counter directly in front of Hans.

"How dare you, Sirs! This is a lady you are addressing! And I will thank you to conduct your deportment in her presence accordingly." Hans' indignant angry gaze challenges the ill-mannered brute as the slender bodied red-head places himself significantly between Elsa and the twin bruiser at her side.

"Ooh! Ooh! Fancy words from this fancy-man red dandy of a saucebox!" A thickly accented Hungarian roughneck, after catapulting himself over the bar, bellows tauntingly from somewhere in the saloon behind Hans.

The Naval officer's tactical mind is blown when another three men, obviously part of the same gang, emerge one by one from some secret entrance between the outbuilding wine cellar and the tavern.

"Come, dear." Hans turns from staring down the burly brown man he was standing toe to toe with to collect Elsa from her stool.

But she had already skittered away, shrinking back from the sneering close attentions of an unsavory strawberry blonde short stocky man who appeared younger and more eager than the rest, though every bit as rascally and tooth-missing filthy.

Flicking up her Parisian hat's wide brim to get a better look at her terrified face, the man with a spotty red complexion then clicks his tongue and whistles with fingers flexing at Elsa's unintentional displayed legginess as she nimbly hopped from the stool to avoid the first mocking man.

"Get back from her! Or I will be required to take drastic action against you." His own ired re up, Prince Hans actually growls right in the 'Irisher's' face, as he rapidly spins himself between Elsa and the man, defensively disgruntled.

Jealousy rears its triumphant head within Commander Westergaard's soul that the grimy scoffing creature even dared to lay his eyes—never mind his filthy hands—upon the beautiful pristinely white Queen.

"Hee, hee, hee! Listen to the Hobbadehoy, gents! He sounds ready and rearing for a jerrycummumble, though we's were just polite-like wantin' to sluice our gobs in celebration with this Gilly Gumpus and his new rib of a juicy Apple Dumpling Shop." After insulting Hans by the inferiority of his manliness reference and now calling the aggrieved man awkward, the seaman hailing from the Emerald Isles fixes his Irish eyes to smile upon Elsa's heaving well covered cleavage as if the red-faced man were mentally undressing her already in his dirty, fertile imagination. His tawdry avaricious look fixed on her chest that was rising and falling so acutely seemed to mesmerize him.

Feeling violated by just those beady dark eyes drinking her body in, Elsa hides herself behind Hans closely, and holds onto his strong shoulder for coverage and support.

"She is a fine figure of a doxy delle, isn't she, boys? From this end, too."

Though sheltered Elsa didn't understand half of his brogue dialect and all its slang vulgarities, she gathered enough from his greedy glances and the chortling with the other rough men beginning to gather about the pair of them to be frightened of his intent.

When the circulating around Irishman's bold hand has the audacity to quick pinch a cheek of her posterior, the Ice Queen was even more petrified that she was about to lose control of her restrained powers of ice…

"**Eeek!" **Elsa squeaks in horror at the man's audacity and shrinks further behind her prince.

But she wasn't the one to yield her cool, as a fiery incensed Prince of the Southern Isles who had been holding his sharp tongue, tosses all his well trained diplomacy to the winds of piqued anger's emotion.

"**HOW DARE YOU TOUCH HER!" **Commander Westergaard of the Royal Norwegian Navy roars in indignant rage, as he not only swivels on his heel in record speed to take another challenging step towards the menacingly grinning man who had dared touch **_his_** Elsa in such a fashion, but the classy gentleman amazes all by decking the sneering man with a bare-knuckled fisted unforgiving blow directly to the instantly dislocated jaw of the crude Irishman, who is knocked out cold to the ground.

_Wait…_**_my_**_ Elsa?!_

Perhaps it was the electioneering potion that rendered Hans' jealousy stirred stout heart bold and also made the Queensberry rules of fair play here moot in a barroom brawl.

For that is soon what this becomes, as Hans (who never imagined his cultured self to be reduced to a common fist-to-cuffs scrap) tugs a dazed Elsa behind his back, her long fingernails grasping his shoulder tight.

Even as the rest of the five scalawags left standing start to encircle them like a pack of wolves, Hans intimately whispers so close to her ear, Elsa could feel his hot breath's moisture.

"As soon as I clear the path, you race up to my brother's room as fast as your legs can take you. And stay there until I come for you." His susurrated voice in her ear was as pervasive as it was commanding.

"But Prince Hans! I can help!" Referring to her icy prowess used in close combat battles before, Elsa hisses back in his ear. She was so close as not to be heard by the closing in crowd that his soft sideburns brush against her cheek.

"No, your majesty! **I** will be the one to punish these ruffians for their impertinence towards you, my Queen. Just stay calm and don't concern yourself about me. If I can handle four, I certainly can handle five." The assertive young man, feeling his brash arrogant oats at the peak age of 25, ends his reassuring sentence with an equally reassured calculated series of combination punches that batter the incoming fighters away like swatted flies, one after the other.

"You can't take them all on by yourself!" Shaking her terrified head, Elsa whimpers in fear for Hans' solo defending her honor's gallantry versus almost half a dozen larger, burlier, vexed males before her protesting, yet bedazzled eyes.

"'_Straight is the gate and narrow is the way'_ that I'll never walk alone again." Hans flashes Elsa a brilliant smile accompanied by his Biblical reference. "Remember, deep breaths and inner calm at all times will give you strength when you're feeling overwhelmed." Hans bolsters himself as well as the young woman listening with these quick, yet heartfelt, truths. He tosses the statements to her over his already preparing for five diverse counterattack moves with a confidence she couldn't help her hazy mind from finding absolutely drop-dead attractive.

Elsa gasps to watch Cmdr. Westergaard's lean body feint to the left then the right between the thick-necked giant of a Swedish lummox's swinging fists and the twirled mustache Spaniard flicking a fencing sword in the air at him, as Hans ably defends them aside with his dagger, swiftly retrieved from his boot cuff in one fluid motion.

"Yes, she is worth fighting for, your _bella mujer extraordinaire_." A tan skinned Spaniard adds his flirtatious two cents to the fray as he and Hans begin to parry their unequal, razor-edged weapons.

"Tell me about it." Hans comments with a smile as he flips his dagger to use the hilt of it to bash the man's precious sword hand until the weapon held within it skitters across the floor, the Spaniard scurrying after it.

Then the tall slim redhead delivers a clenched fist's left jab to the stunned Hungarian's now sunken black eye. Hans shoves the dazed former circus performer at the lumbering towards him slow blonde giant Swede, crashing the lummox off-course with the stunned well flung sturdy body of the Hungarian as interference.

A straight right then commensurate swift left hook knocks back one of the tall twins with a bloodied nose, while the forceful competence of two solid power punches belied by his slender build, they did not at all expect from this 'dandy prat' of a weakling, sends another set of accomplished trained quick upper cuts with his right fist to push the other British brother into the bar and tumble back over the edge.

The two big angry Englishmen simultaneously shake themselves awake from Hans' one man band unpredicted hand to hand fighting skills to produce their own switch blades, stepping up the violence with two snaps of their weapons over their growls as they both rise to get back into the fight.

"Now! Elsa! Go!" Seeing only a brief window of opportunity, Hans was sweating and panting by all the intense physical exertion as he commands Elsa, not as a dangerous in her own right Ice Queen, but as a tender damsel in distress who needed his protection. Elsa immediately takes to her high heels to dash for the tavern's exit

Glancing back as she runs, Elsa's wide doe eyes take in how his right hand confidently plies his own dagger and wields the sharpened weapon like an expert bladesman before his avoiding adversaries. Backing up, Hans defends Elsa's escape route, as she pauses near the saloon entrance to catch her breath and one last look at him.

Over the steel of his dagger's blade, Elsa's fearful eyes meet Hans' fueled by jealousy, angry riled ones at his enemies. And though, behind his great anxiety, they were still gentle and kind in pleading with her to safely escape.

Elsa heeds his signal and sprints like a gazelle through the hostel's front lobby and up the steps at lightning pace.

Hans makes certain she would not be followed as he goes on the offensive, furiously slashing his dagger against two—no, three now—knife producing villains. He staves off most of their nasty blade attacks with agility and grace as flexible Hans' pure muscle frame manages to land several backwards knock back jabs with his ambidextrous southpaw to some of the ruffians attempting to sneak up and illegally jump him from behind.

But Hans prays most of all, not for himself, but for Elsa's security, even while the deadly infighting in the saloon ensues.

* * *

Ice vergles puff from her huffing lips as Elsa stumbles up the final few upstairs steps. She skates on her own path of created ice to launch across the hall to the room to the right side of hers. With a hard deliberate bang on the door announcing her arrival, the Queen doesn't wait for it to be opened before she barrels into the bedroom, crying out for 'Help!'

Her male/female relationship novice eyes are confronted by the sight of her cousins' marital bliss on their bed, as Rapunzel was massaging her lover's aching muscles and cramps in that healing way she reserved for him alone.

"Elsa?! What is it?!" The short-haired brunette wraps a sheet around herself wearing just her chemise before, clumsily removing from the bed with an unwelcome knee and foot kicked to unlucky Eugene's bare backside. She leaves him laying facedown atop their shared bed as the woman rushes to hug her trembling ice breath frosted cousin.

"Men in the tavern—I borrowed a map—They were rude to me—Half a dozen of them—They have knives—Prince Hans!—He told me to stay here!" Breathing heavily in her awesome fear of the fierce battle her ignorance of trust caused, Elsa spasmodically reveals the desperate struggle in bits and pieces.

Rapunzel holds her, rubbing her trembling cold arms with friction's warmth. For her empathic cousin knew Elsa was doing all she could not to have another emotional breakdown on top of the last—and perhaps freeze the entire building to solid ice in her unintended wake.

Elsa closes her eyes, seeing Anna's sunshiny smiling face and focusing on Hans' warm voice in her head.

'_Stay calm, Elsa. Deep breaths and inner calm will be your strength.'_

"Lock the door behind me and don't open it up for anyone save us three men. Got it?" Eugene was already up and back in his pants, tugging on a shirt as he leaves out the door before either female has a chance to respond.

Rapunzel then gives Elsa a quick kiss on the forehead before tripping across the room after him. Sheet wrapped around her, the young wife peeks out to spy her husband reemerge from the room two doors down, something fear-provoking in his hands.

"Eugene! She whispers urgently so he stops in his tracks to look at her.

"Don't get killed!" Taking a step out into the hall in her bare feet as her hastily applied sheet unravels about her lithe body quite fetchingly, Rapunzel boldly whispers the demand just as he was about to take to the staircase.

"What? Deprive the world of this good-looking mug? _And_ make you a single mom for our poor fatherless babe?" He jibes to lighten the fragile mood of his expecting sweetie.

"Besides, we didn't finish that song you were singing yet, Blondie." Flynn Rider's lothario eyes wander all over his little gal, who still could be made to blush at his rakish commentary, even after all these years together.

He flashes her one last toothy smirk as his massaging needs were put on hold by his annoying kid brother - again.

"Now, get back in there and bolt the door! I got me a lil' bro' to bail out!" All serious and responsible now, Eugene commands. Rapunzel still admires her former thief of a husband who proved to be so very selfless at times as she sighs dreamily and returns into the room where unexpected sights greet her eyes.

On the verge of mental breakdown just minutes ago, a less primly attired with loosened collar and unbuttoned down top shirt, Elsa was now acting a bit strangely, dancing around the room, and singing?

"Inner calm, deep breaths. Deep breaths, inner calm, Let the sunshine in!_" _Elsa spins on her well-turned heel, undone lacy French chapeau swinging about in her hand wildly as if she were performing a topsy-turvy Quadrille with an imaginary partner.

"Are you okay, Elsa?" With wide eyes up at the twirling young woman, Rapunzel pauses to ask with concern in her voice.

"I'm fine~~..." Elsa wiggles out the drunken words with a delirious smile.

"Elsa?" Her older cousin was worried now at her calm composed friend acting oddly, as she lightly touches the taller woman's shoulder, causing her dizzied pirouette to pause.

**"What?!"** Eyes flashing, cool Elsa uncharacteristically snaps testily in a flat line annoyed tone, to shock Rapunzel. But that silly smile again almost instantly replaces on her face the next moment, confounding her worried cousin.

_Well different people react differently to stressful situations,_ Rapunzel affords a kind stray thought on the subject before grabbing her back to musically humming tall cousin's delirious arm to stop the dizzying ceaseless energetic spinning around in happy circles, as if she were…

_Nah! Not prim and proper Queen Elsa of Arendelle!_

"Come on, Elsa! Eugene tossed my shoes somewhere in that direction…I think. Help me find them!" The brown bob haired female frantically shakes the blonde who, with a dazed giggle, drops to her knees in undignified search for the missing footwear that walked away, coming up with her skirt under the bed instead.

"Oh, good, I need that, too!" Rapunzel, after swiftly shimmying back into the rest of her scooped up clothing strewn across the room, grabs the skirt from Elsa's bewildered dizzied hand.

"Finish getting me dressed!" The brown-haired young woman orders as a big sister would, for she felt that close to Elsa and Anna now after all they've been through together thus far.

"I don't care what he says! I am **not** letting that man out of my sight ever again! Especially when he's going to be all heroic and manly! Let's go watch!" A bit ditzy herself, though no longer blonde, Rapunzel had been around Flynn Rider long enough to catch a bit of his lively zaniness. She seemed rather excited to be too terribly agitated to send her love into a barroom barnburner, for she and Eugene had seen their fair share of mixing it up in roughneck saloons, and still lived to tell the tales of daring do, plus make a few forever friends along the way.

Back out in the dark hallway, Elsa's head clears a bit from all the blinking lights, dizzy racing around and mind-numbing events she'd witnessed swirling around her fuddled brain. Before losing all sanity again, Elsa takes a deep breath and reaches deep down inside to her calm center, where Hans' warm voice was calling her to stay in control.

She nods to Rapunzel that she was ready.

Then the Queen of Norway and the Princess of Corona, acting like disobedient little schoolgirls, hand in hand, sneak down the stairs, to rubberneck their handsome fellas in the sure to be exciting bust up in the Salsbrucket Hostel's Saloon…

* * *

The odds in the barroom scene that meets Flynn Rider's struck with awe wide eyes were back to 6 to 1, all rough and tumble men converging upon Hans, all half dozen growling.

_And I thought it was just me that no one liked! Guess he's really got my blood in that good-looking skinny backside somewhere…_

Although, the single redheaded man with wily dagger in one hand and calculating fist clenched in the other had been holding his own against the superior muscle of the back on their feet again tag team of multi-national outcast misfits, who used this sleepy seaport town as their loser hangout.

_Yep. Just our luck, Kid…_

Okay here's the rundown, from Eugene's fresh perspective: one irrationally irate fighting Irish scrapper; a pair of big bearded British bruisers with switchblades; that silent strongman Swede strangler; a hot-headed Hungarian gypsy who was on the portly, yet deadly side with his knife-throwing skills; and finally a semi-svelte, socially suave Spaniard whose twirled mustache would've been comical had he not a meter long sword drawn.

Which, just at this moment was showing off to lop off the tops of every candle perched in their holders on each table without even dousing the flames lit in the tavern he was stalking through towards Hans.

"Oh, yeah. You think you're pretty darn impressive with that sword, eh, _Manuel_?" In his inimitable insulting style, Flynn Rider enters the rowdy scene, announced of all the arrogance and rudeness that tagged along with the former thief as he addresses the Spanish swordsman with faux admiration.

But as all six of the drunken lewd heads of these ruffians, converging quite unsportsmanlike on the outnumbered red-head, turn to see this new interloper, standing with one bum right hand resting on his jutted hip in the saloon's doorway as a ploy, it was what was dangling from his left fully functional hand that caught their interest, especially the Spaniard he just ridiculed.

"You haven't seen nothin' yet! Here ya go, Kid! Strut you stuff!" Speaking out of personal hard-fought experience on the receiving end of Hans Westergaard's rapier, Flynn was so confident of his younger brother's blade skills, you could almost call it brotherly pride in his abilities.

_And boy! Queenie must approve of some other of your_**_ fine_**_ abilities to gift you a doozy of a sword like this baby!_

Eugene casually tosses across the room with his good arm, the fine quality Naval officer's sword within its chequered brown leather scabbard and set of strap belts attached that Eugene had the foresight to stop by the boys' room and pick up on his way down earlier.

In slow motion, the sword flies through the smoky air of the saloon above the ruffians' heads, until Hans' outstretched sure hand catches its gold laced ivory grip and securely produces its deadly steel within a matter of seconds.

The newly bestowed sword in his right hand, a trusty sharp dagger in his left, it was now in the Danish Prince's court to do a little bit of flaunting himself. Hans exhibits both his sword wielding prowess and ambidextrous capability as he mimics the Spaniard's display with one of his own flavor.

**SHKKK! CRASH! **

**SLICE! SMASH! **

_Make that double-dipped flavored! Whew-whee, that boy is _**_damn good_**_ with his steel!_

Eugene felt like applauding as he watches Hans send his left handed dagger to zing high through the barroom until it embeds itself in a dead-on bullseye of the dartboard on the wall. It landed just to the side of the Swedish giant who lets out a mocking laugh at the not even close call of this purported 'master swordsman', whose dagger had totally missed its mark.

_Or had it?_

"You call zis goot?" Pointing at the dagger harmlessly dug in the dartboard, the gargantuan galoot scoffs at Eugene's too high assessment of the red-headed fancy word haughty gentleman who was giving the ragtag team a hard time in flooring.

What the hulking strongman didn't notice was the trajectory of the dagger's horizontally thrown blade as it whizzed high overhead, nor the rope it cleanly sheared that was the main support of the large tavern wooden chandelier directly up above the Swedish man's head…

With a loud crunching crash the ceiling overhead light fixture loses its bout with gravity and plummets onto the giant. Its wide encircled wooden band supporting its five lighted candles just fits neatly snug over the dirty blonde lubber's wide shoulders and chest, that the hulk was completely bound, a candle or two still lit melting wax atop his delirious KO'd head.

_Ah ha! And for our next trick! _Eugene was getting a kick out of his kid brother's finesse when it came to putting on a rollicking good show.

At the same time that was happening over there with the falling chandelier he caused, Hans was simultaneously aiming at a closer to home target . As, with deadly accurate precision again, he kneels to the ground to level his Naval sword's sharpened thin blade's refined polished steel at the carved point of the legs of a wooden table that the stout and stocky Irishman had climbed upon to make a flying leap at Hans and take him down for good.

But in foiling those best laid plans, Hans' swiftly calculated and smoothly executed deduction of three of the table's four legs cause it, along with the caught off-guard man balanced upon it, to topple backwards.

Now, the whisky bottle used for both weapon and 'courage stiffener' that the Irishman had filched from behind the bar counter before smashes upon the rushing in to attack Hungarian knife thrower's own bad-tempered head, until he too could swear no more. Both men were thoroughly rendered unconscious as their passed out heads clunk together, their bodies falling backwards to the ground in a heap beneath the upturned table.

"Drop off your garbage here!" Eugene snidely states of the heap as he sticks out a well-placed boot near it to trip over the wandering dazed giant who was trying to extricate himself from the metal banded wooden chandelier ring. The Swede giant, chandelier and all comes down over the poor Irishman 's prostrated form with a head splitting bang!

"That's my kid brother, God love 'im! Don't mess with the man when he's got a sword in his hands, if you know what's good for ya!" Eugene proudly extols Hans' quick practical aptitude and even quicker clever ingenuity that the older man was increasingly growing enamored of.

Young Westergaard's storybook quality deft prowess with a sharp weapon in taking down three of the brute squad in the matter of a few well-choreographed and calculated moves garnered Flynnigan Rider's immense respect.

"Don't speak too quickly, Storbror. They were the more straightforward assailants to apprehend." Savvy Hans was far too levelheaded and competent in battle to let cavalier reckless overconfidence of his older brother's more bombastic personality overstate their triumphs, as the sword-wielding Spaniard comes to, angry that he was so crudely taken down. He challenges the ably bladed Hans to a fair sword fight and the Prince of the Southern Isles gladly obliges the dark European.

"Spoil sport." Flynn Rider mumbles under his breath with a smirk tracing as Hans and his new challenger parry away. But that smile was soon to be wiped off Flynn's simpering face.

"Yipes! Knife!" He squeaks out in that high soprano of his as, from out of nowhere, a sharp flying knife projectile takes a stab at coming within mere millimeters of slicing off the tip of Flynn's beloved nose as it whizzes by.

"Don't we know this double blinkered Gollumpus? Hey, Bert! Haven't we been seeing his picture around somewhere?" The big burly Brit takes this moment of tensed inattention his knife caused to step closer to one of our more handsome paired siblings.

"Yeah, you're right, 'arry! He's that sneezelurker snotter on that 'WANTED' poster our half brothers on the continent sent Mum for her birthday as their letter from that prison in Prussia."

"You have GOT to be kidding me!" Flynn Rider has a jaw-dropped cringing feeling as he concludes that this pair of brutes and his oh-so-friendly pair of brutes back home were related.

_Does fate have to be such a damn comedian at my expense all the time?_

"Now, that IS just mean! Gimme a break, fellas!" Eugene comments when the identical large muscle man produces, with a sneer, the letter he and his partner fortune hunter twin were delivering home to their old 'Mum' from their incarcerated brethren soon to be on parole. It was addressed to: 'MOTHER STABBINGTON, London, England.

"And after my little woman's sweet bleeding heart asked to invite those losers to our wedding! Well, they are NOT coming to the baby shower. A man's gotta put his foot down sometime!" Flynn grabs hold of the WANTED poster with his already ingratiating likeness even further 'artistically' altered. In his own amusing brand of insanity, an indignant Eugene Fitzherbert holds up to his self-described 'gorgeous mug' the famed 'WANTED' poster of the roguish thief.

"Does this even remotely resemble me?! They still got the nose all wrong!" Eugene whines, appalled at the mess.

For the increasingly disfigured face upon it was so painstakingly well done in colored pastels that the image that once _slightly_ resembled the dashing figure standing before them now looked like the horned devil Satan straight out of the pages of Dante's inferno meets the Sunday funnies section buck-teeth long-nosed Jug-ears with a gauche sinister smirk on the creature's silly face that insulted the vainglorious man greatly.

"I think the likeness is spot-on, Bert. The boys even got the whole mourning right! Har-har-har!" The laughing villain was referring to the sunken black eyed look in their beer-garden jaw language that Flynn's unfortunate childhood made him all-too-familiar with its mocking.

The bruisers then surround the affronted Eugene with menacing glances encircling him. The pair laugh maniacally in his face as they move in. Eugene feels an eerie sense of cold cruel déjà vu.

"Hey! I've just had a serious operation. You fellas wouldn't hurt an injured man, would you?" Charmer Flynn pleads with the brothers who were just as wicked as their clutching Corona counterparts. The two glance at one another with a knowing smile.

"No."

"Never." One lies and the other swears to it. Both devious men feign smiles at a cornered Eugene as Bert (or was that Harry?) sends a fiercely fisted liver punch crashing the illegal left hook blow that was deemed so devastating it was banned from boxing matches.

His target was Eugene's lower abdomen—a spot in your opponent that would guarantee them to be brought down, sick and paralyzed.

**_C-c-crack!_**

But the Briton's power punch is rewarded by his bared knuckles being excoriated and shattered as the broken bones of his hand throb with immediate intense pain upon connecting with Flynn's super firm abs.

Eugene takes this opportunity to counterpunch the shocked and wounded man with a stiff right cross, until Harry, the bruiser, is sent flying back against the bar with a bloodied nose writhing in squealing pain at his busted appendage, before one final kick in the pants bashes the poor man's head against the beer barrels with enough force to crack the barrels open and spill onto the floor.

"Oh, gee. It must be that intense stomach crunching exercise workout routine every morning that gives me these rock hard abs!" Eugene pats his unnaturally tough gut with his own aching knuckles from that throw punch.

_Ouch, that hurt…!_

He secretly flexes his hurt hand with the guise of fixing his mussed hair back.

* * *

**_Lunge! _**

**_Traverse!_**

**_Sidestep!_**

**_Glide!_**

"You know, we're going to have to pay for this mess you're making, Storbror." Hans calls over his expertly apex angled positioning of his sword, in perfect rhythm with one arm placed behind his back as a gentleman should behave in a proper fencing swordfight.

His equally attuned opponent was impressed with this talented redheaded prince's skilled feint and jab knowledge, with more than enough confidence as they parry swords. So much so, that the thin _Apuesto caballero_ was able to converse on his feet during their intense jousting match. It would have been over ages ago with any normal man who dared challenge the expert Spaniard to date.

But Hans Westergaard was every bit as much of a seasoned pro, astute in the swordsman's art form of blocking, dodging and riposte of his foible's thrust, cut and lunge with utmost grace and agility. Hans felt as natural with the sword that Elsa had bestowed upon him just a few hours ago as if he had been using it all his life as he displays an impressive panache in his attacks.

"I currently have no soluble funds at my disposal." Hans continues his friendly conversation with Eugene across the saloon, quite at his ease while fencing.

"Yeah, well, ask the wife. I don't own a pfennig." Eugene admits flippantly with a wink at the lobby stairwell he had an itching feeling that his better half didn't 'obey' his husbandly command to stay in their room.

"I married up."

He knew his cute brunette must be smiling ear to ear from her 'peephole' on the stairs at his symbolical thumbs up, before focusing on the big man giving a growl for attention before him.

"Ookay…Back to the job at hand…Care to have a go, tall, dark and ugly?" After a few moments of recovery and sidestepping avoidance, the former thief now taunts, as he displays his chest with a clear shot open for the man.

"Shut yer bone box! I'll show you a floorer, you fimble famble snotter!" Bert cries out but decides on a different tack than his twin in taking down this rotten thief.

"Oooh, I'm scared. Are you gonna talk sea sailor dirty or are you actually intending on trying to knock me out like your brave twin at least attempted? Because if it's the latter, you are doing a really terrible job—" Throwing his hands up as if he was scared, Flynn goads the seething man, who suddenly pauses in his heavy breathing. His beady eyes slant upwards with a slight nod to his dark, swarthy head, perplexing Eugene.

"Eugene! Look out behind you!" Upon seeing, from her bird's eye view, the stocky Hungarian awaken and gather his knives up from the far corner of the tavern, Rapunzel's high pitched scream calls through the lobby into the saloon section of the hostel—so loud and urgent—that her husband _would_ have had enough time to dodge the incoming knives about to be thrown by the third aggressor left in the barroom brawl, had big Bert not grabbed him by the shoulders so that he could not budge an inch.

"Storbror!" After one more agile bit of engaged swordplay that he was rather enjoying the sport of, Hans hears Rapunzel's shrill yell, too. Without missing a beat, with no time to apologize to his accomplished opponent before simply ending their drawn out combat struggle by simply traversing one long leg to the side, then returning his momentum with a shoved golden decorated hilt across the back of his worthy opponent's head, with a forceful unexpected blow that rendered the Spaniard completely unconscious.

"Touche, my skilled friend." In the split seconds that follow the closure of his exhilarating fencing match, Hans makes the judgment to take the defensive rather than simpler offensive of squarely running through the large muscled man who had captured Eugene in a chokehold, despite the former option's greater risk to his own life.

His lean frame swiftly rolls in a lunge forward, as Kommander Westergaard was already making glancing blows with his naval sword to the first two of the Hungarian gypsy's successive stream of knife throws down low.

The next knife was aimed high but his quick reflexes fend it off, in mid spun motion, as Hans stands now back to back with his still accosted brother.

He would defend him with his life, if that's what it took.

Eugene Fitzherbert had a wife and a child on the way to live for, while he, Hans Westergaard, had nothing so precious in this world…

And he never would deserve the only one woman in this wide universe for him, anyway.

Was it his wandering mind's morbid inattentiveness or some secret self-loathing death wish to end the sorry existence he had lived, in exchange for another's in what he believed to be righteous?

But Hans would not need to find out, even as the fourth and fifth condemning flying steel blades of the dark haired ruffian on the opposite side of the room are unleashed.

In the second that seemed to last forever, already logically seeing that his sword's trajectory would be too delayed and slow to save his own life, Hans Westergaard's final picture in his mind was of the beautiful, dazzling lady, who so benevolently gave him absolution and trust in the trusted Kommander-ship of one of her naval vessels, among other things.

For his inexcusable crimes against her, he deserved no more than contempt, if not death, but his heart knew now that for all Queen Elsa of Arendelle had given him, he would give back the only thing he had left to offer her in this world—

His forever grateful, undying love.

Hans could do nothing but watch the knives close in at an alarming rate. He only prayed to God for his body to absorb all the blades himself so that Eugene would survive somehow…

**_Zzztt! Zzztt! Zzzttt!_**

But out of nowhere a sparkling, magical icicle makes a direct hit to the one incoming blade and knocks it off course, and away harmlessly; while a coat of frost hangs heavy on the other until it clangs to the floor at Hans' feet that could have only one explanation—one lovely enchantress, one ruler of the frozen world she was mastering, day by day, in her God-given gifts of this pulled-it-together Ice Queen's mysterious inherent powers.

"Bloody hell!"

As the man swears, Hans realizes that Elsa's finely honed powers that had battered away the sharp knives must've struck across the unsuspecting cheek of Bert the brute. The ruffian curses as he wipes the blood dripping down his face, in doing so, removing one strong hand from its stranglehold around Eugene's neck.

But that's all the leeway our wily thief needed.

His one hand, freed from struggling to protect is jugular vein, reaches beneath his tunic and…

**_C-clang!_**

Eugene wallops his would-be strangler with his newly purchased by his intelligent, loving, gorgeous wife—while she was shopping—shiny, iron skillet frying pan.

Down the bigger man goes, sinking like an autumn leaf to the floor.

"Just like the old days! You little beauty!" Eugene kisses the iron handle of his now favorite weapon of choice. (Though he sticks out his tongue soon after tasting its unpalatable metal flavor.)

As for Hans, it didn't take his quick, striding legs long to pin in the far corner of the tavern the shrinking back in fear 'last ruffian standing.'

The Hungarian knife throwing former circus performer was no longer laughing at this 'red dandy saucebox.' The sniveling man hiding in the corner, was now cowering against the darts board, tail down, when Kommander Westergaard and his brandished naval sword arrive. He had, at this exact second, may not have looked so imperturbably young and scrawny as he did earlier to the now terrified man.

But he was still definitely red, and angry.

As Elsa and Rapunzel race into the tavern with anxiety, fear and excitement etched across their pretty faces, Hans beckons for the Queen to come over to him.

"Have your filthy eyes look with respect upon the pristine lady you and your cohorts disparaged, and find it in yourself to apologize. If she accepts your apology as sincere, I _may _not have to run you through."

Enraged, yet still having the presence of mind to be commanding, Prince Hans demands of the cowering man, the Dane's extended sword in hand easily pinning the frightened man's shirt neck to the dart board.

"I do! I do! Forgive us, lady! Please don't kill me!" The tearing up man begs for mercy from Elsa, who nods regally at him as she nears the scene, though the incensed look in Hans' dazzlingly glowing eyes did not appear so forgiving as hers. He draws his sword across to now re-position it to be held against the gulping, grubby neck of the miscreant, who was, by now, weeping openly, in pleas for his life.

**_Gasp…!_**

But the distressed sound of her startled breath brings the temperature of Hans' burning need for justice in a jealous revenge that the fierce battle had built up in his chest down slowly from how it was roiling in his hot redhead the moment before. His fury's train of thought is cleared, thanks to her calming effect on him, this time.

"'Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.'" Hans thoughtfully repeats Scripture that settles his rage as he slowly and carefully removes the deadly blade of his sword's annealed polished razor edge from its perfect cutting angle at the man's neck.

Elsa smiles in relief at Hans with unfettered pride at the Prince's relinquished anger at her bidding.

"We will let you go free. But tell the others of your ilk that Norway and her Queen are defended from your thuggery." Sword still in hand, the tall lean figure of a man warns in dark tones down at the short, scared ruffian.

"Now, get out." Hans quietly rumbles as the grateful former circus performer scrambles to his feet, hightailing it out of the saloon by way of the back entrance.

"Thank you, Sir. You are a gentleman...and my hero." The Queen of the land says in shy gratitude to this former Prince of the Southern Isle for defending her honor this day most courageously.

Then meeting his eyes and holding her head high with all the decorum she could gather, Elsa tries to nictitate back the dizziness as she steps closer. But after having pulled her all senses together, thankfully, enough to focus on saving Hans Westergaard's self-sacrificing life earlier with her ice powers, the fragile young woman was feeling spent and depleted now that it was all over.

In her current dazed and clumsy state from the aftereffects of the small amount of alcohol she drank earlier resurfacing in the aftermath, Queen Elsa fails in her attempts to remain the cool and dignified pillar of her society as she trips over the protruding feet of one of the big defeated men lying strewn across the tavern floor.

Out of control and in a thoroughly head spinning dizzy, her frail equilibrium faltering, despite her best efforts to stay lucid, Elsa falls forward, towards where Hans had luckily just completed re-sheathing his ultra sharp sword in its leather scabbard attached to the belt he was re-adjusting to fit his slim waist size.

"Queen Elsa!" In yet another valiant moment, Prince Hans moves in to catch the tipsy woman in his arms to steady her.

All breathless, she gazes up into his viridescent eyes with something more than the pride and gratitude she'd just professed from somewhere deep in her uninhibited soul.

Taking a hint from Rapunzel's osculation with her own heroic love in reward from where the Queen could see the kissing couple's tender embrace over Hans' shoulder, Elsa stands on tippy-toe to wrap her long arms around Hans' surprised neck. She then heedlessly pulls his unsuspecting head into a wildly passionate kiss that had been waiting for his special warmth upon her cold lips for a long time now.

But that cold warms up tenfold when Hans' adrenaline rushed body heat reflexively presses into Elsa's willing lips and melts away her icy fears, as the reality of the physical room and everyone else around them begins to fade away, until there was only the two of them there…

When their lips part, Hans stares deeply into Elsa's deliriously acquiescent eyes reflecting nothing but passionate love for the brave man whom she was secretly elated to have him jealously defend her honor so courageously.

Drinking in her adoring glances, Hans lifts Elsa's trembling weak-kneed body that had stumbled against his strong one, up in his arms in one fluid motion. He carries the royal Queen who was leaning in close to enjoy the reassuring warmth of his pounding heartbeat, away from the unsuitable chaos of the violence hit barroom left in he and his older brother's skirmishing wake.

All for the sake of the Queen's honor, Kommander Hans Westergaard would do it all again, without a second thought, as her dauntless hero exits the tavern with the delicate beauty of an Ice Queen in his embrace.

* * *

"Mmnh-Mmm-ooh, Blondie. Hold that thought." Tearing himself away from her scrumptious kiss, Eugene Fitzherbert places a quieting finger over his own canoodling recipient's satisfied lips. As out of the corner of his eye, Eugene spots Brit Bruiser #1 named Bert, whom he had previously punched out, begin to rustle awake in the spilled beer he was unconsciously swilling in.

The ruffian emerges from behind the bar to scan his downed comrades with a vengeful look crossing his ugly mug.

With his new frying pan still available at the ready, older, and not too much wiser, Eugene didn't possess his little brother's finesse, nor mercy.

As Flynn Rider just bashes the iron skillet over this twin's angry noggin, Bert is sent back on a jolly holiday to dreamland on the beer soaked ground just as he was getting to his feet.

"There. Now you twins have matching eggheads, compliments of Flynn Rider…and his little bro Hans." Eugene generously tacks the redhead's name to this little scrap Hans _helped _participate in as Eugene returns to the inviting call of Rapunzel's soft comforts.

Just going in to finish their kiss, Eugene is once again interrupted. This time it was by the hostel owner, who chooses to reenter his establishment from the back barn stalls where he was chewing his lazy sons out for not cleaning properly.

"What on God's good Earth happened here?!" The large and round in every way-eyes, head and body-hostel manager was flabbergasted at the utter topsy-turvy disorder of downed men strewn over broken furniture, cracked glass bottles of booze, smashed beer keg, not to mention the overhead lighting equipment fractured in pieces about them. But thankfully his precious large mirror, hanging over the bar, made it through unscathed.

"Oh, my rowdy buddies must've gotten the party a little out of hand." A few of the collapsed ruffians were conscious enough to hear Eugene's cover for them, as Flynn begrudgingly garners respect from the ne'er do wells. But over the years, he and his wife both were loathe to send up any ragtag team of losers who reminded them of that sorry bunch of saloon-made friends, circa the Snuggly Duckling.

Prince Consort Eugene Fitzherbert smiles his most charming at the astonished man still shaking his head, standing there glancing around his tavern in horror, heard to be saying over and over: "I'm ruined! Ruined!" as he holds his head over his destroyed place of business.

"Oh, don't worry, pal! We'll foot the bill for all you repair expenses. After all, fair's fair, right?" 'Honest citizen' Eugene offers the blubbering man over his shoulder quite generously to the wide width Salsbrucket Hostel owner's sighed relief.

"You just see my cousin when he gets back in. He handles all our monetary transactions. You can't miss him. Big, tall blonde, sweet-faced bloke who just married a princess of his own himself."

Eugene fails to equate into account the fact that he too was wed to a Princess Fair enough to splurge a few Thallers and Pfennigs around once in a while.

Getting money was one thing, but parting with it was such sweet sorrow. Eugene mixes his metaphors as old habits die hard for the thief.

He then, quite carefree on the matter, goes back to his wife's welcoming massaging embrace, with not a thought of worry to where his sword wielding partner in crime of a younger brother and that lovely Queen of long legs that this whole kerfuffle was all started about, disappeared off to…

* * *

Kicking the unlocked door to her hostel room open and closed behind him, Hans Westergaard had been giving his best effort not to succumb to the Queen's pervasive charms along the way, as undeniable as they may be.

But that was proving to be difficult for the vital young man, for all the pawing and caressing and nibbling—_yes, nibbling—_on his neck and chin and, by now, bright red ears, as Hans was carrying a frisky Elsa's supple body upstairs and into her bedroom.

He recognized that the naturally reserved, dignified young lady must've been intoxicated from the erratic way she was acting.

_But how? On only two, maybe three small sips of low alcohol content crème de Cassis?_

He had seen Elsa's yet nearly full glass of the black current based drink he had ordered for the two of them as merely a ruse to fend off any unwanted attention from those villains.

_A failed tactic, alas…with such unintended unfortunate results... _Hans chides himself for his vain attempts at cunning chicanery.

Hans was almost completely certain that the blonde young queen had only taken two or three sips of the lightly alcoholic liquor 16th century monks had produced mainly for healing medicinal uses.

_And yet…_

"You were so brave, my _Hans-some_ Prince." Elsa giggles at her pun as she huskily breathes his name. The bewildered as what to do titian haired man lays her loose body, that certainly had all the signs of being drunk, on her bed.

Well, he at least attempts to, as the platinum blonde struggles to keep his arms around her, so impressed was she with her new Naval Officer's manly display of courage and competence…and open jealousy that excited her, right before her bedazzled eyes.

"Queen Elsa, please. You are unwell. You must sleep before our ship dispatches tomorrow." He concludes responsibly as he tries again to extricate his captured neck and gripped arms from her as gently as he could from her endlessly clutching long fingernailed hands.

"Yes…" She whispers with a enthusiastic giggle, clinging to his neck.

"Kommander Westergaard… 'Kommander Westergaard'…I like the way that rolls off my tongue, don't you?" At the mention of tongues, Elsa quite agilely cranes her limber upper body up and forward, to lick her cool tongue across the side of Hans' startled closed lips, stunning the man utterly by her amorous boldness.

Uninhibited in this way for the first time in her adult life, Elsa of Arendelle pulls against his leaned down neck, sizzling his name luxuriously before tasting his nape's bare skin.

Upon finding she liked the flavor of it, the intoxicated Queen makes frosty tracks back up his neck with snow butterfly kisses all over his noble chin until she reaches the destination of his lips for another try…

_After all, you did say I was your wife, didn't you?_

After a few seconds of dazed amazement at the level of the sheltered young woman's unquenched passion, the true gentleman in Hans continues to resist her potent advances, chalking this all down to the fault of the demon liquor he'd foolishly ignorant introduced for her in imbibe.

"Your Majesty! Please, you're…you're not yourself! It's only the intoxication's effects. I understand that this is not your fault at all. You don't know what you want, right now. You...me…this is…wrong. Please, you'll regret this all later." Hans was giving his best stab at diplomacy in such a delicate area, doing his utmost to gently stave the frisky girl off.

But Elsa's slender arms were stronger than they appeared as she laces her chilled hands around the retreating back of his head in a fight to pull him down and meet her mouth, huffing cold breaths up at him.

"No! You're wrong! I finally know just what I want!" Her high pitched voice snaps at him in willful defiance.

"I want to be warm. When I'm with you, I feel so warm and complete…When I'm with you, I finally can let it all go—and just be me." Lightheaded, Elsa snuggles the frozen cool tip of her sweet little nose to Hans' sideburns, breathing in his rich scent with approving sounds murmured in her throat.

Hans listens intently to the vulnerable young lady's expressions from her heart revealed in this inflicted state of delirium. Elsa was at last opening up to someone from outside that world she's been trapped inside for nearly the entire span of her lifetime.

_How could you feel that for me, my darling Queen Elsa? After what I did to you… I am… too unworthy to ever be good enough for you._

Hans own guilty conscience kicks in, as he uses some muscle to pull back from hovering over her at the side of the bed, overpowering her frantic grasp.

"No! Don't leave me, too…" Squeezing both his freezing hands in hers desperately, the Ice Queen's inebriated senses were so heightened that she easily and ably starts icing him until Hans could no longer protest being tugged back, her magical cold ice pervading his no longer movable body.

Hans is struck by the intensity of her cold passion, as driven Elsa presses another kiss on his willing but unwilling lips.

"Queen Elsa…please…I beg of you…" Wholly breathless and frozen stiff in place, an iced, blue lipped Hans just manages to huff out in between her frozen cold fierce kisses. But Elsa's icy grip around the back of his neck was not letting up as she lets go of all her denied past's pent-up emotions in a wild full mouthed kiss he knew he, of all people, shouldn't be the lucky man to be the first to indulge in.

Although, Hans finds his well maintained restraint slipping, for his own hands, supposedly ice coated frozen in place, had made their way to grip around her tiny waist sometime in the heat of passion.

And an idea begins to form in his strategic head at this realization.

"Tell me we haven't kissed like this in your dreams, too. Say it, and I'll let you go." The young woman, whom spirited drinks caused her to be both extremely giddy **and** extremely amorous, makes this offer beneath purple shadowed heavy lids, as she awaits his answer, even as she caresses his sideburns and each distracting freckle on his handsome, yet blue-tinged face hovering so close to hers.

"I promised myself I wouldn't lie to you ever again." In a sultry voice at his limit, unable to hold himself back for much longer, this virile young man honestly had to admit his own fantasies with the irrepressible desire catching aflame in both of them as Elsa's luminous eyes and intoxicating lips were wearing down at his proprietous ethical moral fiber and 19th century principled sensibilities.

One more inviting nibble from her to his lower lip and the 25 year old man can withstand all her forces of nature no longer. In a brief lapse of his well maintained restraint, Hans suddenly unleashes his red hot passion for this Ice Queen, pressing his now regaining warmth lips down to Elsa with all the passion he'd been harboring for this beautiful blonde woman these past two unrequited years. He had fantasized of her ever since he'd physically had the chance to hold his lifelong dream girl of a flawless Princess turned beautiful Queen in his arms when he carried her on his horse Sitron down from the peaks of her North mountain ice palace.

As for Elsa, she was deliriously basking in the glow of an aroused Hans pressed to her cool frame in satisfying ways the Ice Queen's cold world never thought humanly possible before Kommander Hans Westergaard had commandeered her heart.

The high strung cool young Queen, forever holding back her surging icy powers was in constant awareness that the slightest chemical imbalance in her system could cause her to be irrational. In this case, it let out all her bottled up years of self-restraint and pent-up denied emotions, set loose at those one or two innocent little sips ruining her self-control.

The fine balance of mysterious energies of chemistry running through this prim proper young lady's royal veins had been wildly thrown off kilter before, by a mere spoonful of patent medicine whose partial ingredient was of a stimulating liquor content, as Elsa and Anna both discovered in trader Oaken's homemade cold remedy from a few years of birthdays back. That's when the girls found out the constitution of the magical queen could go haywire at the slightest trace of alcohol.

As what was happening once more again.

* * *

Hans' intensely hot breaths in Elsa's mouth mix with her cool ones until an inversion of hot and cold within their locked lips gives both recipients a sensation that was nothing short of absolutely thrilling.

As a result, Elsa's ungovernable chaotic frosted ice is immediately melted and nulled by Hans' feverishly delivered kiss. The sheer force of his will dissolves all of her wildly unmanageable ice reams coating his body, as he consciously focuses all the clarity of his mind's true passions for her to literally melt the ice holding him hostage.

And although Hans Westergaard really didn't wish for this insatiable dream to end, he knew it must.

_I will live the rest of my life longing for your kiss to capture me like this again, Snowflake.._._And knowing it never can be..._

Though it was killing him to leave this bliss behind, determined to be righteous Hans manages to extricate himself from this woman—_the only woman he's ever wanted-_upon sensing that his working supposition of melting her ice with his passionate warmth had panned out to stymie the frenzied female's dangerous ice powers into remission.

But as he selflessly relinquishes her moist, no longer frozen cold lips, a few sad words escape Elsa's dizzied, yet now seemingly stabilizing to normal mind.

"Anna…I have to bring you home…" She says sobbing, with the worry hanging over her heart even more so when it was breaking for her lost little sister who had become the center of her world.

Pushing his own desires aside, Hans realizes that this troubled anxiety was the root cause that drove Queen Elsa to this escapism madness almost equally at fault with the mind numbing evils of the alcoholic drink.

"I will bring her home to you, my Queen, if it's the last thing I do on this earth, I swear it, on my honor. It is the least I can do for you both. And then I will leave and never bother your serenity with my curse again..." Hans whispers sweetly from his adoring heart in her semiconscious ear with his peaceful emotional voice humming directly to her overwhelmed confused mind. His soft tenor leads her troubles into calm submission with an old Danish lullaby, coincidentally written by a another man named Hans in 1586, that an inconsolably lonely little boy had learned the comfort of once upon a time from the kind nuns at the boarding school academy that the unwanted child had been shipped off to at an early age…

"'Sov sodelig, sov bodelig…'It's all right. Shh, shh.. You're fine now. 'Sleep sweetly and softly' Reassuring her sobs in between each line, Hans sings with devoted adoration for his distressed love—_yes, I love her_—in his gentle most tender tones to lull the poor girl to a fitful crying herself to sleep in worry for her dear sister. And then he compassionately covers her incognizant lissome body with a soft blanket.

"Go to sleep, your Majesty, and forget this ever happened." Hans says with a final soothing pet of her drowsy brow and mussed blonde hair as he mannerly bows and backs away to leave the room, as if nothing untoward had just occurred between them.

…_Try to forget all about me, my chaste Queen..._

But this night would be hard for the repentant man in him to let go of the memory of her.

_…The girl I can never have_…

_And I am ashamed to think that I would have been no better than those thugs had I given into temptation when my poor angel was not in control of herself, no matter how much she was begging me, no matter how much I wanted to just let it go…_

_I'm afraid I didn't behave as a proper gentleman should treat a fine lady when she's in such distress. Weak-willed man… What was I thinking?!_

_I can only hope your opinion of me has not been diminished too greatly by this impropriety I unwittingly caused that I must take full responsibility for._ _I know I mustn't be a distraction to you. I pray Queen Elsa, you will still think of me kindly in the morning…For, by daybreak, we must both focus on this new mission, for Princess Anna's sake. I will try to be a better man...for you... _

'_Sov sodelig, sov blodelig, luk dine ojne til. Gud Fader udi Himmerig din vogter vaere vil…'_

'Sleep sweetly and softly, Please, close your eyes.

God the Father of Heaven will be watching over 'til you rise…'

* * *

_So, the cool Helsa relationship just heated up big time in our story at last! _

_(Olaf is melting as he reads the it ! _:~)

_After a few addendums, we ended up somewhere about 13,000 words! (Longest and juiciest chapter yet for the Ice Queen and her assigned Royal Navy Kommander!)_

_What do you think of Hans and Elsa's newest, most tactile and intimate tête-à-tête?_

_Your reviews would be most welcome, please! ^_*_

_Thanks for your patience! And God bless!_

* * *

**19th century seaman slang:**

_Job's turkey_ – A thin badly fed man

_cock-robin toff – _Soft, easy rich or upper-class man

_saucebox_ – Pert young person with a smart mouth

_Hobbadehoy_ – A youth not yet regarded a man

_Jerrycummumble_ – tumble about

_sluice our gobs_ – Share a hearty drink

_Gilly Gumpus _– tall awkward fellow

_Rib_ \- wife

_Apple dumpling shop _– A woman's bosom

_doxy delle_ – woman who cohabits with an important man

_electioneering potion_ – spirits of alcoholic beverages that cause a person to be stout and bold

_dandy prat_ – Insignificant, trifling fellow

_double blinkered_ _Gollumpus_ – Clumsy fellow with 2 black eyes

_whole mourning_ – Both black eyes

_beer-garden jaw_\- Coarse rude language slang

_cold gruel_ – misfortune/bad luck

_bone box_ – mouth

_fimble famble snotter_ – lame excuse for a thief

_floorer_ – a blow sufficiently strong enough to knock a man down to the floor

_tail down_ – to lose courage

* * *

_Quadrille_ \- French society square-dancing type dance

_bella mujer extraordinaire_ – especially beautiful woman (in Spanish)

_apuesto caballero_ \- Handsome man in Spanish

_pfennig _– coinage in old Prussian

_Thaller_ – Dollar equivalent in old Prussian

_'Sov sodelig, sov blodelig'-_ 'Sleep sweetly and softly' Danish Lullaby 1586


	30. Chapter 29 - Towards You, My Beloved

We do not own "Frozen" nor any of its characters.

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act II**

**Chapter 29**

**"Towards You, My Beloved"**

The sun was still fairly high in the sky at 8 PM as it hangs over the seemingly endless waves of the Norwegian sea.

Blinking her dazed eyes against the engulfing sunlight, Princess Anna of Arendelle staggers up dizzily from the below deck of the ship in a bedraggled, sweaty state of appearance.

Her two orangey braids were dusty, uneven and wildly askew. Her dirt-smudged cheeks were flushed and huffing as she climbs up onto the main deck to take a deep, deep breath of the salty sea air whipping in her face.

Raising both hands to touch the sun drenched sky, Anna greedily sucks in the breeze. Closing her eyes tight, her face soaks up the blazing sun overhead.

"You be a hard workin' little gal, Missy Anna. Job be surprised you be a pampered princess." Job's deep baritone comments as he lumbers up the ramp behind her to the deck. He pauses to survey her coal-dusted small frame as Anna stands in the blinding sunlight.

Though her face was streaked with dirt, her tiny hands covered with soot, and her pretty light green dress singed from when she'd gotten too close to the small engine room's boiler furnace she had been aiding Job in refueling, the dark Caribbean couldn't see how the young waif could glow any brighter.

"Who's a 'pampered princess'?! Hmph! If I can get up at the crack of dawn to go early morning ice harvesting, I can shovel coal into stoves like a trouper! I'm a tough guy! Besides, '_Hard work defines the true measure of a man_.' At least, that's what my Kristly says. S'pose it still counts for a woman, too?" Haughtily wanting to be classed as an experienced woman by the ripe old age of twenty, Anna repeats the phrase she'd heard her industrious lad coin so many times when he put his own proverbial nose to the grindstone and went that extra mile in his laborious exertion of hard work, uncomplainingly.

_Hey! My twenty-first birthday's next week!_

"Then he be right in tinkin' dat." Similarly diligent, quiet man Job glances warily into the bridge wheelhouse ahead on the deck as his dark eyes carefully observe Captain Houtebeen's aggravated silhouette bob and jerk forward with the ship's movement , bent over some stolen tome, as the old man dozes from time to time over the ancient text he was futilely attempting to translate.

For these past few hours, the first mate had wisely kept erstwhile Anna close, giving the irate Captain the excuse that he could use her as fill-in duty stoker for fueling the hungry coal fire steamship that the peg leg captain demanded run at full throttle.

"Here. The deck need a swabbin' next, Missy 'tough guy.'" Job almost affords Anna a smile as he forcefully shoves a mop and bucket into the sprightly young girl's filthy hands that he'd filled with sea water and had used a pulley to bring up from the small ship's side.

"Oh, goody, I love washing the floors back home at the castle." Anna says, in a sarcastic monotone with a pair of twisted lips.

"And I bet I can do it even better and quicker than _that_ Hans—I mean, that last skinny excuse for a cabin boy you had as a sorry deck hand." But her liveliness was soon replacing it as undiminished as her 'high' opinion of Mr. Westergaard as Anna vigorously sets her enthusiastic hands to the task with a quick song on her lips.

"Just whistle while you work. Hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm."

As she sings and whistles loudly, Job glances over at Captain Houtebeen, giving him a wary eye. The Captain looks up from his own preoccupied mental absorption at all the evening noisy whistling and ruckus that the one rude little meisje was causing on deck.

Luckily, he was too engrossed with his reading to do more than ignore her, with one disgruntled shout. "Argh! The sea's rumbling from all that blasted racket, Job!"

"You best be keepin' it down, Missy. The Cap'n likes a quiet deck." Job wisely advises in a low tone to the vivacious girl with the dirt streaked face.

But Anna doesn't cease her somewhat annoying song. She merely lowers the volume of both it and her shrill whistle as she swiftly pushes the mop in front of her forward along the deck with such alacrity that it sploshes up droplets onto her dirty black coal-powdered cheeks. Then, at the other end of the deck, she picks up and plops the big bucket on the planks beside the railing.

"Oooh, that water's cold!" She giggles at herself as the chilly ocean water splashes all over her face again. Anna then pulls her favorite filmy sunflower sprinkled pale blue and green floral scarf, that had been one of her 'best one yet' early birthday presents this year from Elsa, from around her neck tucked beneath her folk dress blouse to dab at her grimy chin and cheek that the splattered mop water caused to run muck down her face. She then dips it again in the seawater bucket to wash the remainder of her soiled mug.

"Oh, hello, birdies!" Peeking out from beneath the scarf when she catches a glimpse of fluttered movement out of the corner of her eye, Anna speaks to the group of sea aves that had gathered above the steamship at her lovely melody's beckoning.

Ever since she was a child, Princess Anna had an affinity for song as well as small furry and feathered creatures. They had been her only companions some lonely childhood days gone by. In fact, Anna had the type of charm to bewitch any living thing with the lilt of her music.

"I wish you little guys could tell my Kristly not to be too worried. I don't know what's going on yet, but I know it'll all turn out all right in the end. It just has to! Besides, I've already made a friend here, in Job watching out for me. He's not as big and scary as he looks. Goes to show that first impressions are often wrong, as far as I'm concerned. Especially concerning redheads, hmph! _He's_ probably mooning with those puppy dog eyes all over Elsa now that I'm not there to supervise. I hope she's smart enough to see through his wily subterfuge.._." And opportunistic fraudulent kisses._.._What in heck was that pirate talking all about?! 'Shipboard romance,' my patootie! He's after Arendelle's crown again!_ _**That j****erky Hans** just better keep his mitts off **my sister **while I'm gone! Or else there'll be heck to pay!_

"Anyways...please go and find my worried sick guy! I know him inside and out. This being separated from me will kill him! My Kristly needs all the moral support he can get! I have to let him know I'm alive and well or he'll go whacko!" Effervescent Anna, after bemoaning her absence of sisterly supervision for a restless angry tick at a certain cunning young man, does a 180, her fiercely apoplectic thunder cloud face returns to a wistful smile at the calming thought of her cool-headed fella. The optimistic on-the-world-turning-right-side-up-again Anna leans down to plant her own pleading kiss on the blushing forehead of the seagull that had been bold enough to flutter and land on her welcoming hand.

The curious white gull looks up at the hopeful, always buoyant able to bounce back young girl with a quizzical expression on its cock-eyed feathered and confused long billed face at the pretty young maiden's contrasting moods of vicious anger and fondly tenderness.

"You can't miss him! My Kristoff's six foot five, skyscraper tall, with perfect skin and an absolutely gorgeous muscular build. He has a messy shock of fluffy angel, buttery blonde hair over the yummiest chocolate brown eyes on his sweet handsome face—oh! And he's usually riding in his Ice Master sleigh with a good-natured reindeer named 'Sven.' Sven has always been his best friend. So when I became Kristoff's new best friend, you know, _because he loves me in every way_, all three of us are best friends now. And mark my words, my Kristoff **is** coming to get me, so you just tell him that I'm not worried. I** know** my beloved's coming for me! I believe in him with all my heart..."

A be-smitten, in love, proud of her guy's good looks Anna confidently relates all that to the curious little seagull cupped in her hands with a whisper. Then, as she pats its back tail feathers with a nod, she causes the off-balanced seagull to nearly 'scuttle' his ship.

But after a few seconds, the dizzied fowl makes a determined squalling sound from his decidedly non-melodic throat and joins a few of its mates who too were listening in to the pretty, nature-loving human girl's lilting song and entertaining sweet prattle. Suddenly, the flock take flight from the deck across the winds in a southeasterly direction, as their widespread, black tipped white wings pepper the ocean sky.

"Who you be talkin' to, Missy?" Job returns from his checking on the steamship's funnels to catch the last bit of Anna's conversation to the empty thin air.

"No one! No one…just singing! 'Someday my prince will come, someday we'll meet again!' So…where are we going? When do we get there?" Looking up at him with bright eyes, Anna abruptly interrupts her own 'heartfelt' high pitched warbling to slip in the query when she thought the big man may have been gazing upon her with softer eyes.

Though she didn't seem very 'tough' at all with her plaintive tunes, the little songbird scrubbing the deck had hit a particularly mucky section and goes right down on her knees to give it a thorough scrub, that quite unbefit royalty.

But it made her all the more lovable in his hardened eyes.

"You ask too many questions, girl, for your own good." After a moment of staring at the still bright-eyed pixie hard at work, Job sadly shakes his head down at her. "You keep a-swabbin' the deck till I come back—and no more singin', ya hear? You be disturbin' the Cap'n and you probably not want his attention right now." Job tersely instructs with a pointed finger towards the deck that Anna was to finish cleaning until it shone.

"Oookay, grumpy pants…" Anna mumbles under her breath but the rebellious streak in the young woman couldn't help but hum low (_humming is__** technically**__ not singing_) thinking (_not singing!) _the words of a haunting melody she'd heard Gerda sing so many times while the kindly housekeeping 'nanny' was busy at scrubbing floors like this. Many past hours for young lonely Anna were spent listening to Gerda tidying up the castle with this song the plump woman herself had learned from a wandering minstrel in her own youthful adventures in the far northern reaches of their magical Land of the Midnight Sun on her similarly still untainted, optimistic lips:

_"Towards you, my beloved, I quickly come to you with all of my love._  
_Your words, from those times together, keep a light alive for me…"_

* * *

On the road west, a few kilometers from Salsbrucket Port, along the Kvistenfjorden was the village of Lund. It was there in that small village that Harbor Master Alfen gave Kristoff permission papers to allow the care and sheltered housing of the horses, Guddy and Iriserende, as well as the Vis-à-vis covered sleigh, for an indefinite amount of time.

Once that task was complete, responsible Kristoff started back on the road, riding Sven. The impatient young man all the while was inwardly cursing at himself and already wishing he'd continued on alone.

Anna's welfare had been preying on his protective mind until Kristoff was in a pensive state of apprehensive disquietude. His mood matched the suddenly overcast grey sky, for the longer time dragged on, the worse his inner demons tortured him.

_[Don't you wanna talk about it, Buddy?]_ Sven cranes his neck around to try to make some eye contact with his silently driven pal, as the reindeer 'speaks' through their special link.

But Kristoff had purposely kept their communication closed all the ride long he'd been astride Sven's back.

"No, Sven." Kristoff finally breaks his silence. "I'm too angry with myself to talk. Unless you want to hear about how rotten a husband I've turned out to be." The tone in Kristoff's usually mellow voice was even parts dejected and vexed, as he keeps his brown eyes transfixed forward on the high cliff road between Sven's tall cream colored antlers.

_[Come on, Kristoff! It's not your fault! Anna wouldn't want you to be kicking yourself around like this. She loves you too much, and so do I.] _The compassionate reindeer possessed a heart as innocent and untainted as the day he and Kristoff were given to one another, all those years ago.

_Funny…I can just about remember the accident now…_

"Thanks for trying, Sven, but that sentimental stuff's not gonna bring her back." Shaking his wandering mind back to reality, Kristoff grumbles aloud through gritted teeth. He continues to psychologically beat himself up in his wild mental imaginings of what horrible fate may be befalling his precious little wife under that wicked pirate's thumb.

"Damn! Why did I let her go?!" Red blooded, virile young man Kristoff vents his anger by mindlessly clutching Sven's sharp pointed rutting antlers, squeezing his palms against the reindeer's in-velvet summertime prongs until it breaks his skin and starts to bleed.

_[Kristoff! You're bleeding!]_ Sven mentally cries out with a grunted rangifer roar as the reindeer comes to a screeching halt on the edge of the tall cliff Naeroy road.

"I'm fine. It's nothing." Balanced on the cervidae's back with his powerful thigh muscles alone, Kristoff cradles his multiple open wounded left-handed palm with his right, as the blood spills over Sven's mantle of taupe fur.

Just then, as if on cue of an uncanny run of bad luck, the dark storm clouds that had been hanging over the sky open up and begin to pour a strange torrent of rain that drives Sven's off-balanced cloven hooves down the side of the steep cliff that had been created by glacial erosion over time.

_[I guess we're heading to the fjorden down there. At least you can wash your hand in its cool waters—that always helped you when you got hurt before.]_ Always seeing the sunny side of life, doting Sven worries for his bleeding friend. The reindeer starts to gingerly glide on the muddy hillside towards the edge of the freshwater Kvistenfjorden's long, narrow inlet that the pair was being pulled down into by gravity.

"All right, all right. Why not? We'll be holed up in that fancy hostel for the night anyway. There's no rush back, I guess, 'til morning." Kristoff finally relents his stubborn stance at Sven's insistence directly into his brain. "Actually hearing you in my head, Sven, is starting to be a real—

"Whoa! Watch out! Where did you come from?!" The tall, blonde man pulls back from where an even larger brown bear was disoriented from the lashing rain driving it too down the cliff.

_[Bear!]_ Sven rears back with imprinted fear in his wobbly voice to match his wobbly legs that begin to full skid down the mud sliding cliff's edge.

"Be careful, Sven! We don't know this area well enough to get so close to the banks in this heavy a downpour!" Kristoff warns his headstrong friend of this fjorden's unknown quantity as the frightened reindeer, in avoiding the equally frightened brown bear, recklessly veers dangerously across the steep precipice where the waters were raging below the sheer escarpment they were wildly winding their way down.

"Steady on, Sven!" Kristoff screams out over the din of the rushing fjorden's crashing currents as his reindeer best friend's mud-caked cloven hooves beneath his four spindly legs slide clumsily this way and that down the hillside, out of control until the furry creature was about to plummet into the racing waves of the 4.6 kilometer astonishingly deep fjorden.

But not without courageously tossing Kristoff from his bareback ride to the safety of the fjorden's comparatively shallow threshold embankment first.

"**SVEN!"** Kristoff yells out his lifelong friend's name powerlessly as he struggles to stand on his own stunned feet in the slippery shallows Sven had just thrown him to land.

Kristoff's waterlogged heavy legs quickly attempt to rush forward as he tries to catch hold of the reindeer's flailing antlers before Sven was swept downstream.

But the currents were too strong this night, due to the oncoming storm's flux.

[_Kristoff! Don't try to save me! Anna needs you more!]_ Sven's selfless mind manages one last heroic thought before the struggling reindeer's awkward kicking legs start to give out beneath the rushing currents that were sweeping him further away from where Kristoff was hanging onto a lowered tree limb as far as he could go without too being swept away against the unrelenting currents of the storm-tossed waters.

"Sven!" The tall, blonde man was in heartwrenched tears by now. For the only other precious thing that truly belonged to him in this world, beyond his Anna, was also being stolen from his pitiable soul.

Kristoff had to make the terrible decision again to try and save his kicking and struggling reindeer friend from being pulled downstream and most likely drowned, or just watch his best friend go and stay alive himself.

_No, not again! I can't take this again—__**Sven! I'm coming!**_

Kristoff lets go of the tree limb and starts trudging out into the racing water across the harsh currents.

_**Whoosh!**_

A flash of white fur yanks him back to the rock at a dizzying speed, bringing our confused mountain man back against the boulder rock as he comes to his disoriented senses in the torrential rain.

"Kristoff! Catch!" That's when a voice even deeper and more profound than his reindeer buddy's was suddenly calling his name over the deafened roar of pelting waves below and crashing thunder overhead.

Kristoff instinctively grabs hold of the grappling hook thrown through the air to land at the boulder rock he was clinging to. The soaked blonde strains his eyes between his flattened bangs and the pouring rain to glimpse the silhouette of a sure footed, tall man in a tall pair of brown boots and a tall dark hat several meters downstream, standing at the unforgiving fjorden's edge.

That man then swings his end of the lassoed rope in the air in a cylindrical pattern, three times, like a rodeo pro, before loosing the lasso's long cord of rope across the rushing fjorden.

At everything happening so swiftly, in sheer amazement, Kristoff watches how the expertly thrown rope entangles around Sven's writhing body's shoulder and thick neck, and stops the spent reindeer's final flailed descent to the black muddy bottom of the four and half kilometer deep Kvistenfjorden.

The tall stranger then utilizes the 165-foot rock climbing long rope he had already bound around a sturdy tree some meters from the banks to begin to winch the rope for greater torque leverage near the pivot point of the tree.

The man in the tall hat curved under a hood then swiftly moves to the side of the fjorden's bank where Kristoff was, to take firm grasp of the rope that Kristoff was still tightly holding the other end of. He calls out to the tearful and staggered younger man.

"On the count of three, you pull, son. You pull as if your best friend's life depends on it—because it does." The scratchy voice was changed from its mellow tone over the two decades since the boy had first seen the man, although the stranger possessed that type of enigma to be more forgotten than remembered.

Though Kristoff Bjorgman was oddly acquainted with the man's startlingly grey-brown eyes that seemed able to pierce straight through him with a wisdom beyond the many years upon the older man's creased brow beneath that concealing grey hood, Kristoff **did** know the stranger. He just couldn't place when or where they had met.

The singular man was the kind to slip between the shadows of life—unnoticed and unthanked, just like the wind…

"One, two, three, PULL!" Immediately responding to the sagacious maturity of the grey hooded man who takes a firm stance in front of him with the commanding order, Kristoff pulls with all his might simultaneously with the stranger—and the young Ice Harvester's amply flexed bicep, tricep, and extensor muscles were considerable indeed.

The leverage of the rope to pivot around the sturdy tree gave the two men combined enough torque power to pull the doubly heavy struggling and soaked to the bone normally 300 lb hefty and overfed Svalbard reindeer back to the fjorden shore's safety.

"Sven! Are you okay, Buddy?!" The warmhearted young man immediately drops his end of the rescue rope to dash over to the huffing and puffing, yet grateful to be alive reindeer lying on the shallows of the fjorden.

Kristoff drops to his knees and swiftly removes the lasso-ed rope around Sven's body that saved the reindeer's life. The anxious mountain man then rubs his buck's heaving chest until it finally quiets to find calming breaths under his lifelong friend's comforting touch.

[_Sorry, Kristoff. I slipped._] Sven mentally apologizes, his big mournful eyes gazing up at his beleaguered buddy with a smile.

It's okay now, Sven. Just take it easy. I won't let anything happen to you, too." Kristoff pets Sven's fuzzy brown forehead crown between those freshly grown large summer antlers 'in velvet' that had just finished maturing this season to their full proud 4 ft height.

"Thank you, sir." Kristoff stands against the cold rain to shake the hand of the man in the long grey hooded cape with the gold circlet designs on its edging. "I don't know if we would've made it without your help." Kristoff, as respectful as his adopted troll mother Bulda taught him to be, nods to the stranger as he extends his right hand out to shake.

When the leathery skinned bony hand grips his with a firmness beyond their aged appearance, Kristoff's startled brown eyes scrutinize the tall mysterious man beneath that dark cloak.

Certainly, the tall stranger was an older gentleman, from his era gone by style of uniformed clothing that surely was a throwback to Norway's past military days of old. Yes, he had a wrinkle or two on his prepossessing well worn square-jawed long face. His sideburns were doubtlessly greyed at his temples to match the washed out creams and greys of his once dark golden tan mane of past shoulder length wavy hair.

His yet erect straight body form did not conform to that of an old man, though that certain something behind his wise observant eyes relayed to Kristoff the impression that the man standing before him was indescribably ancient.

_And undeniably familiar._

Kristoff's brown eyes slit in consternation when the silvery white wolf who had pushed him back before, now appears from out of nowhere to gather up for his master the rope Kristoff had just undone from Sven to sit at its place at the aged man's side. That reminiscent action cinched it the rest of the way for Kristoff's curious mind.

"…Holger?" Kristoff gazes through the raindrops into the glowing black eyes of the large white furred wolf that knew no age, with a sudden recognition that the young man's conscious mind was unaware he possessed beyond childhood's dreams.

The alabaster furred creature then in turn nuzzles his long thin snout against the blonde-boy-turned-man's arm to raise Kristoff's bleeding palm upwards.

[_Sven was right. You must wash it before it gets infected_.] The silky silvery wolf's corresponding silky silver tongue gives a lick to the forgotten deep wound as he too speaks directly in Kristoff's head.

_[Yes. The icy waters of this land can bring healing comfort as much as they can cause pain_.] Obviously privvied to listen in on the mental exchange, the tall enigmatic gentleman joins the psychic conversation as he gathers up the remainder of the rope lead attached to the grappling hook that he replaces around his broad shoulders in place of where a lute once hung strapped to his navy blue army trenchcoat's back.

He had pulled off his grey hooded cape that concealed his identity earlier. And the svelte man then places its warmth around Kristoff's soaked, involuntarily trembling shoulders in the pounding rainstorm as he takes long strides towards the blonde man and the two caring animals surrounding him.

"Old Ragi! It is you, isn't it?!" As more of the man's features are revealed, visions of pieced together memories that the sane and grounded young man laughed off before as silly boyish fantasies, come flooding back to flash across the cold icescape of Kristoff Bjorgman's mind...

* * *

Playing in his memory, was each past encounter of his formative years when young Kristoff learned the ice harvesting trade through first hand hard work and diligence at the mountain men's camp where 'Old Ragi the Traveling Minstrel' would often visit to entertain the weary mountaineers after a long day's work in the ice fields with his trusty lute. It was the very same instrument that the kind old man would take the time to apprentice the youthful, wide-eyed and curious boy there to play under his wing.

Old Ragi's somber ballads that told of age-old moral stories around the campfire then mainly revolved around the unshakable love of a man for his true soulmate, enough to defy the odds of Nature itself to give her life's happy ending she eternally prayed for…

Remembering those heart-wrenched words now, more than he appreciated the sappy stuff in his emotionally pent-up teenaged adolescence then, Kristoff only recently had come to understand the depth of such emotion, in his love for Anna.

But there were memories that went even further back, that were cloudier and more frostbitten than the rest within the shackles of Kristoff's confused inner mind that he had successfully locked away for all these years that were just coming unhinged right now in a foggy memory cloud...

* * *

*v*V*v*V*v*V*v*V*v*

A dark-skinned bundled up sweet Sami couple ride in a reindeer herding sleigh screaming in fear; a devastating avalanche that left a frozen cold pale child, no more than a toddler, who had been placed in their care, suffocating beneath the overturned sleigh in a deep blood stained snowbank trapped in the inky cold darkness; the sounds of a white furred wolf's urgent howl and frantically digging paws overhead; a handsome middle-aged man in a tall blue hat breaking through the thick barrier of frigid snow to incredibly power lift the sleigh up as a pale bluish cool hand reaches through to pull the small blonde boy out from the encapsulating packed snow; the flawlessly beautiful woman with dignified pulled back iridescent shining platinum tresses, much akin to Elsa's, likewise with her graceful lavender lips, touches the numbed child's cheek with all the love of a worried mother before she hands the tender babe over to the warm man's care; the elegantly high collared frosty woman then turns back to swirl her struggling magical snow powers to hold back the remainder of the rumbling mountain avalanche from harming the wee child again.

The recollection of a chilled droplet tearful farewell from that stunning icy lady and the gently placed warm wet nosed baby reindeer, conjured from a mirrored portal gateway, gifted as a forever friend into the pleased and gurgling buttery blonde boy's lonely arms was all of that past scene Kristoff remembered, even in the far reaches of his mind.

Although, if his bedazzled eyes had looked then beyond the joy of receiving his furry new pal, young Kristoff Bjorgman would've seen the untouchable timeless blonde beauty melt into her one and only man's embrace. She unselfishly was letting go of this special impossible child of her dreams for a second time, to give him his own chance at a normal life she herself only glimpsed for a short blissful time of recovering convalescence where he was conceived.

Her curtailed innate ice powers had been receded and diminished by the near fatal injury that this wondrous brave human named Ragi had saved her from in that pit of a violently hot molten volcano fissure that the grown altruistic Snow Queen had been attempting to selflessly squelch the Poas Volcano in Costa Rica in order to save innocent lives in the year of our Lord 1828.

It was then the noble Snow Queen's once frozen cold heart had been thawed by pure unmitigated love in the reward of her long-awaited yearning of God's cherished miracle of miracles-

The blessed warmth of motherhood for her beloved Christ-bearer...whom greater love forced her to quietly abandon to live a true life of his own freedom's choosing...

* * *

"You remember me, boy." It was always difficult to read the reserved tone of Ragi's monotonous voice, but Kristoff had spent enough time learning the ropes on how to play the lute from the older man, among other subtle wisdoms passed along the way, to know that the elderly man was exhibiting affection with this phrase.

For as long a 21 year old Kristoff remembered him, Ragi was like this. The indefatigable resolve of the enigmatic man seemed unaltered by the ravages of time. The tall, emotionless, steadfast soldier had to be in his late eighties, though he appeared no more than in his fifties.

And the still capable and wiry man—who had the vitality and spirit of a thirty or forty year old—had a proud smile upon his well weathered tanned and deeply scarred face as he looks upon Kristoff now.

The two men share that smile and respectful nod as Ragi leads his junior to the fjorden's bank to wash out that injured palm as the downpour begins to soften.

"How come you've always been there to bail me out when I need you to, Ragi?" Kristoff kneels to the embankment to manfully scrub at his wounded palm to wash out all that dirt and grit and gravel his grasping hand's open palm had picked up from that moldy algae coated boulder he'd been clinging to minutes ago.

"Just as you will always be there for the one you love, if you don't let anger consume your better judgment along the way. Much like the dark clouds, heavy with their burdens, block out the light."

As the allegorical man was speaking, the young new husband was distractedly noticing the golden wedding band gleaming on his own ring finger that Anna had shoved on it, not a dozen days ago. As it glitters upon the waters, the strange wet deluge ceases and the reemerging sun scares the rest of the storm clouds away, reminding Kristoff of another glittering ray of light he held close in his arms not so long ago.

"Her name is Anna. Princess Anna of Arendelle. She agreed to marry lowly me and I still can't figure out why I was so lucky. I love that little gal more than life itself, and will adore her until the day I die." Kristoff says quite emotionally choked up as he finally opens up to this older man he always felt a peaceful camaraderie with in conversations concerning delicate subjects, such as his childhood loneliness or now true love's honesty of his secretly sensitive heart.

To him, Old Ragi was more akin to the trolls, minus their rude, loud, overbearing-ness, of course. For there was something deep and metaphorical beneath that rough emotionless surface that Kristoff was sure camouflaged an enlightened perspicacity and insight that few of this world comprehended.

"Yes, I know your Anna. I was at the wedding in Arendelle." The older man had been a silent witness for a great deal of Kristoff Bjorgman's life. Our 'pungent reindeer king.' as Olaf so dubbed him, was just becoming aware of that fact himself in this moment.

"Look, we've got a ship that sails in the morning to go find Anna. She's been kidnapped by some peg-leg old pirate who's taking her to Mosken Island for who knows why. I've been out of my mind with worry ever since, knowing I've failed her, just as we were starting out on life together." Kristoff was more pained by his own tormented words than the bandage Ragi produces to wrap securely around his palm as he stands to the other man's level beside the fjorden bank.

Ragi opens his mouth and then pauses before he speaks his next well chosen phrased words.

"Then you must cut the safety rope you've tied around Anna in your mind, first, Kristoff." He inscrutably says in an even tone, looking the boy directly in the eye.

"What in Hell does that mean, Ragi?! She is **my wife**! Of course it's my responsibility to watch out for her safety! _You've _obviously never been in love or you'd know how I feel, old man!" Kristoff, as Ragi self predicted, instantly explodes in virulent anger as its wrath—whether lashed out at himself or another person—was indeed proven to be consuming the normally sweet and mellow boy's tender heart to the point the pragmatic youth was rude and coarse tongued to his elder.

The old soldier silently kneels back down to the rushing fjorden's bank, dabbling his long bony fingers in the rambling stream of waters.

"Your love right now, is that of these young leaves. Joined side by side by their sticky fresh tree sap in this freshwater fjorden at its threshold, they're just beginning on their epic journey out to the deep North Arctic sea. But if those tender leaves of yours become too wild and storm-tossed by the harsh currents, their sap will dissolve and they'll be dashed apart on these angry rocks before they even make it beyond the delta, before they even set out to glimpse the sea where my patient old intertwined branches survived the rushing tides, to travel slow and steady and forever inseparable."

The simple analogy way he spoke in is all Ragi need say with his even monotone full of deeper context for Kristoff to sense he had offended the man kneeling at the banks. Though Ragi never looked up once from surveying how verdant green leaf set after leaf set are ripped apart by the strong currents if they get caught on the craggly rocks at its outset, while the stronger intertwined branches flow smoothly around the bends, still clinging to one another for strength and refuge together, side by side.

"I'm sorry for blowing up, Ragi. I'm just so angry at myself inside." Kristoff apologizes as he rubs his right hand up over his eyes and through his slicked back wet dark gold shaded hair. The careless action full of humility made his handsome, enlightened features all the more stunning under the late sun's gleam.

"And I do know exactly what you're going through, my boy, because I've lived through this storm of anxiety before for years on my own, too. I am testament to the fact that **alone** is never an easy road to travel." Ragi lays a sympathetic, yet supportive, hand on Kristoff's wide shoulder, a consoling look in his wise aged eyes.

"But I found my solace in the cognition that none of us are truly alone in this world. And only the heart that is pure, without anger and hate can freely flow upstream with God or hear His creature's encouragements along the way. We are His creatures, too, after all." Ragi's old eyes were wiser for his reverence to the Creator of all, above the sky he was facing.

"Remember, Son, if your heart is too angry, it will not be as pure as it was born to be able to hear nature's voices all around you. And it will never be clear enough to decipher the colors of the wind that will paint arrows pointing to your love. You must learn to listen with your heart, Spirit Whisperer…"

And with those final sapient prescient statements, the perceptive old sage gazes up the steep cliff where the brown bear who had inadvertently startled Sven onto his unnerved descent down the slippery precipice earlier had returned to the scene of the accident, holding a trio of bear cubs close to her large furry body.

"No, my dear. Everyone here is unharmed and unsullied by that wily old Hobgoblin's deceptive artifice of self-blame and recriminations trying to split them apart with the sin of anger."

Silently answering the mother bear's inaudible query, Ragi's soulful eyes speak his heartfelt advice with meaning behind his stare to Kristoff as he gives Sven's now standing sturdy flank a supportive pat before the navy blue coated man climbs up the steep path to meet the bear family. Faithful Holger, as mysterious as a wisp, was at his master's side in the matter of a blink.

Once the tall elderly gentleman made it to the top, he turns abruptly to face Kristoff and call down in an assured voice: "The time is coming for you to soon fulfill the destiny you were born to proclaim, my boy. Be strong and of good courage, and don't allow anger to taint your way again. Here! You too may need this in your time of need." Ragi tosses a crystal pendant he yanks from his own neck over the side of the cliff to land precisely in Kristoff's hand, just as the wind Ragi seemed to command carried it.

"Make your Mother and I proud of our impossible dream's promise to this land." The puzzling enigma of a man speaks quite cryptically before disappearing, just as he came, over the Norwegian west coast's sunsetting mountain vista range along with that brown bear family.

"My Mother...?" But the soft spoken young man's questions of the unknown parents he believed long dead were again left unanswered. He stares in fascinated wonderment at the pale blue, eerily luminant at his touch snowflake shaped crystalline pendant the original Wind Whisperer just tossed to his hand.

Kristoff then closes his bewildered eyes to steady his skewed thoughts and follows his old mentor's advice to let go of all the self-reproaching anger hindering the clarity of his thoughts.

Determined Kristoff Bjorgman decides here and now to use every bit of his energy to center on the path the wind was guiding him to find his love and bring her home again, as the gentle post-storm breezes wash their calming peace over his tousled thoughts.

The wind blows through hi's moistened bangs with so many whispered voices of the mountains surrounding that painted a vast plethora of varied hues of summer colors across the vivid landscape beckoning for him to seek out and find the girl who surpassed them all for her vibrancy and radiance. At each point of nature, his heart subconsciously begs for them to point the direction towards his Anna to the best of their vast collected knowledge.

"Come on, Sven. Let's get back to that hostel before Elsa sends out a search party to find us."

Innocent Kristoff had absolutely no idea of all the misadventures and hi jinx that had already been taking place this night in that supposedly restful tavern lodging, as he offers his forever best friend a smile. Feeling calmer and of greater purpose, the tall blonde takes hold of Sven's leather holster straps and leads the traumatized reindeer up the steep and winding hilly path, with all of God's nature singing its windswept song to guide his soul towards his beloved…

_Towards you, my beloved, with all of my love I will race to you  
The wind embraces me as I run and fly to your arms…_

* * *

"**Towards you, my beloved" ("Daisuki na Kimi ni") is the English translation of the ending theme song from NHK's "The Snow Queen" ("Yuuki no Jou") where Gerda, Kai, Ragi and Holger's turn of the early 19th century adventures with the Snow Queen can be seen in the well done Japanese adaptation of Hans Christian Anderson's classic fairytale that "Frozen" was made to be the sequel of.**

* * *

_How about that for Mother's Day weekend tie-in with the original fable? The Snow Queen is his** Mother**?! _

_Our sweet humble Kristoff is the son of the original Snow Queen! So, does that make him 'The Snow Prince'?! Wow! _

_After all, the orphan boy did say 'Ice is my life!' so much he 'may cry'._

_What do you think about that, Frozen Friends? Can Anna pick'em, or what?!_

_Please review on this eye opening chapter's revelations of our buttery blonde Reindeer King's mysterious origins! :)_

_And may I wish a very Happy Mother's Day to all wonderful mums and their loving children celebrating the first and forever friend &amp; best selfless champion the Lord blessed to ever give them on her own special day this weekend! ^_^ _

_ Happy Mother's Day, Mama! Daisuki dayo!_

* * *

_meisje - _little girl in Dutch

_Daisuki dayo - 'I love you so much!' in Japanese_


	31. Chapter 30 - Commissioned for Service

We do not own "Frozen" nor any of its characters.

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act II**

**Chapter 30**

**"Commissioned for Service"**

"La da di da, la da da di—Oh! I've a fix on my radar! Bogey at five o'clock!" A dizzy seagull pauses overhead in his careless weaves in and out of the southeasterly clouds he's been traversing.

This seemingly intoxicated Larus mew haphazardly glides its black and white tipped wings through the damp air, several hours into its neighborly volunteer work as messenger pigeon—ahem—_seagull_, for that sweet voiced Princess in distress.

"Solicitations, Prince My Kristly!" The white seagull almost drunkenly crashes into the treeline where Kristoff was walking alongside Sven.

He zeroes in down to his target.

"Hey! How do you know my name? And why am I talking to a bird?" Realist Kristoff was still getting accustomed to the ability he had in speaking to the birds and animals. But this ditzy excuse for a seagull more reminded him of another zany black and white creature—a goofy, talking snowman, namely—than anything mystically amazing.

"Let's see…_'Six foot five giant skyscraper tall'_—2, 4, 6 and a half—wing!" The air bound bird clumsily measures his stretched two foot wingspan to practically crawl and aerial descend sideways and downward from the tip of Kristoff's head to his bewildered boot toe.

"_'Perfect absolutely gorgeous muscle build_.' Mmhmmm…uh-huh..Yup! Whoo boy! Those are big!" The bold bird squeezes his grey feathered 'fingertips' around Kristoff's ample bicep with approving sounds, clicking his aves tongue. "Check!"

"What are you silly birds doing?" As Kristoff and Sven walk along the road, birds hover on either side of him, as the strangest of them all gives the human a physical rundown.

It was quite a show, according to the acclaimed twitters of his audience of several other gulls and puffins. They had tagged along with adventurous brother Scuttle to fulfill a promise to the pretty songbird Princess who had made friends with them onboard that pirate steamship.

"Just making sure you fit the bill." Scuttle answers the 'Wind Whisperer,' not at all phased that the human man could both hear and speak in the gull's bird-ese language, either."Get it-_Bill_?" The cracked fowl points cross-eyed at his own orangy schnoz.

"Mhmm-mhmm, mhmm-mhmm. Hair is golden buttery blonde. Yup, yup. But not exactly '_fluffy angel' _quality, though. What do you girlies think?" After sizing a thoroughly weirded-out Kristoff, like he was going to be shown off as some prize show-dog, or even better-tossed into a pan as dinner roast. The partly unhinged white gull then asks his less verbal feathered companions for their judgment on the iffy matter.

"Tweet tweet tweet! Yes, yes, yess!" The three practically fainting feminine fowl twitter in impressed cacophony at Kristoff's other fine, overtly masculine features.

"Yeah, maybe so, maybe so. How about more like that?" Scuttle flutters up to use all his webbed toes to none too gently muss up Kristoff's slicked back, still moistened tufts of blonde hair.

"Ow! Hey! Oww, that hurts!" Our gentle hearted mountain man holds back from throttling the bird to save for mew stew later.

"Oh, yeah! That's an improvement!" Young Scuttle and the rest of his aves entourage nod in silent cooing agreement at Kristoff's re-scruffed mass of blonde wavy hair.

"What's going on here?! What are you crazy birds talking about!?" Kristoff throws up his big hands in frustration as he is, once again, ignored by his ridiculers, as if he was not there at all.

"Okay, moving on." The white seagull then clumsily lands on Kristoff's shocked shoulder and uses his feather digits to pry and stretch at the man's face. Scuttle peers into Kristoff's dilated eyes for several seconds way too long for poor Kristoff's taste.

"Yup! There they blow! Yummy chocolate brown eyes. The _'handsome face'_ is human female objective, of course." Scuttle proves that he was not only a birdbrain, but a comedian as well. His clumsy pun's delivery gains more than a few birdy chortles and swooning biddy chicks at an aggravated Kristoff's red-faced good looking features.

"CHECK!" The scatterbrained gull loudly caterwauls the affirmative right in the man's shell-shocked ear.

"All right! All that's left then…" Satisfied with the identification process thus far, Scuttle zigzags his fluctuated wings until he is able to hover directly parallel to Sven's cantering fuzzy head.

"Are you a_ reindeer?_" The kooky one-eye squinted seagull turns his interrogating spotlight on the recovered rangifer who nervously blinks back under the grill of the hot lights.

Sven gulps and nods, his eyes extremely large and baleful at the sergeant major of a seagull.

**"What's—your—name—Mister?" **Scuttle pokes an accusatory feather into the larger mammal's sheepish mantle of fur with each forceful word.

A skittish Sven shrinks back from the smaller creature, totally bullied.

"Stop that! His name is Sven, and I'm Kristoff. What do you birds want from us?" Kristoff decides to hold the reins here now as he takes a provocative step in front of his harassed best friend. He confronts the suddenly turned aggressive genus Larus class kleptopractic bird as it takes a fancy to the Royal Ice Harvester &amp; Deliverer badge dangling from his reindeer partner's furry neck.

"A-ha! Krist-_**off**_! So you've slipped up, now, you shameless felons!"

"Wh-what?" Kristoff scoffs at the crazed inventions of the insane fowl bothering them.

"You two are guilty of impersonating Prince Kristly and his best friend of a reindeer! Pah! Who in his right mind would name a self-respecting reindeer 'Sven'? What a fake name! You don't even have the Royal Ice Harvester's sleigh that she was so proud of. Ha! Tried to trick a trained investigator like me! Imagine!" On a tirade, the dumb bird thinks he has the slippery pair on the ropes as he now was fingering Kristoff's matching RIH&amp;D badge too. Though unable to read its designated markings, the klepto-bird liked its shine.

"This is ridiculous! I am Prince Kristly—I mean, I AM the real KRISTOFF! And this is the real SVEN! Olaf! Tell them who we are! I give up!" All of the interrogated ride back to the Salsbrucket Hostel, Kristoff had kept his cool, as Ragi advised, until the exasperating birds just got too darn vexatious to take anymore. So he passes them off to the cool-headed, likewise insane snowman to handle as the birds trail Kristoff and Sven into the hostel barn.

"Oh, hello, little-birdy-wirdies. Nice to meet you." Olaf had that condescending air on again, as he looks from Kristoff to the fowl he was conversing with, as if the man was the one off his rocker.

"This is Kristoff. This is Sven. This is their Royal Ice Harvester and Deliverer sleigh that Elsa appointed to them after Anna hinted like a ba-zillion times." Scuttle had just met his match for inane prattle in this three piled snow mound creature we all have come to love.

"And I'm Olaf. I like warm hugs." The always pleasant snowman extends his branch arms out and moves towards the befuddled skittish birds that instead scatter wildly across the barn at his open invitation as Olaf patronizingly addresses the seagulls and puffins that were hitching a ride on Sven's accommodating back. "Where'd you all go?"

_Blink. Blink. Blink. Blink. _

After assessing the situation from his perch in the high rafters of the barn where he was keeping a look-out all night, dutiful Pascal abandons the safety of his post. Though quite self-aware of the carnivorous fowl and their tendency to be predators for small prey such as he, the previously obscured chameleon stealthily sneaks up to the feathered gaggle as they rest en masse nearby. Pascal then uses the power of his hypnotizing eyes on he goofy birdbrains to perplex them into baffled submission and they cease their distracting kerfuffle.

"Ohhhh! Prince 'Kristly' is short for 'Kristoff'! Why didn't you say so in the first place, boyo?" Scuttle had remained close to his quarry as he wobbles across the barn stalls to follow Kristoff who was seeing to Sven's watering and carrot and oat supper he retrieves from in the sleigh's rear bed.

Doing his best to ignore the feathered annoyance, a tired out Kristoff rolls his eyes to the heavens as he takes the second chomp of the large orange carrot after Sven had already slobbered on it

"A-hem!" After clearing his gargled throat loudly self-important, the stout long-billed seagull prepares to deliver his memorized speech to the Wind Whisperer. However, to a few passers by housing their own horses for the night, it all sounded like ear-splitting squawking birdlike wails that the nutty young blonde man was conversing with.

"We have a message from a pretty little lady for her 'beloved Prince Kristly'"

"What?! When?! Where is she?!" Kristoff nearly chokes on the carrot he was sharing halves with Sven in place of dinner. He stumbles forward to where the seagull ringleader and his other carnivorous friends, who had come to again, were encircling around a smiling Olaf and pensive Pascal perched on the snowman's shoulder.

"Over the sea! Over the sea! Or was that 'under'? Always mixing up my directions!" The zany bird's eyes roll right around his strange head.

"Anyway, your little princess is singing away, scrubbing decks on a little steamship heading northwest of here over that ocean some 50-60 km away." The birdbrain actually says something of sensible import between his ramblings that tilted a bit Caribbean flavored musical.

Just like he had heard the music traveling on the winds overhead one day long ago from a funny little crustacean that had just hatched from beneath the sand and scurried all of its creepy claws to the ocean. All whilst singing that gleeful tune before joining its mermaid and merman populated deep ocean denizens _Under da Sea_ for good.

"Missy Anna' told us to tell you 'not to be worried' because she's 'not worried' because the little songbird made a new friend in …let me see, his name was…Job! Yeah! Job! He's watching out for the little lady, so she knows everything will turn out fine because she believes with all her heart that her Kristly is coming for her. That's you, Bucko! Whew! There ya go! Message delivered. That'll be one shiny gold thing-a-ma-bob as service charge." After delivering Anna's message in a run-on not-stopping-for-breath-sentence, as accurately as his addled brain could retain, Scuttle sticks out his open palmed feathers before Kristoff who was too grinning in relief from ear to ear to notice.

After Pascal gives the cocky bird a pounded fist look, the seagull bursts out in full fledged laughter.

"Bwa-ha-ha! Made ya look! Haa, ha! Just kidding, guys! Had you going for a minute there, didn't I? Ha! Ha!"

"No. Why was that so funny?" Olaf responds at the pause honestly naive. But the literal snowperson never did get any jokes barely.

"You just get out a boat on that big 'ole sea and the '_Scuttle Reconnaissance'_ will do our best to lead you back to that lovely lass of yours. Won't we gang?" Though Scuttle believed he was talking to his choir, his fellow aerials were more entranced now with Olaf's comedy act antics involving an empty pail, a handful of oats and the snowman's snow flurry cloud as he raps his wooden drumsticks upon the frosted metal drum. Happy to hear of Anna, the oats upon it were dancing to Olaf's own peculiar snowflake beats.

"Come on, troops! No more silly parlor tricks! We've an important mission to stake out that kidnapped little girl! I gotta keep these airhead slackers in line." Scuttle murmurs to Kristoff that last line behind a raised wing as if he were the perfectly sane one of the bunch.

"Remember, we'll find you." The recon commando seagull does little to quell Kristoff's suspicions on the aerial squadron's reliability as he salutes in his topsy-turvy manner.

For after a few squawked wails signaling the others to leave, Scuttle leads his foolheardy group straight into the barn door. Each one goes down SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT! against the hardwood before righting their dizzied bodies to exit through an open window hole near the horse stalls.

"Bye-bye, Birdies! Tell Anna 'Hi' from me, when you see her!" Olaf waddles over to the window as he waves pleasantly, tracing their aerial path across the now moonlit sky of 11PM.

"Right. _You'll_ lead the way…" Kristoff shares a skeptical look with Sven, who had remained radio silent all while the strange seagull sortie was ruling the roost.

"At least now you know that Anna's doing okay." Sven mentally taps into Kristoff's somewhat relieved thoughts as he recalls the Anna-like phrasing and descriptions of his physique that only could come from his cute little firecracker of a wife.

"Thank God." Kristoff breathes a sigh as he pats his reindeer pal's head. "The message said that guy Job is looking out for her as a friend? I guess Anna does have that effect on people." Kristoff thinks to himself with a self-deprecating smile. Just then, the wise words of his old friend and mentor…_and Father?..._creep back into the forefront of his mind amidst his still unquenched concern for his beloved's welfare.

'_Let go of the anger, my boy, and you'll hear nature's voices__. __The colors of the wind will paint arrows pointing to your love__ on the horizon, __if you learn to listen with your heart, Spirit Whisperer__…"_

Feeling Ragi's words, Kristoff's distant eyes follow the far-off trail that the little flock of God's feathered creatures was weaving across the finally dark sky.

The tall blonde mountain man just notices, in the corner of his eye as he's about to turn away, how the five birds' black-tipped white wings cross the full moon in pursuit of reuniting the starlit path of these young lovers, in the perfect shape of an arrow head…

* * *

After his long, revealing night, an exhausted, yet pleased to have word of his Anna, Kristoff Bjorgman trudges into the Salsbrucket Hostel. Only to be accosted by the irate owner of the establishment, who stops the tall blonde at the reception desk to inform him of the extensive damages his inn suffered as a result of his party's actions. A shocked Kristoff is slapped with a lengthy bill for the damages done to the man's prized tavern.

_Thank you very much, Cousin Eugene._

By the time those two bad boy brothers' barroom brawl's resulting cost of broken furniture, liquor bottles and beer barrel destruction were tallied, displayed and fairly argued as to monetary value, our tired hardworking mountain man doesn't get to his room for some well deserved sleep until nearly midnight.

Quietly making his way through the darkened upstairs hallway after removing his boots at the stair top as not to disturb others who were fortunate enough to find sleep already, Kristoff opens the unlatched door.

Before he left to take care of the Vis-à-vis and the two horses, big sister-ish Elsa had informed her 'little' brother-in-law of the room she'd designated for him. And she slipped in the fact that, with only three rooms available, he'd have to be sharing it with a certain undesirable Prince Hans, of all people.

Kristoff's keen senses were grateful in a suspicious cynical sort of way that someone was indeed present this un-chaperoned night in _his_ hostel room, rather than in the Queen's, temptingly just next door.

The well-built young man stealthily crosses the moonlit room as silently as he could. Though acquiescing without complaint to Elsa's unspoken desire for him to smell clean (not barnyard) aboard ship, Kristoff would have preferred sleeping in the barn with Sven and the smelly horses rather than in a soft bed with this unpalatable—albeit undeniably sweeter scented—former rival for Anna's affections. But a rugged hard life taught Kristoff long ago that 'needs must'.

With only the three bedrooms available, it was either Hans or Elsa up for his bunkmate, with the married couple taking one room. And the way those two singles had been dancing around one another—relationship-wise—these past few days, even in his own tumult, experienced married man Kristoff could sense when his interfering presence may be a necessity in Anna's place.

Kristoff really didn't give a wit beyond general caring of the Queen's safety, but if it was important to Anna, it was _**imperative**_ to him to make sure to keep a close vigilant eye over her untouched pure sister and that wandering smooth-talking lothario in his wife's absence.

Even if close, this time, meant he had to physically share a begrudging bed with the skinny twit.

After fumbling his way to a chair to hang his yet fairly damp shirt and vest cloying to his chest all this while, Kristoff plunks onto the bed with the resigned sigh of a martyr.

_My pants and I are not separating tonight—no way, no how!_

His large robust body can't help but bump—though he tried his best to avoid—Prince Hans of the Southern Isles' rather greedily sprawled out form, after his own evening's battle exhaustion. The red-headed prince was all skin and bones beneath those pale blue thin silk pajamas that were a size or two too big, that one of the females purchased for him when buying extra clothes for them all earlier in the day.

_I wonder which one…_

Kristoff thinks to himself with a smirk as he tries to settle in. Despite his slight frame, Hans was still everywhere on the double bed.

"Move your skinny butt over." Kristoff gives Hans' dozing shoulder an unfriendly shove as the bigger man tries to resolve his mind to sleep himself.

"No, my Queen. I mustn't mar your purity…" Whispered on the winds of a moonlit dream's darkness, Kristoff could just about make out the strange declaration on Hans' yet agonized slumbered subconscious as he stirs when the Ice Harvester first lays his own head down to the pillow on his far side of the bed.

_Did Hans just say that out loud?_

Or was it the Wind Whisperer eavesdropping unbeknownst on some semi-inebriated dream?

Unsure of his newfound abilities and still reeling from the night's adventures and revelations with Sven and Ragi, Kristoff decides to give Hans the benefit of the doubt and let the loose statement go.

Taking another stab at elusive sleep to ready for the big day in the next leg of their journey tomorrow, Kristoff closes his eyes tightly until he feels a warm hand tentatively touch his bare back.

The blonde's eyes pop open in unnerved shock, frozen in place as he was pretty sure now that Hans was actually verbally speaking in his sleep, in the faintest of soft voices.

"Snowflake…Please forgive me if my brazen and forthright admiration for you has inveigled you to acquiesce to fill the void in my heart that holds you in every dream…I am inconsolable to the fact that I know you and I can never be now…after what I did you…"

_Wow! Even when he's in unconscious sleep this guy's longwinded! What did you do to her, you lout?!_

_But I'm glad to hear you're backing off now, pal. For everyone's sake_. Kristoff thinks with an uncomfortable smirk, as, at the same time in a deeply masculine voice, he speaks one deliberate terse phrase aloud to signify_ his_ irked presence in place of the fantasized ice maiden:

"**It's Kristoff."**

Then adds a truly darkly threatening**: **"_**Now, get your hand off my back."**_

"Hmm? What?...Oh! Do forgive me, sir. I-It won't happen again!" As red in the face as his red hair tumbling uncoiffed about his startled awake pretty boy face, a fiercely ashamed Hans Westergaard immediately removes his wandering appendage's palm from its comforting touch on Kristoff's broad, muscular, and warm–in stark contrast to Elsa's slim, delicate, and cool—bare back. How could he have made such an error?! Even in his sleep! The shamed young man sits straight up on the bed, his lowered voice brimming over with evident mortification.

Unable to meet Kristoff's by now challenging gaze, Hans shrinks back with as much distance between them as possible to his far side of the shared bed.

"It better not. Or I'll break your scrawny arm six ways 'til Sunday." The newly wedded virile young man was more amused than he was disgusted (though that repulsed sentiment was still there somewhere) as he revels in the joy of upbraiding one of the pair of cavalier criminal culprits who caused the hostel owner this night to raid Kristoff's unhappy money purse. It was nice somehow to see the former villain of Arendelle get his comeuppance of curling into his vain self in utter humiliation. That beat this lofty Prince's uppity elitist superiority anyday, in Kristoff's book of justice.

Though his own conscience knew better, Kristoff couldn't help himself from enjoying taking down this royal pain down a peg or two. But seeing how wretched the man looked all curled up, and after hearing Hans' heartfelt confessions before, the good boy Bulda raised wouldn't be totally devoid of compassion for his fellow forlorn creature.

"Just get to sleep. Don't even dream of her. It'll be easier that way." Kristoff advises and sympathizes with the painful machinations of the human heart in his down to earth way.

And yet, as he settles his own fatigued bones down to rest on his side, Kristoff can't restrain himself from adding one last barb.

"After all, you've got a schooner to take the helm of in a few hours…_Kommander _Westergaard." With the ridiculed moniker, Kristoff allows the tiniest smile to tickle his lips before dismissing the rattled man beside him fully.

Kristoff's brown eyes then meander to the open window where the penetrating moonlight was just breaking through the dark midnight clouds that had parted.

_And that ship will take me across that damned sea to my Anna ._

Kristoff's mind then steadies himself to make his first attempt to reach Anna via this special new skill he'd been told he possesses over and over.

_First by those old Saami, then Sven, and now even Ragi. _

Did even the trolls know something about his extraordinary connection to this icy land way back then? Kristoff doesn't waste much thought on that potential musing, although the yellowed crystal necklace his rock-like foster parents had given as a wedding present was strangely beginning to glow. Unbeknownst to either man in the room, the crystals' eerie golden gleam that had the power to channel the Aurora Borealis itself, or so troll legends say, begin to blink and shine.

The golden incandescence pulsates in intensity from inside the one clothing satchel that he had managed to preserve this entire trip, under the chair across the room. The radiating glow was in synch it seemed with the 'Snow Prince's' singularly treasured concentrated thought of his love for Anna as he sends it out across the winds …

He focuses all his strength of mind on one thought, one person, as he closes his soulful chocolaty eyes, almost in a prayer…

_"If you can hear me, Anna. I promise I'll be there to save you soon. Just you wait and see. I'm coming for you, Baby. I love you…" _The Wind Whisperer in Kristoff Bjorgman uses all his focus to transmit the sentiment of his heart along the moonlight's reflective golden beams to his true love…

* * *

Those radiating lights twinkle their golden path across the crests of each sea wave until the crystalline sparkle reflects in the mirror on the face of the full moon above Princess Anna's head.

She has the sudden urge to glance up to the emerging stars in the illuminated moonlight as it shines ten times more brightly than it had just been silhouetting her petite frame against the night sky, the stars like little fireworks exploding in her gaze.

Anna was perched atop the small steamship's wheelhouse, where Job had hefted her up 'to give the bridge's roof a good scrubbin'' and to check for any damage after that sudden, inexplicable storm that the little vessel had just been tossed and tussled on the angry waves to survive under the experienced Caribbean's hand.

Her pitter-pattering feet and stumbling scraping sounds directly above that had been annoying a grumbling Captain Houtebeen for some fifteen minutes now instantly cease. The patch-eyed pirate in the bridgehouse below cocks his head, with one suspicious eye squinting at the irritating child's abrupt lack of distracting aggravation.

_Noisy, infernal wench!_

But Anna's deep heart in love could indeed intuitively hear her true love's voice calling to her across the waters. Their love was so great that her senses were keen to his presence, even in the very air. She hears her Kristoff's whisper on the wind as clearly as if he were right there on the bridge house's roof next to her.

Foregoing her diligent scrubbing with the brush at those persistent birdy droppings, dreamy Anna sits back to stargaze. Her own whispered response was every bit as heartfelt as it was innocent enough to believe that the voice in her head was truly her husband sending a message to her and not only a 'vocal mirage' for her needy, lonely soul.

Her faith in her boy was so ardent and pure that their link over the distance could be this impassioned.

"I love it when you call me 'Baby.'"

Still in a deliriously in love with her hunky new hubby state, as this emotionally driven girl probably would be for the rest of her life, Anna gurgles to the wind's whispers. She embraces its invisible warmth to her chest, where beneath her blouse, hung on a brown hemp cord, was a single golden yellow crystal accosted from her new husband's handmade necklace that was a present from her inlaws, the Trolls. She feels the jewel's faceted edges exude a curious warmth as she presses its obsured dazzle even closer to her heart. Princess Anna smiles, despite her own desperate situation, in an expressive lovestruck security hug towards her lover.

Anna recalls the fun scene of her 'snitching' one of Kristoff's gems from his wedding gift. After all, the roped necklace the trolls had crafted for the groom to wear at their troll marriage ceremony was replete with such shiny crystals. So why shouldn't his new wife swipe one crystal sparkler right off his ripped muscular chest when he was feigning sleep after it caught her mesmerized attention with its soft pulsating glow? His pleasurable _'punishment'_ for her naughty stealing that came soon thereafter on their first honeymoon night spent in that cave in Valley of Living Rock was nothing short of glorious, as the golden crystal, now around her neck, glowed all the while.

And Anna could sense his true love undulate through that crystal again in this moment upon her thumping heart.

His windswept declaration had reached her heart and she knew he'd be coming soon. Anna blows a kiss to her Kristoff, on the brightest star twinkling down from the heavens as she makes a silent wish upon it.

_Please let Kristly and I be happy together again…soon._

Anna's wish upon a star, coupled with her unquestioning belief in her love's assured protection that had been projected to her over the miles, causes her, through her crystal that captured all the mysterious glimmer of God in Nature's beauteous phenomenon called the Aurora Borealis, to sparkle atop the highest spot on the small boat, like a shining star herself, all aglow with his utterly pure love...

* * *

Sleep had been an elusive commodity for the remainder of his guilt-stricken night by the time a sheepish Hans Westergaard rises, nearing their 5AM appointment with the sea, Kristoff had already departed to ready Sven and their supplies for the trip.

Alone, Hans quickly changes his clothes into some that intrepid seamstress Princess Rapunzel had quick measured him up for before she and Elsa went into shop at Salsbrucket's ample offerings of textile mill produced clothing in the mercantile district they had stopped at—for themselves and the three guys they were traveling with.

After giving his night's stubble a welcome shave and his sideburns a delicate trim, fastidious Prince Hans—ahem, Kommander Westergaard—appeared a far more dashing a heroic figure in the vanity's mirror than he felt.

Hans recalls how he and his brother Eugene had successfully thwarted those ruffians in their evil intentions and mocking of the Queen. Yes, he remembered the thrill of the swashbuckling combat with his beloved sword and a worthy opponent. But also vivid in his mind were the rash indulgences and uncontrollable acts after the exhilaration of the 'battle's' success had clouded his mind.

He keenly recalls how he had carried the tender bodied, dizzied Queen Elsa up to her room. The passionate kisses that had ensued with the delicate beauty soon after were nothing short of heaven for the guilty man who was now putting himself through hell for allowing them.

_How could I have been so weak to have allowed that? She deserves so much better…_

Hans nearly nicks his handsome, noble chin with his sharp razor knife in some kind of masochistic punishment as he and his conscience put the final touches on his contrite face.

_Could she, after giving lowly nothing me the great honor of commissioning such an unworthy man to be the top ranking ship's officer in her royal navy, now look upon that man with anything beyond derision and shame after last night? How can I face those flawless, crystalline eyes without flinching in remorse and contrition now that I am aware of the emotions my improper behavior towards her innocence illicit?_

_And yet, was that impassioned expression of my esteemed regard and admiration for her ever truly a deception?_

At the wash basin, Hans splashes cool water on his face one more time in one more attempt to clear his befuddled mind's tangled cobwebs.

He knew one thing for certain, though—nothing could ever erase his inebriated 'Snowflake's' kisses from his memory.

_But I know what I must do to unravel your mind's disarray—for your sake, my beautiful Queen. Whether out of kindness or pity, I fear you have grown too attached to me…_

After clearing up the remainder of his meager belongings from the tiny hostel room that he and Kristoff had shared last night as an odd couple indeed, Hans cautiously peeks out before entering the hall.

Once out there, he could plainly hear, through the thin doors, how his brother Eugene and Rapunzel were bickering as married couples were wont to do—about how too warm or too snug her clothing choices for his traveling clothes were mainly.

Then a loud, tearing ripping sound soon follows thereafter that signaled the unlucky man's 'minor' adjustments of newly purchased wear that would require some quick stitching now.

But it was the silent room in the center that captures the majority of Hans' attention. He imagines the young woman within as she would be preparing for their imminent rescue mission to save her little sister from kidnapped captivity.

With a longing expression for a past to have been a different world entirely concerning himself and Elsa, Hans, still a bit dazed, stands in the darkened hallway dreaming of a place where princes and queens and royal houses and kingdoms took no precedence to matters of love.

He is startled when the quiet door his green eyes had been fixed upon cracks open and Queen Elsa, wearing a little grey shawl over her long, gold trimmed deep purple dress, takes a tentative step out into the dark hall.

"Oh! Good morning, Prince—or should I say 'Kommander' Westergaard." At first surprised to see him standing there, Elsa's smile was as genuinely blinding to his hungry eyes as the first rays of sunlight that were beginning to dawn over this Land of the Midnight Sun on this early morning through her room's window behind her. Those sunstreaks play on her platinum tresses to cascade down into her trademark, elegantly prim side braid.

"…Good morning." His eyebrows were furrowed in uncertain confusion as a torn Hans responds far too politely and succinctly, but he could manage little else.

"Were you waiting for me? I am so very sorry to be tardy right on the onset, but for some reason, I woke up with a bit of a headache. Do forgive me, kind Sir?" Elsa was pleasantly smiling and teasing him, completely unaware of the troubled man's agonized discomfort.

Whether last night's interlude of flirtations with the very man standing in the dark before her was too much for her regal proper mind to process, or some innate self-preservation to keep control of her ice powers that had guarded her from such excess emotional wear and tear, or if it was merely the common after effect of even that small amount of alcohol in her fragile system's none-too-normal processes—whatever the reason, Queen Elsa had blocked out last night. It had been forgotten and chased to the recesses of her mind in denial.

That is to say, up to a point.

"I suppose the strain and pressure of our impending voyage and its imperative outcome has been weighing too much on my little mind." Elsa finds her self-conscious humor not received with a kind smile and witty humorous retort she had come to expect and desire from Hans Westergaard.

But the redheaded man fighting a battle within his own conscience was simply gazing upon her with flat consternation.

"And with all the new clothing and bedding that Rapunzel insisted that we may require onboard the ship. it did prove to be a little difficult to squeeze into my one trunk. But I finally used a little ice power to seal it closed." Elsa's exotic eyes purposely glance back into her room and the trunk upon the bed for the 'gentleman' to courteously retrieve as he had always jumped to her every whim, waiting upon her hand and foot up to now, without so much as a word.

However, the aloof and reticent manner on his unforthcoming, drawn line face gives the Ice Queen chills that she had not felt from the Danish prince before, as his green eyes avoid her blue ones purposefully.

"I see." Though it was killing him inside to be so cold to her when he only wished to give this fragile lady all his warmth, Hans utters the two words simply, in disattached response. He then pointedly turns towards the room to the right where Eugene and Rapunzel were emerging from their door finally.

Nervously confused, Elsa giggles as she blows that stray, pesky wild bang back from her face. Hans had to do all he could to fight the urge to push that blonde tuft back for her, but his gloved hands restrain themselves to rest upon the leather holstered sword on the belt of his gold and crimson trimmed naval jacket uniform.

It was then that Elsa notices the tall, thin man was no longer sporting the Arendelle grey cloak she had given him as he had previously on this journey together. But rather, he was wearing a new dark Navy issue coat over the dark blue naval tunic she had personally selected for him with Rapunzel.

"I am glad to see that Kommander's jacket fits you so well. Rapunzel herself aided the storekeeper, upon my request, for it to be tailored especially for you with all due haste, especially for our trip this morning. It's silly, but it seems that most Naval Commanders that the uniforms are designed for in this port are several sizes heftier than you—"

Elsa was desperately trying to make pleasant conversation with the laconic young man, until he gives her an almost indifferent curt reply.

"I apologize if my slightly built proportions are less than satisfactory for a Commander in your Navy, Your Majesty." Hans states, much too formally clinical for Elsa's taste.

"Oh, no! That's not what I meant at all. I was merely saying…" Elsa's cheeks flush as she stumbles for words under Hans' cool gaze upon her. "Please allow me to restate how your physique made more than an impressive performance last night." Referring to her memories of the barroom brawl, Elsa attempts to 'right' any ill-spoken words with a well placed compliment that a pair of curious pitchers pick up on right away.

"Music to any man's ears, am I right, little bro?" Eugene elbows Hans in the ribs with a catty glance and a wink in Elsa's blushing direction. "I see you two are bright eyed and bushy tailed and up with the dawn. Or have you crazy kids skipped the sleeping stage altogether?" Flynn Rider ambles up to the incommunicative pair with his own adult mood insinuations.

After all, he had personally witnessed both the ultra-passionate consented kiss between the youthful couple after the fight ended, and the valiant way that his brother had carried the seductive eyed young queen up to her room last night.

It didn't take much for Flynn's worldly imagination to put the rest of the night together for them.

"You sly dog, you. Didn't know you had it in you, little bro. Can't say I blame you, though, with Her Legginess over there." Flynn again elbows Hans in the ribs as he mumbles like a proud elder brother such crude statements right in Hans' appalled ear.

"Enough, Storbror. Please retrieve the Queen's trunk from her room." Dismissively striding right past Elsa, without so much as making the eye contact she was longing for, such as she was hanging on his every word, a detached Hans takes the two small sacks from his older brother's quizzical hands and then goes out of his way to fetch struggling Rapunzel's heavier load of double trunks and medical supplies baskets.

_When __Eugene__ gets bloodied and wounded this time, I will be prepared!_

"Gee…Thanks, Hans…? You okay?" Chasing after the seemingly distraught quick-stepping young officer, as he heads down the stairs double barreled fast, cocerned Rapunzel asks in a low voice, after she exchanges a bewildered look with her husband. Eugene gives her a pair of big eyes, rolling in likewise curiosity as he shrugs his shoulders over Elsa's deflated, hung head as Rapunzel too shrugs at his high signs before she scurries down the steps after Hans. The blonde young woman lets out a repressed sigh.

"Prince Hans? Did I do something wrong?" Never imbued with much self-confidence and feeling quite abandoned by his cold looks and thin, nonexistent smiles, rejected Elsa whispers through the dark to the air, as her voice catches in her constricting throat.

Eugene was just about able to make out her words in between the cold ice-puffed breaths, as the older man joins the dejected younger female in the hall, at the top of the steps that his wife and brother had already disappeared down. The Ice Queen was staring after them in disheartened shock.

"Chill, lady. I mean, not literally, just figuratively. Cut him some slack—we guys are known to try to act a little macho and aloof the morning after, just so you still think we're cool. He's just going through a little phase, believe me. I've done the same. _Many_ times." Flynn, rather big brotherly, makes a yawning attempt at mending icy bridges between these young new lovers as he saunters past to fetch her bulging trunk and head downstairs, like the cat who knows someone ate the canary.

_Macho? A phase? The 'morning after?' After what?_

Flabbergasted and naïve, Elsa of Arendelle's frosted over mind at Hans' cold shoulder was now worrying with all these new ideas that smug, experienced man-of-the-world Eugene Fitzherbert was enigmatically injecting into the situation.

"I don't understand…What went wrong?" Dispirited Elsa innocently whispers, alone in the darkness, quite disappointed that someone she had believed she was becoming close to—someone who could be, perhaps, her champion—was growing distant, and she didn't have a clue as to the reason why.

The romantic escapade last night was so impermissible to Elsa's orderly mind that the Queen of Arendelle had all but wiped the liaison from her memory as light feet take her down the stairs to join the others.

But as she turns the corner of the lobby, looking so very demure and sweet, a tormented Prince Hans could not sanction his thought processes in such a disjunctive manner as she, concerning his growing sentiment for her.

Perhaps because not only was he raised from childhood to be a lonely man, but he also recognized, now more than ever, that he was in love with the one woman he must never have.

The sins of his crimes against her personally were far too great to overcome.

* * *

"But I've practically already paid for redecorating your entire barroom! You don't have to charge me a king's ransom for staying one night in this three flea-bitten—"

_Let the anger go, my boy…_

A disgruntled Kristoff hears Ragi's voice calm his heart, so easily irate with shop owners and businessmen the blonde man normally was.

"Hey…never mind that. Thanks for providing a dry roof over their heads while I was out in the storm. I'm sorry for being short with you, but my new wife is missing and her family and I are setting off to go find her now." Heeding the words whispered in his head, Kristoff instead opens his heart to the portly man, whose plump, vexed red face turns right around for the kind word.

"Oh, you poor boy! Ingeborg! Rustle up a quick breakfast to go for our travelers while the boys and I load up their sleigh. It's the least that Salsbrucket Inn can do to provide our friends with warm and full bellies as they set out on their important journey. And I'll only charge you for the two rooms, since you were out most of the night, battling the elements, my good man."

Quite a change of tune for the hostel owner causes Kristoff to lightly smile. He was reminded again of how even the mere mention of his Anna could brighten the atmosphere.

_I guess just like Ragi said, we are all of us God's creatures, too. _

* * *

So, with a bit of help from new friends, with a full food basket in hand, and waved well wishes 'goodbye,' Kristoff drives Sven's full Ice Harvester's sleigh towards Salsbrucket Port—just a few kilometers west.

The space was limited between the five people, and the one sweet-toothed snowman scarfing down the traditional Norwegian powdered sugar coated pancakes called 'pannekaken,' until the rolled and folded crepes filled with berry and jams were smudged all over his face, not to mention all over one now extra colorful (and gooey) chameleon and their multiple trunks and supply baggage.

Rapunzel had soon been pulled onto her tactile, teasing husband's lap, along with a napkin wiped Pascal on Flynn's shoulder as his doting wife feeds the three of them in turn, with some of the sweet offerings the hostel owner's wife had cooked up for them that Olaf didn't yet devour.

But the pair in the middle sleigh bench was more of the silent and taciturn variety, despite Olaf's best efforts to get either Hans or Elsa to speak.

"Hey, Olaf, why don't you pass around some of those pannekaken crepe…thingys to your friends up there? I always say a good breakfast in the morning keeps 'em full, keeps 'em focused! And these fellas can sure put a sweet smile on your face! Mmm hmm, good! And it's only five in the morning!" Feeling lively this early morn as he chews expressively on his fruity Norwegian pancake, Eugene tries to lighten the sleigh's depressing mood for his emotional sweetie's sake if not his sour-pussed little bro, as Flynn Rider gives it his best selling technique.

He encouragingly pats the snowy shoulder of the only passenger of the middle seat who was paying any attention to anyone or anything beyond the treeline. Eugene glances quizzically on either side of the bench that Hans and Elsa were purposely as far separated upon with as much luggage in between them as possible.

"Here, Hans!" Olaf offers up to the person on his right but the Naval officer declines the sticky crepe offer with a waved away hand, after the hungry snowman had already stuffed one sweet powdered, sugar fried breakfast fare into his big-toothed mouth whole, without chewing.

"No, thank you, Olaf." Elsa, too, refuses the pannekaken. Fond memories of cooking up the Danish version of her own pancakes was a little painful right now, as the friendly snowman waves the folded crepe in front of her face until it splits open and several whole, loose jam coated berries spill out onto the queen's unsuspecting lap.

"Oh, Olaf!" Elsa cries out, never fond of a mess, especially not blood red berries strewn upon her neat apparel that instantly stain her pale blue gloved hands as she tries to wipe them away.

"Oh, sorry…" Olaf stuffs the remainder of the pancakes into his mouth for safekeeping, Kristoff not even getting one offered crumb of the free meal he'd earned this morning..

Reacting to her distress, Hans immediately springs to action, using his own fresh new pair of white gloves to be saturated against Olaf's clueless melting bottom snowmound pressed against the focused heat of the quick thinking man's warm hand. Once wet, Hans leans over the piles of luggage to use his moistened hand to carefully press the created water onto her skirt. He tenderly, yet firmly wipes the red jam stain from the gold trimmed belt section of Elsa's prim purple and blue shirt where it connected with her long fancy gold trimmed violet skirt.

"But, Prince Hans! Your new gloves will be stained!" Though thrilled by the sensation of his merest touch, Elsa protests Hans' gentlemanly selfless act in his concern for her appearance more than his own. As he continues, pointedly focused on cleaning her belt, Elsa can't help but gaze in unabashed longing and admiration towards him while she was sure he wasn't looking.

"But at least this type of stain can be washed away, if attended forthwith. So please allow me to endeavor to try, your Majesty." Acquainted with the sort of stains that were not so easily removed, Hans says softly in that gentle voice he reserved for her alone again. Forgetting himself entirely again in the beauty of her enchanting eyes, Hans and Elsa share an unresolved forever glance until Eugene's coarse voice breaks the moment.

"Aw, he got the stain out! And here I thought you'd enjoy having 'red fox' berries on your lap permanently, Queenie." With a coy smirk, Eugene wickedly teases Hans and Elsa again as both look up from one another's entranced gaze to blush at his juicy comparison. Hans clears his throat in embarrassment and returns to his distant seat, the reticent look returning to his guilty eye.

Rapunzel slaps her insensitive mate's arm in punishment for blowing a tender moment to smithereens.

"Yowie! Bad arm…Darling." Eugene wails in her ear, then amends it to a fond nickname.

"Ooops, sorry…! Wow—!" Rapunzel starts to apologize, but her attention is soon stolen away as the sleigh maneuvers around the harbor dock to arrive at the HMnoS Gler's loading bay area, with the ship shimmering and shining against the rising sun.

"Whew! She's a beauty! Your first vessel awaits your conquest, 'Kommander' Westergaard." A whistling Eugene signals with his one good arm towards the docked schooner in all its rigged, clewlined glory.

Half-proud and half-mocking, Hans' older brother lifts his pregnant wife from the parked sleigh's rear in a show off his own 'leadership command.'

"Or should we call her your 'second conquest'?" In an undertone murmur, Eugene's eyebrows at eye level with Hans still in the sleigh, raise up and down quite jovially as Rapunzel, who grasped each one of her love's alluded to innuendo, knowing him so well, inside and out, was careful this time to whack the correct appendage in doling out just punishment to her uncouth, shameless tease of a husband.

"The Gler is my **first **command…if the offer still stands, that is, Your Majesty." Offended by the older man's crass phrasing in his ear, a shocked and uppity Hans exits the sleigh. He gives Eugene a pursed lip look as he alights neatly beside his handsome yet rascally, elder sibling.

Hans then turns to speak to Elsa at last. The ignored queen was eager for his attention of any kind, albeit formal and polite, as he deems to help her from the passenger seat with one offered ungloved hand.

"I have every confidence in your abilities to lead this vessel in search for my sister." Queen Elsa, monarchal head of the Norwegian Sjoforsvaret, says with complete assurance as she takes Hans' hand.

Just then, Harbormaster Alfen appears from the ship to dutifully attend the Naval schooner's launch at his ruler's side, after a few final instructions to the reliable workers of the steam crew below deck, who the harbormaster had hand selected as good reliable workers to run the boiler room for this journey.

"As official overseer of this secured Naval Port of Salsbrucket, as Harbormaster of the Nord-Trondelag municipality of Naeroy, under her Majesty's direct order, I, Halvdan Alfen, declare this ship, the Her Norwegian Majesty's Ship Gler, seaworthy." Performing his duties to a tee, every document signed and sealed for this emergency naval commission under the explicit order of the Queen herself, Alfen proudly states, looking to Queen Elsa for approval, which she gives in a regal nod, self-consciously removing her red berry stained gloves before any of her subjects saw.

"And I hereby commission the command of this Schooner class vessel of the Sjoforsvaret of Norway, the HMnoMS Gler—" The Harbormaster pauses in his speech at the rising dawn to look the taller man standing before him in the eye.

"—to Kommander Westergaard."

Despite this morning's shaky relationship's cold shoulder, Elsa still feels a surge of proud warmth tug at her heart as her right hand lightly touches Kommander Hans Westergaard, of Her Majesty's Royal Navy, on the firm golden epaulette and decorative roping shoulder to signal her unconditional trust in placing one of the gems of her kingdom in his care.

"I am proud to serve to the best of my abilities and honor this ship under your direct command, Your Royal Majesty, Queen Elsa." Wearing his debonair navy blue Kommander's jacket and complimentary white formal suit pants uniform, Hans kneels at her feet, his forehead pressed against Elsa's thin pale hand in show of absolute respect for her authority as the new Sovereign he was pledging to serve under.

But the shy young woman, yet unaccustomed to another human's direct skin-to-skin touch, nevermind this particular handsome young man's winsome attentions, blushes violently, unable to quite know how to react and still keep her cool. Literally.

Seeing this predicament he had placed the delicate maiden in, as the gallant young man rises, he tenderly takes hold of the elegant Queen's trembling palm. With great warmth, Prince Hans then arranges the back of her slender pale ice blue long-nailed hand for his awestruck, adoring lips to graze gently across in utter grateful tenderness, despite himself.

And as Hans Wesregaard stands to his full 6 foot 2 inch height, his dulled olive green eyes were not quite able to withdraw from Elsa's surprised, yet inexpressively pleased ones as she bats those heavily violet shadowed eyes up at him, then demurely draws her right hand over her stirred heart at his intimate startling bare skin touch she didn't expect.

Hans' resolve falters within this immeasurable moment of her precious trust being bestowed upon the young man who had only daydreamed of the grandeur and distinction of a Naval Commander's appointment with such a worthy vessel. For, as 13th in line back home, due to the rules of Naval seniority succession, young Prince Hans would never command any ship.

The red-headed officer could only watch now in disbelieving astonishment as his tall black boots, shining in the new sunlight, take their first steps across the sparkling clean deck of the first commission of his Naval career. His viridescent eyes, in a melancholy mood previously for the relationship in turmoil with the woman he loves, but knows he shouldn't, sparkle involuntarily upon her altered from timid to beaming a smile for believing in him, despite himself, to give the undeserving man this remarkable tremendous chance of a lifetime.

"Thank you." In all earnest, Hans mouths to Elsa across the deck as their eyes interact with his most genuine, grateful smile locking with her gorgeous trusting one, receiving the utter radiance of her effulgent brilliance as reward. And his shining lady of ice all wrapped in royal purples, pale blues and gold shimmering against the dawn, could be no more lovely in his besmitten eyes.

There, upon the tentative pair, the diminutive rays of the first sunlight cascade down as the sun begins to make its assertive ascending move. As now does Kommander Westergaard, for the trained Naval officer wastes no time to take command of this vessel. He strides his long thin legs purposefully into the bridge wheelhouse where a volunteer helmsman was awaiting his commanding officer's order with a respectful greeting salute.

"As you were, Helmsman. Set a course to navigate us through this port, via the Kvistenfjorden and the Norwegian Sea, towards the Mosken Island of Vaeroy in Nordland county. Enroute with this faster vessel, we hope to intercept a small steamship under pirate control. Our dear Princess of Arendelle has been kidnapped by the villains, and we hope to apprehend the guilty and free the lady unharmed to safety as swiftly as possible. Has the rest of the crew below deck been informed of our pertinent mission?"

"Yes, sir!" The young man with droopy eyes and mousy brown hair responds quite enthusiastically.

"And please give the order to hoist the anchor to break ground to clear us of the seabed. Then set main sail to course, with all due haste. And spare not the engines, Helmsman. Time is of the essence." In full display of his experienced seaman's moxie, Kmdr. Westergaard was born to be in Naval command.

Elsa proudly attests this in her pleased mind of his intelligent capability as ship's leader as she steps one well-turned high heel onto the bridge of the Gler to listen into Kommander Hans Westergaard's first order of his commission. And, though their tentative relationship was now on shaky ground and she could not explain why, the Queen of Norway is still certain she made the right choice for the correct man to perform this all-important job.

_Perhaps this is why God brought you back into my life, to help save my Anna, bring her home, and redeem yourself in doing so. Or perhaps there **is** more of a destiny between us than either of us realize that He has in store for us, just yet…_

As the HMnoMS Gler rumbles to life beneath their feet in its paramount mission to take them across the sea in a quest to find beloved sister, wife, and friend, Kristoff, windblown in his newly inherited, gold design trimmed grey cape, leans over the railing to gaze across the vast blue in the early morning's muted sunlight that was pointing crested wave trails towards a distant uninhabited island's far off mysterious shore...

* * *

Greetings, Frozen friends!

Did everyone see the gorgeous romantic cover picture scene that my talented big sister drew of Helsa when Hans was first being commissioned as Kommander on Elsa's ship taking place here? Wasn't it breathtaking?

And earlier in the previous chapter, when the gang first arrived at the hostel, was the Eupunzel part she illustrated. A unsatisfied with his barber, close-shorn of his trademark stubble (just growing back now) Eugene was warmly embracing his newly revealed pregnant wife as they watch lillebror Hans carry the bags up the Salsbrucket hotel stairs. (_Now, that's what little brothers are good for_!)

If you want to see the larger versions of this beautiful portrait that were both story scene and picture perfect, search the submissions of SetsunaKou on DeviantArt or TsukimoriKahoko on Tumblr! You'll see both Helsa &amp; Eupunzel featured in this chapter of 'Frozen Again' there at full resolution!

Wow! I love them both! So romantic! So lovely! And… ('_Someone finally got my nose right!' _^_^)

Check the two of them out on DeviantArt or Tumblr to be wowed by Setsuna's stunning art too!

God bless,

HarukaKou


	32. Chapter 31 - All Hands on Deck

We do not own "Frozen" nor any of its characters.

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act II**

**Chapter 31**

**"All Hands on Deck"**

Well beyond the skillfully navigated delta where the mouth of the Kvistenfjorden meets the depth of the Norwegian Sea, Kommander Hans Westergaard steps his sure foot across the newly polished plank strakes of his ship to survey the endless ocean surrounding.

_My ship…_

Never in all his youth spent daydreaming of foreign ports and distant destinations as far-flung as possible from the dreary Egeskov Castle he was born to be enslaved to, to the practical side of Hans never truly imagined he would be in control of a seabound vessel that could take him away from his 13th in-line irremediable futile life.

And yet, here he was, standing at the bowsprit beneath the billowy foresail of the powerful modern schooner of the Norwegian Naval Fleet in full command of the majestic HNoMS Gler as it swiftly cuts its past across the crests of the sea. Though still in disbelief, Hans had to shake himself every now and then, but this appointment to be a naval commander of a royal fleet schooner wasn't all he was in awe of.

How many more boyish fantasies were being fulfilled, as he not only was in command of his own auspicious naval craft, taking him across the crashing blue of the mysteriously, but the woman he was in love with was riding those waves to travel alongside him?

_Love… What do I know of love?_

As he lets the noontime's fresh summery winds sweep over his strong noble brow and titillated strands of his golden red hair along the handsome curve of his tall celestial nose, Kommander Hans Westergaard deeply breathes in the salty sea air. No one would ever believe that the Queen of this great nation would bestow such an honor to captain one of her Navy vessels to the villain who once made an attempt on her life, amongst other wicked transgressions to her family, her crown.

No one would have believed it – especially not he himself.

He scans his eyes along the choppy seas whose salty spray both stung and invigorated his senses. Hans bows his eyes to the roar of the ocean, as his mind immerses itself and its deafening waves.

Temporarily blinded by the brilliant sunlight exuding behind a certain lady several meters away, spellbound, he sneaks a gaze upon the lovely royal sovereign who gave him so much, though he deserved so little, of her benevolent confidence in him. Staring at her across the deck of the ship, Hans steels himself in a moment of calming resolution.

_I cannot waver. I will not falter. You must remain pure and pristine as the driven snow you command. My heart is far too fouled, too sullied to ever again indulge in your beauty… I must give everything, but take nothing further of your light…_

The determined young man tries to apply his mind now fully to the task at hand, despite how difficult his emotions made it to be.

From where he was on the ship's forward deck elegantly sporting his dark blue naval uniform she had just commissioned for him to wear, Kommander Hans Westergaard surveys the endless waves ahead. He raises the long mahogany and brass three-draw telescope in his hands as he scans the horizon towards the Vega archipelago looming closer in the northscape of the Norwegian Sea ahead.

He lifts one long agile leg up over a wooden crate near the topsail schooner's gunwale ledge to gain a closer vantage point, as the naval officer focuses his nautical telescope to assess the proximity of how close to the island the schooner was to estimate speed calculations.

"So tell me, why are sea captains such an elusive standoffish breed? Does it make you naval types putting on airs seem more debonair and suave? Or is it more a shipboard authority complex kind of thing?"

Flynn Rider saunters up to Hans with the taunted question. Without even shifting, the tall thin man merely raises one incredulous eyebrow at the former thief in response.

All morning, Rapunzel and her husband, upon observation, had both noted how, for the entire voyage this far, 'Kmdr. Westergaard', had kept a thoughtful silence and respectful distance from most of the rest of the team as they settled into their new shipboard accommodations. But the redheaded new Captain of this impressive craft seemed more absorbed with the dutiful task of setting ship's course, trimming the sale and going below deck to become acquainted personally with each of the crewmembers that Harbormaster Alfen had placed there in the boiler room of the sailing vessel to keep it running for this emergency mission.

And after this proficient upright naval officer had sedulously seemed to convey his gratitude and apprise his naval crew of their immediate situation, the conscientious new skipper skipped his lunch in the Officer's Wardroom, which was a disappointment for Queen Elsa since she had made a special sandwich plate at Kommander Westergaard's reserve seat, at the captain's table that the Gler's chief officer never bothered to show up at.

"Too bad you missed a really swell meal in the mess hall below. It was specially prepared for _'your exalted Lordship'_ by the royal lady's delicate icy fingers herself…" Eugene trails off the dangled sentence, awaiting his noncommittal brother's answer that too never arrives.

Hans seemed too enthralled with that fool telescope to notice anyone else.

"Fine. Ignore your big brother..." Flaunting his new position's upperhand, Eugene plops his butt down hard upon the wooden crate that Hans' boot was balanced upon. That causes the younger man to stumble a bit from the scenic fine figure he cut of an able-bodied dashing Kommander that Elsa had secretly been admiring from the far end of the deck where Olaf had been in awe of the multiples sails –fore and aft– swinging on their masts in a lazy kind of hypnotic way.

**_"…Lillebror."_**Peeking around to garner the slighter man's attention, Eugene tosses out the translated Danish word that the well educated of neighboring nations' Queen Elsa had conveyed to his conversational curiosity over lunch.

Hans smiles, despite himself, at the affectionate familial term that not a **one** of any of his other 12 older brothers, whether out of spite, disdain, or indifference, deemed to call their youngest 'little brother'.

"At least that got a winning smile out of you, Handsome." The older man adds his own smirk to the fraternal scene. When Hans finally meets Flynn's inviting eyes, a warm wind blows the hair of either stunningly gorgeous man – one coiffed, one messy – as Eugene pats the wooden crate for Hans to take a seat beside him.

"Here, take a load off. You've been a busy beaver since you first step foot on the ship-and your company was missed at lunch." Eugene says pointedly, giving him eyes.

"Yes, well, one must familiarize with his crew to ensure each comprehends the vital consequential significance of this vessel's essential requirements for utmost celerity."

Hans continues to keep his rigid stance, his tall slender frame's straight-backed posture accentuated by the wind blowing through his red hair in the sunlight that was quite breathtaking to one feminine pair of eyes still secretly watching.

"Wow. I think I'm gonna need a dictionary for some of that crap." Eugene reverts to his own bad language upon the more high class man's uppity descriptive and verbal usage. As for Hans, he cocks his nonplussed head down at the rougher tongued man cutely.

"Forgive me. I did not intend to sound condescending. But there is a great deal of responsibility that comes with commanding a ship of this caliber." Hans apologizes to his more crafty sibling, ever the polite gentleman.

"Hey, no problemo, Lillebror. Don't stress out. But maybe I'm not the one you need to be apologizing to." Eugene's heavy-lidded eyes designate towards where a dubious Elsa was forcing a wary smile on 'midshipman Olaf,' who pretends to have the know-how to climb the ratlines up to the lookout nest near the topsail yard.

"You know, even in a lover's quarrel, the cold shoulder brushoff loses it enigmatic charm after a while, if you know what I mean. Speaking of cold…" Older brother Eugene comments his advice as both men's diverted gazes travel up to where the Frozen Queen wields some mid air ice netting capabilities to haul the clumsy snowman back from his inevitable fall from the 30 foot-high crows nest drop.

"Queen Elsa and I are not lovers." After a few moments of thought-provoking silence, despite the blow to his own male ego, in all honesty Hans must quietly admit the truth, if nothing else, to protect the Lady's honor.

"Yeah, sure you aren't." Eugene chuckles incredulously, having lived far too long as a man himself to believe those passionate kisses after the barroom scene he had witnessed would not lead to further action.

"Storbror." Hans practically growls in his lowered voice the warning to back off and Eugene takes the hint. Although he was not quite certain if the younger man was just being chivalrous or not, until Hans' emerald green eyes flash at him with indignant shock that the pride of the normal virile 25-year-old would no longer possess, had he and that long legged Nordic Queen already –

"No way! A gorgeous creature like that throws herself at you and you **flub** it?! What is **wrong** with you, Sideburns?!" He certainly was sure that he would not be able to withstand the full ice gale force of a seductive icy queen's whim. Eugene was starting to freak out at this honest revelation that was more of shock to him than the moral indiscretions he had convinced himself had occurred last night.

"_Everything_…"

A slack-jawed Eugene just about picks up the depressed, dejected admission accompanied by a pair of remorseful eyes upon the woman across the way as despondent Hans leaves to return to the bridge. That broken voice, those forlorn eyes told his experienced older brother how, in spite of his confused contradiction, that obvious blazing spark between the Kommander and the Queen was as yet undiminished. For some strange reason, though, Hans was trying to dampen love's inextinguishable flame.

_Kids these days got no guts for the rigors of romance anymore._

A doubtful Flynn Rider's smirk soon turns into a frown as he is reminded of his real mission to come up to the deck by a sickly green gilled exasperated Pascal, who was making expectant descriptive gyrations of how poor Rapunzel was more than tad seasick in their cabin below.

"Right. Seasick powders." Eugene recalls all the romance of his pregnant wife's _mal de mer_ vomiting as he goes to find that helpful Ensign So-and-So who showed all the travelers to their cabins upon arrival on the HNoMS Gler. Slapping his hands to his tight thighs, the married man abandons his matchmaking to go find some medicine for his ill other half in the paymaster stores as Pascal leaps upon Flynn's shoulder. Over the years, the pair had formed an uneasy alliance for their mutual love of a Blondie turned brunette.

* * *

From where she was standing on the deck, babysitting an overexcited Olaf who was waving down at Pascal and Eugene's departure so enthusiastically from his perch on the high jibboom, the acrobatic snowman starts losing body parts to gravity.

Luckily for him though, Kristoff, as usual, comes to the rescue, as the tall blonde and his wobbly legged reindeer, who needed some fresh air from the hold area below, make an appearance on the Gler's upper deck.

"Olaf. Try to keep it together." Kristoff berates the accident prone snowman as he starts to gather some of his parts up from the deck when the Ice Harvester climbs up the wide ramp from behind Sven's skittering cloven hooves.

"Hey! There's Sven and Kristoff! Look at me guys! I'm a sailor now!" Though missing some vital parts, the head was still intact enough for Olaf to be donning a Sjoforsvaret naval Menig's cap as he dangles dangerously from the foresail's jib by the one branch arm he had left. But one harsh gale soon sends the rest of the snowman rolling about the vessel's strakes in the back-and-forth rolling sea's motion.

"Elsa? You okay?" Kristoff, his eyes adjusted to the bright midafternoon sunlight, strides over to where the lonely Queen was standing near the bridge's deck house, covertly peering through one of the small port hole windows.

"Oh! Kristoff. Yes, I'm fine. Thank you." Jerking her head back from where it was leaning in to listen to a certain ship Kommander's tenor voiced orders spoken to his helmsman within the bridge, Elsa guiltily says to Kristoff. She swiftly removes her long fingernailed hands away from where they had been clinging to the freshly lacquered polished wood of the bridge deckhouse.

"How are you and Sven adjusting the voyage, so far?" Covering up her shame with the query, Elsa knew how juvenile she must've appeared now eavesdropping like a teenager would. The Queen then pushes back her errant bangs and smoothes her wind tossed platinum blonde braid to recover her dignity.

But inwardly, she couldn't help but be dazzled by a man in a uniform with a Naval background. Growing up with her dear papa as a proud Sjoforsvaret Admiral who taught his eldest child everything he loved about the Norwegian Navy's sailing ships and schooners such as this, Elsa too fell in love with her country's noble Kongelig Norske Marine service at a young age, studying everything about it with Papa.

Now she walks the top deck of the ship is if she owned it.

Purposefully Elsa moves to where Kristoff was leaning on Sven to give them both sea legs with six planted firmly on the deck planks between them at the stem of the ship.

"Sven was having a bit of a time with the rocking and rolling waves earlier, but I think we figured out something in the engine room to stabilize him. Right old buddy?" Kristoff smiles to his best friend, recalling all the trouble with belts, tethers, the harnesses slung around or tied to the noisy machinery gears and pulleys down there that the ingenious young mountain man constructed a makeshift stall for Sven to be housed for the trip's duration.

"Sorry to be so much trouble, Kristoff. But I think reindeer legs aren't meant for long ocean travel." Sven passes on through the ice harvesting team's psychic link.

"Or a snowman's either, it seems." Good natured Kristoff smirks as he offers Olaf, who comes lethargically hobbling up, the one snowball foot that rolled under some coiled rope rigging of the hawser beneath the mizzen mast the thoughtful man had scooped up.

"Thanks, Sven! Oh– I mean Kristoff! Ha ha! I'm always getting you two mixed up! Remember how you guys tried to fool me when Anna introduced both of you to me as 'Sven'? And then your troll family blew your secret when they tried to marry you guys off! I loved that song! Oh, it was a hoot. Singing and dancing and dressing you up in those funky grass hats… Those were good days. I miss Anna. Oh, what's that over there? I think I'll wander a bit." Though having the attention span and curiosity of a five-year-old, in his brutally honest way, heart-on-his-sleeve Olaf hops to his feet after pulling himself all together. He skips up his snow padded feets on the ramp to hop over the wheelhouse to the ship's uppermost weather deck to discover more nautical mysteries aboard this intriguing new adventure near the aft stern of the ship now.

In his naïveté, Olaf did not realize that just the mention of Anna's name brought the sprightly girl to the forefront of their minds again. Although, for both of these people who loved that little Arendelle Princess so much, the girl was never far from their hearts.

"Kristoff, what if we're too late already? What if…What if that pirate hurt Anna and she's…" Tears stinging her beautiful blue eyes, Elsa airs her worst fears that had been agonizing her soul over her kidnapped little sister's fate at the hands of that wicked criminal.

Kristoff and Elsa exchange a similarly pained look, though the female's pain was more tearfully evident and anxious, the man's intermingled with a stoic, determined conviction.

"Don't ask me how, Elsa, but I've had word about Anna. Don't worry, she's doing all right. Trust me." Remembering his conversation – _yes actual conversation_ – with the strange seagull and his birdie buddies, Kristoff offers a distraught looking Elsa the reassuring smile that he was trying to find solace in himself.

"I'll bring her home to you. I swear it." Compassionate Kristoff was so utterly good in generous spirit that, even through his own torture concerning his true love's strife, he could still sense how listless her big sister Elsa was. It was as if the Queen had suddenly lost her proverbial rudder, that steady shoulder she had been leaning on.

All morning, the singular woman had been trembling with the frozen cold she had been battling all alone on the ship's deck, inwardly shivering despite the warm sunny weather crossing the ocean waves.

"Come on. She wants us to be strong." The big and tall golden blonde man places one big fingered brotherly hand on Elsa's pale lissome shoulder and squeezes it tightly. Intuitively sensing she needed his support, Kristoff gives Anna's big sister some of his strength, fearless of coming in contact with her attempting to remain regulated, frozen chill.

After all_, 'ice was his life'._ And now, though he still didn't comprehend all of what Ragi intimated, Snow Prince Kristoff Bjorgman was just at the cusp of understanding why he's been so unfazed by—in fact in **awe**of—its flawless, though deadly, frigid beauty. He had worked closely with ice in the cold winter snows of arctic Norway all his life and still reveled in its frosted wonder, since he was a wee boy. _Who was that mysterious pale woman with Ragi in my awakening memory of that terrible day? And what does she have to do with me?_

Kristoff tries to make sense of the cluttered jumble of past unlocked memories that were slowly ebbing in, like an icy algid tide just beginning to warm to the light.

Unaware of Kristoff's inner thoughts, Elsa nods to the contemplating, caring young man as she wipes the hot tear or two that had escaped down her cold pale cheeks at his words of support. Then she bravely swallows her gelid fear back down, as both say silent prayers for the lost girl.

The Gler sets course full steam ahead longitudinally across the Norwegian Sea with nothing but faith and hope and love to go by, as Kristoff gazes over Elsa's shoulder, that his large firm hand was still warmly upon for her to draw strength from, towards the open sea waves cresting on the northern horizon ahead.

Also observing forward across the vast sea, the new Kommander of the ship within the bridge at the helm's command utilizes all the instruments his shipboard compasses and maritime know-how to navigate expertly the vessel around the coastal island of Vega. But no tool aboard this ship could ease the tenuous machinations compelling his remorseful heart.

Wishing it could be him there in Kristoff's place to embrace and comfort the delicate form of the trembling young woman, with a full heart, Hans strains his eyes through the window to glimpse near the forward bowsprit of the deck, the touching scene of the two blonde heads bent together.

The younger blonde man stabilizes the unsteady reindeer physically and the uncertain queen emotionally, as the Gler travels the ocean waves at its full steam capacity in hopes to reunite those who love her with the young girl whose plucky caring and sweet innocence in the face of adversity brought each solitary soul out of themselves and into a whole new world of familial friendship and brave courage together...

* * *

That courage was something that Anna of Arendelle may require very soon herself.

The smaller insular steam powered boat she was unwittingly held against her will upon had suffered a few more bumps and bruises in weathering that sudden vicious storm the previous night. Job had been forced to steer the small steamship into port and weighed anchor at the small outlying fishing village of Selnes that stretched into the Norwegian Sea. It was an unpredicted stop, but the dark Caribbean needed some welding tools and parts to repair the damaged tail shaft propeller and steam funnel leading from the tubular boiler's pipes if the ship was to continue on its nonstop course. A bent propeller would never do, unless the impatient pirate captain wished the vessel to yaw wildly off course.

So while the hard-working first mate was gone from the ship in search of ship repair parts, Princess Anna was left alone and unprotected at the mercy of the disgruntled at being delayed Captain Houtebeen.

After swearing foul curses at the blasted 'lemon' of the ship, that a delicate princess's ear should never hear, her often visits with the rough ice harvesters in the mountains Kristoff relented to take her to, had blunted Anna to a bit of that well enough.

In the ship's galley below deck, there was Anna, as Job instructed her to stay put, peeling the potatoes and onions in preparation for one of the captain's favorite meals that his last cabin boy created for him.

_I can't believe I'm cooking a recipe that that Westergaard dreamed up!_

Anna smacks the recipe booklet to the wooden cutting table that still retained a certain distasteful prince's fine flourished handwriting that the kooky old captain requested Hans catalog after his slave traded cabin boy's original cookery was such a hit in the galley of the Pearl Lady. The hungry old man wanted at least some record of how the food should be cooked if the far too skinny young dandy prat had just keeled over one day from overwork and malnutrition and leave poor old Houtebeen bereft of fine chef.

But the 'dandy prat' turned out to be quite a tough survivor, lasting nearly all of his 2 years of hard labor service until his level head was turned by a lovely lass and the young man had to be executed and thrown overboard. But the Dutch captain still missed the redheaded lad's undeniable culinary skills in the kitchen with the potato.

"Okay, Red. I'll cook your stupid recipe. And I bet I'll make it even better than you ever did!" A combatant Anna was inwardly steaming almost more than her boiling pot of potatoes.

"I've boiled water and peeled and chopped the potatoes 'til my fingers are all scorched and burned. I skinned the onions and diced them. Ooh, onions make me cry… That darn Hans and his stupid recipes! All he's good at is cooking up trouble!" Anna bemoans her sworn enemy, still inadvertently plotting against her.

Anna had a tendency to talk to herself when she was alone since her sheltered childhood days wandering the Arendelle Castle.

"'Twas blind but now I see…" With her lovely soft voiced Papa's most beloved religious tune in mind, Anna tries to sing away her tears as she foolishly rubs her eyes causing the onion's pungent juices to attack her all the more.

_Oh, Kristly. I love it when you tease me for chattering to myself…_

Balling her fists into her eyes, Anna fights the onion-ated tears. A smile comes to her lips as she thinks of her very true love.

That is, until Anna hears the awful sounds of—

**_Drag. Scrape. Clip, Clop. Drag scrape, clip—_**

**_Clop._**

"Oh, poor lass. Ye be crying yer eyes out down here in the galley, leetle mesje, because yer be lonely? Can old Captain Houtebeen be of any comfort to yer?" The mangy faced aged captain seemed to be in a less confrontation mode than in their last encounter, perhaps due to the promised hot meal special potatoes the girl was whipping up.

"No. I'm crying because I'm cooking onions. All cooks cry over onions. And there's too darn many stupid onions in this stupid recipe that your stupid cabin boy came up with in this stupid 'Dild Kartoffellog' he invented. Even the name sounds stupid! So don't disturb me, I'm counting how many times I have to stir the stupid thing." A bold as brass sniffling Anna's blatant honesty and enjoyment at calling anything Hans Westergaard had to do with '_stupid'_, along with her fearless audacity to speak her mind to anyone, went hand-in-hand with the girl's innocent belief that everything would just have to turn out all right.

How could it not? Kristoff and Elsa were on the job of coming to save her.

_Enough said_.

Anna returns to her calm counting off how many tablespoons of butter and salt and pepper and –dill?

_Yuck! Skip that!_

"Hey, since you're here – what's this ingredient written here say? Am I reading it right? R – O – U - X?" Anna buries her nose deeper into Hans' recipe book, trying to decipher what it said.

"Is that French? I never was very good at French." Hanging her head at the memory of Kai trying to drill the universal language in the flighty little miss, Anna fearlessly holds out Hans' precious recipe book to the pirate captain, who strains his one and only eye to try to read the fine penmanship of his former, now deceased, employee.

Anna screws up her cute face as she recalls how her serious Papa had laughed his beautiful rare laugh at her clumsy pronunciation of that pesky pleasantry '_Sil Vous plait'_ ("Sill Voos Platt") that just meant 'please' when an exasperated Kai and secretly eyes laughing Mama relentlessly attempted to train the young princess in the foreign tongue that all snooty royals were required to speak, for some reason.

"Yes, it does say 'R-O-U-X'. I do not know what zat is. You are a female. Do you not know yoer way around a kitchen?" A male chauvinistic Houtebeen demands of the flustered girl who had more flour upon her dusty cheeks and bits of potato peels all over her soggy lap than he cared to think about.

"Umm…No. But that's because I wasn't allowed much in the kitchen when Mama and Gerda were cooking. They always said that if I didn't end up polishing off all the plates of the yummy food they just cooked before they were ready to be served, I ended up breaking the dishes instead. So I was kind of unofficially banned from the kitchen. You know how it is, only being hungry and not knowing what to –"

"Silence! You give me a headache, little girl! Just be quiet and finish cooking my dinner!" The 'kindly old Captain' explodes back into his usual wrathful anger as he holds his pounding noggin the one hand, then leaves the galley, unable to take anymore of her prattle.

"Fine! Some help you were! Sheesh! Men are helpless in the kitchen! The ones who are _real_men anyway. Not the_fakers_ that they're _men_…That kind **can** cook."

After a few moments, Anna shakes off her bitterness that that Westergaard always brought out in her. She then smacks her flour dusted palms together and gets down to serious cooking. Amidst her industrious hands' picky work, she now suddenly starts to hum a song she hadn't heard in years.

_Five years, to be exact…_

"Rock of ages, cleft for me. Let me hide myself in Thee…"

Anna starts to hum the famous 18th century quintessential Christian standard that she subconsciously associated with the thought of her beloved mother in the kitchen. Queen Idun loved this touching emotional song so much, it was never far from her lips, whether the lively Queen was cooking in the palace kitchen at the stove with Gerda, or trying to teach her erstwhile impatient little daughter in the library the French language, or sitting on the setee in the parlor to becalm her frazzled husband after a long trying day in front of the fireplace where she would lean to his chest and sing directly to his weary heart

_Mama's song to make Papa feel better…_

The tears abruptly biting behind her eyes for her lost parents, were not all of onion irritated origin. Princess Anna of Arendelle, with no pity for herself in this dire situation, feels the moving song reach beyond the grave as she continues to chop up the potent potables for the dinner, that she, though inexperienced in cookery, was doggedly determined to excel at.

_Even if it is an original Hans Westergaard recipe,_**_grumble grumble grumble._**

Anna continues to sing the next verse of her Mama's most favored religious hymn, letting its soothing beauty sweep away her anger and her troubles.

_Oh Mama, I'm a grown-up married woman now. Why didn't I learn better be a good homemaker like you, when you were trying to teach me? I wish you could chase me from your clean kitchen one more time and let me hear you sing your song again…_

* * *

As the old curmudgeon departs the cramped galley, dragging his bum peg leg up the ramp steps through this, Captain Houtebeen, in dark inscrutable curiosity, pauses to listen to rebellious songbird Anna's melody, as she once again disobeys his command and starts singing to herself the next cherished verse's line replaying in her memory. The 'mature' girl vigorously vents all her jumbled emotions to go back to savagely chopping potatoes and crying tears over diced onions for the recipe, with or without that darn 'roux', whatever it may be.

"_Let the water and the blood, from Thy wounded side which flowed._

_Be of sin the double cure_

_Save from wrath and make me pure._

"_Rock of ages, cleft for me. Let me hide myself in Thee…"_

* * *

As the well navigated Gler rounds the corner the island on its windward side to catch the undertoe currents, Kristoff was still standing there at the stem's bowsprit with Sven to stare over the waters crashing against the ship's hull and keel.

After the belated seasick medicine for treating her nausea had finally taken some effect, Rapunzel had come to the top deck for some fresh air. Elsa had joined her poor sick cousin for a promenade on the deck, leaving Kristoff alone with this thoughts.

He went entirely sure, but the mountain man could've sworn he would hearing little twitters from beneath the waves. It was disconcerting, and the logical young man was trying to let go of all the disparaging doubtful thoughts to listen closely. But it was hard to think that you could speak with animals who never had a voice before, never mind invisible ones hidden beneath the waves he couldn't even make eye contact with, to become on friendly terms.

" I bet they can hear you if you try to call out to them, Buddy. Those creatures down there may be able to help us. " Sven psychically pipes in encouragement to Kristoff's uncertain doubts, from beside his human companion where the big reindeer was plopped on his rear in a sitting position that he found much easier than trying to keep his unsteady four legs from wobbling across the swaying ship out from under him.

"But I'll look stupid just talking to thin air. Everyone will think I've gone crazy."

"Hey, we each handle stress in different ways, Big Guy. I, for one, find talking to my stunningly handsome self in the mirror each morning does wonders for my self-esteem. That good-looking devil." Eugene surreptitiously appears from the shadows where he was listening in to Kristoff's one-way conversation.

Flynn Rider saunters across the wooden planks from the deckhouse's bridge as he speaks.

"Whew! Just breathe in that salty sea air. It'll clear your head. And your sinuses." Sucking in the saline breeze to his lung full capacity so deeply, he begins the choke, the swarthy man joins Kristoff at the Gler's deck railing with the droll addendum.

"So who are we looking for down there?" Holding his injured upper arm as he stretches his bullet embedded bicep, and manfully biting back the pain, Eugene peers over the edge to the disturbingly choppy waters churning below in the wake of the steam powered ship speeding northward.

"Nothing." Kristoff answers, his cheeks flushing embarrassed before the older man's questioning eyes as if he were caught being foolish red-handed.

"Well, I heard that mermaids be swimming down there, just waiting to seduce young men. Those sirens 'advise' the poor beggar the leap overboard to their drowned doom." With an eerie lilt to his deep voice, Eugene taps into some of his childhood tales of uncanny thrills spun at the orphanage to keep himself and the other unwanted kids sane amidst life's insecure insanity.

"You didn't happen to hear voices in your head when you looked over those entrancing ocean waves did you? Because those sexy sirens have been known to prey on a depressed man's mental confusion and sorrow. So hold onto the railing tight, Kris." Kristoff didn't know if Eugene was serious or teasing.

"Psst. I'd keep a cloven hoof around your pal if I were you, Sven, old buddy." Eugene sidles the whispered advice into the startled reindeer's furry pricking up ear.

"Sirens? There are no sirens on my ship I can assure you, Sir." Though his own home country of Denmark was rife with legends and lore of fabled mer-people, a bemused Hans chooses the moment to emerge from the bridge onto _his _ship's main deck to double check his cardinal point compass readings with his naval man's gut instinct of the sea's climate and wind weather patterns on the forecastle weather deck.

_How's that for relishing in the role?_ Eugene smirks to himself.

Though Hans' eyes **were** admittedly entranced and trained upon the authentic pair of enchantingly beauteous young visions who, arm in arm, had come up from their cabins earlier and taken to strolling around the deck to get some air. He furtively gazes upon the poised tall blonde with a disheartened miserable sigh, purposely avoiding the woman's hopeful blue diamond eyes in his glum direction.

"Ooh, '_my ship'_ is it now, Lillebror? Queenie knows how to push your buttons." Picking up on the tentative scene, Eugene mutters under his breath with a chuckle at young love's misery. He ponders all it twists and turns, trifles and teases as Eugene watches a somber Hans survey the fragile lithe form of Elsa's delicate feet tread lightly upon the deck of the Naval ship she had entrusted to him. With a lovesick look on his face, Hans was gazing upon Queen Elsa's back as if she were an unattainable wisp of seafoam that may indeed flutter away from him on the ocean breeze at any given moment.

"Anyway… Our Kristoff seems to be incommunicado with some deep-sea creatures. Don't know what that does for us now, but it would be a pretty nifty parlor trick back in Corona. Old Fritz goes for that sort of nutty thing." Flynn Rider had this uneasy confrontational way of dealing with other men, making those who shared the same male gender often irritated with him.

"Mr. Bjorgman?" Kommander Westergaard turns his gaze from Eugene's fantastic ridicule to the more down to earth third man on the deck for a more plausible explanation. Kristoff merely shakes his head and shrugs at the far–out idea, looking at Eugene as if the 'old man' was crazy.

"Yes… Perhaps I should have a look at that ballistic wound of yours again. Just to be on the safe side." Logical Hans associates his big brother's peculiar accusations with perhaps some remaining deleterious effects from the wounded man's triage emergency operation not so long ago.

Hans exchanges a respectful nod with Kristoff before dismissing the entire fanciful thought completely from his mind. With one extended hand attaching to his good arm, Hans leads Eugene down the ship's steps or the offices medical ward room.

"Come on! I heard him myself with my own ears! The guy can **talk** to the animals. Just ask Sven!" A defensive Eugene calls the reindeer in for his sanity plea, making Hans all the more suspicious of his brother's mental state. The non-linguistic rangifer merely shakes his silent head as a troubled Hans prods his protesting elder sibling down the stairs to the deck below's examination room.

"See, Sven? Hans thinks Eugene's nuts for just intimating I could communicate with the creatures. Maybe we should keep it under wraps for a little while, just between you, me, and maybe Elsa. Okay, Pal?" Kristoff relates his reservations on the squirrelly subject to his best friend.

"I think you might be right. Probably for the best right now. They don't have to know for the time being. We just have to focus on finding Anna." Sven wisely projects his deep voiced opinion.

"Hey! Don't forget about me! I know you and Sven can talk with all kinds of critters!" Olaf's funny voice snows down on the pair from his lofty skating across the multiple booms of the schooner's sails until he reaches them at the front of the Gler's stem.

"Remember those birds back in Salsbrucket, the 'Scuttle Reconnaissance'? I liked that seagull who became friends with Anna. But between you and me, I think he's got a screw loose somewhere." As if he were a perfectly serious sober snowman, Olaf had come from the bridge where he and Kommander Westergaard were performing important ship duties together. Hans actually had quite a time introducing the magical snowman to his helmsman first ensign. The young officer had continued to silently steer the ship after a clipped nod, with a skeptical look on his face down at the curious bantering snowman who seemed to be on good terms with the capable young captain of the ship.

Of course, in personal service to the Queen, this patriotic Norwegian boy would never question his Kommander nor his Sovereign's authority.

"Hey! Speak of the seagull! There Scuttle is now!" Olaf had swiped Kmdr. Westergaard's nautical telescope and hand compass from the bridge in the top Naval officer's absence.

The enthusiastic snowman had pestered an extraordinarily patient Hans to teach him how to use the seaman's essential tools. The simple snowman, who couldn't spell, just about grasped the meaning of the letterings on the four cardinal points of thecompass – N, S, E, W – enough to take a reading and call out like a seasoned Naval pro:

"Scuttle Recon Formation, traveling 65 degrees Magnetic North, 11 degrees Declination Positive East! Just as he said they'd lead the way for us to Anna! Like clockwork!" Olaf sings the announcement so loudly that Elsa, who had just seen to helping Rapunzel, with Pascal's support, balance her way down the stairwell to her cabin for a rest, could hear. The seasickness had let up thanks to the medicine, but her other medical issue—namely morning sickness due to the baby developing in her womb quite normally, to Eugene's unspoken relief—was tiring the poor girl out.

As Elsa blindly hurries up the remainder of the stairs back to the upper deck to see what all the commotion was about, she brushes against a warm figure in the vestibule's darkness.

"Oh! Pardon me—! Kommander?" Elsa whispers, **feeling** his calm aura, his gentle scent somewhere nearby in the ship's shadows.

"Your Majesty. It was entirely my fault, not yours. You are blameless. Forgive me." Hans reverently bows his head and lowers his respectful eyes to the light of her glimmering eyes in the still darkness passing between them in the small enclosed area.

"But surely, I was the one heedlessly running through the hall and up the steps." Elsa smiles sweetly up at him, but the darkness obscured his handsome facial features from her scrutiny.

"Prince Hans?" A nervous Elsa asks when no reply comes, she having no idea that his meaning was entirely different.

"Shall we see what has occurred to provoke such an uproar on deck?" Hans' voice, purposely devoid of all emotion, was quietly even toned. His eyes were dull as he speaks with the insecure young woman. Quite gentlemanly still, he motions for her to go first up the stairs, though she rather would have preferred – no expected- his arm to hang upon as he led, just yesterday.

Numbly obeying, Elsa emerges from the shaded lower level to join Olaf, Kristoff and Sven on the top deck of the Gler near its spiked forward bowsprit, under the billowing jibs of ship's headgear.

The snowman was eager to hold out to Elsa the bowed out glass of the marine compass, proudly showing off to her and the 'Admiral' who taught him how he learned so quickly about 'magnetic North' and 'degree variations based on the inner and outer rings on the compass face that the mathematical genius in Hans Westergaard took his valuable time out to instruct the curious snowpea-brained Olaf about.

With an excited glance at Hans, who looks from Kristoff to Queen Elsa for her ultimate approval, Olaf dashes to the bridge to inform Ensign Jan of the new course settings, by way the seagull flies.

The young seaman peers out of the wheelhouse to confirm with his true superior officer if this course correction was a genuine order. After a long gaze of trusted belief with Elsa who takes Kristoff's judgment seriously, Kommander Westergaard returns to his post on the bridge and nods to both helmsman and snowman, Olaf pronouncing loudly those immortal words:

"FOLLOW THAT BIRD!" All hands on deck turn to gaze up to the brilliant sun blazing in the northeastern sky at the white winged 'V' formation pointing an arrow across the sky towards the distant horizon…

* * *

_Kongelig Norske Marine_ – Royal Norwegian Navy

_Dild Kartoffellog -_Dill Onion Potato Souffle in Danish


	33. Chapter 32- I Have a Dream-IchEinenTraum

We do not own "Frozen" nor any of its characters.

""**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act II**

**Chapter 32**

**"Ich Habe Einen Traum - I Have a Dream "**

The peaceful rolling waves of the Norwegian Sea begin to churn beneath the outskirts of the region where the Midnight Sun was predicted to never set. The HnoMS Gler draws towards its target latitude/longitude coordinates as the steamship had been sailing at a swift full steam 35 knots along the waters of the northwestern coast of the country for over 12 hours. The naval craft had taken its travelers some 350 nautical miles from where they first left harbor at Salsbrucket port and across the mysterious sea.

Out of the blue, an ice cold ebony darkness claws the pale sun away from the sky, as if in a hazy dream.

Through the almost impenetrable breathless still night air, a lone young woman felt the insatiable desire to leave the safety of her cabin berth to ascend the companionway to the ship's top deck above.

A little disoriented, the tall, regal, fair-haired lady carefully crosses the wooden plank strakes in her dainty high heels through the eerily dark midnight that was unlit by any vestige of the moon.

"Hello? Is there anyone there? Where is everyone? Hans? Do you hear somebody crying out there over the waters?" In an uncertain quivering voice, Queen Elsa of Arendelle could not tell if her large luminous eyes were opened or closed. For the pitch darkness was intensely thick as it hangs like a heavy damp curtain over the very atmosphere.

Immeasurably thick and glacially cold.

Elsa could only just about move against the fierce gale. But forward she must go, for the compassionate young royal was certain she heard a voice calling her here from the depths of her soul.

As she strains her blue eyes through the dark of a black fog, the trembling Queen squints into the nothingness. She shivers with something more than quizzical apprehension of the unknown danger, something more than indiscriminate fear as she blindly walks into the night all alone.

The stunningly beautiful ruler of this land, wearing her self-created filmy blue shoulderless Ice Queen dress only, without shawl or cover against the cool night, but rather coated in thin verglas of ice, had a sinking feeling that was more aplomb with her innate dread of witnessing again a fear of the ominous deep sea that her portentous nightmares were far too familiar with.

But she still couldn't stop herself from living her foreboding inner demons all over again.

"Help…_cough cough..._My love… He's badly injured…" The soft feathery voice of a woman whispers in the wavering night's darkness.

The wind suddenly whips all around her, so that Elsa could not pin the voice down as she gazes wild eyes over the railed bulwark edge of the ship she was standing upon. In the immense fathomless deep of the directionless ocean, the woman's weak words are lost on the dark tumultuous waves.

"Where are you?!" Elsa urgently calls out in her high-pitched tone. She was trying her utmost to remain calm and centered in order to aid whoever it was making that pathetic plea for assistance, as any honest Christian should help a fellow beleaguered sister or brother in need with God's hand of generosity and hope.

Frenetically, Elsa glances around for assistance from the titian haired man she fully expected to already be prepared to jump at her beck and call. But she was disappointed to gaze about and find herself to be all by herself on the Gler's deck in the strangely abrupt ocean storm.

Just then, the swaying ship suddenly lunges forward violently, and with growing concern for the heard, but yet unseen, shipwrecked individual and her wounded partner's safety, Elsa subconsciously notes how rocky and unsteady her own craft had become. The rough ocean waves seemed to have grasped the vessel within its irate storm tossed clutches.

Those invisible icy hands start to thrash the ship to and fro like a paper toy boat against its massive unforgiving rising swell.

"Nevermind us. Our ship went down in that terrible storm. You have your life to live now, darling. We're in God's hands." That velvety voice was becoming increasingly thin and frail with each passing moment.

Inwardly shaky, Elsa attempts to navigate blind steps to trip across the ship's endless top deck in the woman's resigned weakened direction somewhere below.

But soon the voice is nearly totally lost to the crashing tidal waves smacking against the ship's hull and keel. Elsa sprints from stern to stem, to the opposing end of the Gler, all the way to its fore bowsprit that she believed the pleas were now emanating from.

"Please! Don't stop speaking to me! I'm getting closer, I can feel it! I can almost hear your breathing!" Elsa leans her head far over the side of the ship, trying to peer closer through the twisting spewing waves spume of white bubbles.

"The Kommander here can adeptly handle medical procedures! He's very capable in an emergency. Please hang on! We can help you!" Elsa's strained eyes could just make out the shadows of two figures adrift on a floating chunked out piece of ship's salvage just coming into view.

On the storm rattled troughs between the surging battering waves, the couple below cling to one another on the rickety piece of bulkhead flotsam for dear life amidst the deadly drowning waters.

Her mind confused and terrified, the young Ice Queen raises her arms in their direction, in order to render the convulsing waves still with her ice powers. Yet nothing but snow shards sputter and spill from her useless fingertips.

"Why isn't it working?!" Her well groomed winter magic failing her, panic sets in. Elsa loses control of her innate frozen powers again as she begins to unwittingly frost over the entire ship deck in her manic emotional response to her wildly varied thoughts of anxiety and fear.

Huffing ice clouds in her cold panic to hold back the surging ice strangling at her chest, and feeling so utterly alone in the world without her sunshine, her Anna, at her side, Elsa looks deeply into the angry ocean currents surrounding until she is utterly entranced in its swirling deadly majesty.

Losing herself to its awesome depths that the cold tears formed in her eyes had blurred, Elsa, in a desperate trance, automatically begins to climb over the ship's railing to hang on the spiked bowsprit. Her high heeled delicate feet dangerously balance on the outer bobstay ropes, as she reaches both hands out for the illusionary pair, long lost at sea…

For amidst her panic stricken and compassionate heart, Queen Elsa of Arendelle had finally recognized just who that woman with the melodic soft voice calling out to her from that adrift piece of ship's bulkhead beam was, in her total disbelief of what her addled senses were convincing her frazzled mind at such a dizzying windblown height—

**"Elsa! Don't!"** A faint voice cries from behind her, but she couldn't turn her head to see, for another voice was more commanding her forward attention.

"Elsa! Don't! Be a good brave girl so you can take care of your sister in our place! Just let the past stay in the past, and move on with your life, my darling child. Let. It. Go."

The dual voices ringing in her ears calling her name from every side are eclipsed by the sight before her stunned eyes of the dangling bloody limb half hanging off the man in kingly uniform cradling his exhausted near drowned wife against his chest with the one good arm he had left…

That commanding male voice's order, heard by Elsa in a surreal unsettling phantom of sudden silence that was contrasted to the din of waves slapping the hull and crashing below in an unnatural monstrous howl, snaps Elsa wide-awake and back to her senses.

* * *

With wide scared startled eyes, the reawakening Queen finds herself balanced precariously upon the Gler's long bowsprit in the dusky midnight sun's light. She had been hanging like some gorgeously ornate statue perch upon the Gler's front stern in place of an inanimate figurehead for several seconds before panic once again begins to set in.

But just before fear and gravity take their toll, one ungloved hand serendipitously appears out of nowhere. It courageously extends itself dangerously out over the ship's edge to pull back the flustered unsteady woman from her delusionary dream as she was just about to bodily launch herself in a maddened leap of faith from the deck with no thought to her own safety.

The sweet lyrical tenor above now overtakes the more prominent forceful noble baritone below as both had simultaneously directed her clarifying mind back to reality in their own special way. The one man in her life before, and the one man in her life now both had called upon their precious, magical girl's inner calm to weather her emotional storms, no doubt brought on by the imminent crisis concerning her little sister soon approaching.

After Hans Westergaard glides the emotionally overwrought woman deftly onto the safety of the ship's deck and into his strong wiry arms, he hugs her close with _il rapide velocissimo tempo_ in his rhythmically wild, beating chest.

A long awed moment passes before either has the wherewithal to be able to speak again.

But, of course, the reticent romantic in the stoic man is the first to pull away from the dusky pale sunlight's intoxicating eye lock.

"What were you thinking, your Majesty? If I didn't happen to just pass by whilst making my rounds on the decks, due to my penchant for insomnia when a mission is impending, and notice how…entranced… you seemed to be, walking dazed through the passageways…" Kommander Westergaard trails off his own heart pounding anxiety as he tactfully admits how he had _'happened'_to be '_just passing by'_her cabin—which in fact was nowhere close to his captain's quarters aboard this naval schooner's lower berths—in his traipsing around her closed cabin door several times this sleepless night.

His viridescent green eyes modestly divert as Hans blushes for the incriminating voyeuristic admission that the _'_gentleman' in him may have been spying on the sophisticated lady in her bedchamber.

_Only to ensure that the fair Queen was settling in comfortably, surely._

But honestly, Hans himself noticed something was amiss in the sea air. His instincts were proven when Elsa appeared outside of her room wandering upon the top deck at this late hour of the night, even when all the others had retired for rest.

She was almost in a sleepwalking like trance, and Hans knew that Elsa's mind, disturbed over Anna's safety, was anything but settled. So he had discreetly followed her, keeping a respectful distance. The young queen may have just desired to spend some time thinking alone, as Hans himself was wont to stare out over the silver flaked ocean waves and share his deep sentiment with the Lord God Above, beneath His deep purple Heaven as it turns blue, from time to time in his moments of soulful indecision.

"Thank God I caught you." With a gentle chuckle and disarming smile as he softly pats her frosted white cheek, Hans politely says the niceties as the leads her to the center of the deck. Pausing at her unnerving silence, Hans starts to extricate his arms from around her trembling frozen cold body.

"I need you to hold me! Just hold me!" The unhinged pale young woman, shaking in the pale evening's light, was beyond distraught as she bursts out, throwing her icy arms around Hans' neck all the tighter.

Her terrible anxieties of what was to become of her sweet little sister on the morrow, in conjunction with her imagination's horrible mix of dreams and memories of what befell her dear parents on a ship voyage such as this some five years ago, causes prim, proper Elsa of Arendelle to break down in cold tears. She buries her face in Hans' unbuttoned Navy blue jacket, gleaning the warmth of his chest for stabilization.

"Queen Elsa, please. I know the ship voyage has been difficult on you, considering your past loss at sea, but I don't believe you have been in sound mind the past couple of days, for entirely acceptable reasons. You've merely turned to the first person's arms for solace in your understandable torment. You need your rest. Allow me to see you to your cabin door."

Kommander Westergaard begins to forcibly turn Elsa's trembling frail form towards the companionway steps going below, just behind the bridge wheelhouse

"No! Please, I need the fresh air." Her breath still coming out in puffs of super cooled air, Elsa was practically panting while she was trying her best to remain calm enough not to freeze him – and the whole ship – due to her panicking loss of control. Her wild eyes gaze up at Hans with fierce desperation in her plea.

He halts in his tracks to give the rattled lady on his arm some time to take several calming deep breaths that slowly wind down from their icy peaks to a more sedate presence of mind.

"I saw Mama and Papa on their downed ship's wreckage just now. Injured and calling out for my help." After collecting herself for a few moments, Elsa whispers in a disattached tone as she scans distant eyes over the Gler's railing edge, with both bitter hope and bitter fear, into the sea's vast nothingness as Hans leads her away from its beckoning roar.

"What you saw is no more than a nightmare, my Queen. A sea mist chimera, perhaps. The ocean air has been known for centuries to stir up mental mirages for many a stouter hearted mariner and far more experienced seamen with the ocean's enigma than a Norsklandkrabbe such as you. Hmm?" His regretful conscience's guilt and self recriminations that he was not deserving of any fond reciprocation whatsoever cause the redheaded man to be caught between a rock and a hard place. However, his protective love for the delicate woman wins out in the end.

_Yes, I love her, though I know I should not._

For this truly noble, deep down, young man still felt a burning need to comfort the female in her melancholy time of need, however their relationship stood, with some well-placed humor.

Unable to turn her head away from the vast swaying waters, Elsa smiles a small glint of a smile, though inside, her heart was still trembling with those foreboding visions of her beloved parents. But the man whose arms she was still enshrouded within, cutely peers around to gain the reward of her attention in his native Danish tongue's tease at her lack of seadog legs.

_As breathtakingly enticing as your landlubber ones may be..._

Hans chides himself for thinking such thoughts more befitting his newest older brother, but maybe Eugene's rustic charm was rubbing off a bit.

With a concerned sigh at her disturbed reticence to even meet his eyes now, Hans leads Elsa to a deck bench that wrapped around the bridge deckhouse beneath the aft main sail's boom. He gently sits the trembling girl down.

The elegant blonde woman folds her unnerved hands on her lap before opening her composed mouth when a tentative Hans decided to sit beside her yet shaky form, for warmth, if nothing else.

"When Anna and I were very little, we would wait all day for Papa to come home from the naval yard tell us more stories of brave naval sailors' courageous seafaring adventurers who sailed on magnificent ships for mighty navies."

Elsa glances up with pride, her voice less shaky in relating her dearest childhood memories spent bouncing on her kind Papa's loving knee, with a tiny Anna close beside listening just as intently on the other.

"Every one of those heroic figures were strong and noble and righteous, as they sought out ancient hidden treasures or fought evil villains on the high seas to save beautiful 'damsels in distress.'" Elsa pauses here with a nostalgic smile in her retelling of her quiet Papa's thrilling tales of adventure and daring-do.

No matter how busy he was, Papa loved his two little girls so much that he took the time every night to shower his valuable kingly attentions upon the pair of glimmering jewel-eyed babes—for petite sapphire Elsa and tiny aquamarine Anna were King Agdar's greatest precious treasures in all his kingdom.

"Of course, the damsels in distress must be beautiful. A requirement for any well told tale." Hans smirks in amenable congeniality back at Elsa, who reddens demurely at his playfully pointed eyes upon her. For some uncanny reason, Queen Elsa felt perfectly secure in sharing her innermost thoughts concerning those she loved dearest to her heart, with Prince Hans Westergaard.

And Hans appreciated how the shy young woman was opening up to him of her painful past's better days. After all, it was for those sweet days spent in the embrace of her loving family that made Elsa of Arendelle the tender young woman she was today, if one explored beneath the layers of ice that coated her heart in subsequent years of restricted doubt since.

"And even after my accident with Anna when she was five…" Hans watches Elsa's normalized eyes grow fearful again as they dart around in her pretty head, as if she was seeing every moment of that terrifying day replaying over again in her mind's eye.

"… And my ice powers began growing exponentially, to where there were times growing up I couldn't handle the frozen energy beginning to surge in my little eight-year-old body. Mama would try to calm me with her lovely songs, and Papa was always there to hold me tight when the ice took control and was too much for me on my own. Though, thinking back on it now, I'm sure I was freezing him solid sometimes. I don't know how he withstood it to comfort me. Poor Papa." Elsa was gazing at her inadequate hands in sorrow as they wring themselves around the overwrought young woman's balled up royal purple long skirt in regret.

"Forgive me. I never did get the chance to convey my sadness for your loss all those years ago, Queen Elsa. When word came to the Southern Isles, I was deeply troubled for you and your sister." Hans sincerely says, still recalling the day he and his older brother, Lars, were informed of the oceanic accident by their incorrigible twin brothers, Rudi and Runo.

Hans had always admired the neighboring country of Norway's Naval Admiral King Agdar and his close-knit family that the daguerreotype of them he had once acquired, clearly displayed their tender feelings, and the studious young boy kept secretly tucked away in his books for inspiration.

Elsa nods in acknowledgment before looking down at her useless hands again._What good were these powers, if they were not able to save Papa and Mama? Will they even be of any use to help Anna now?_

"It sounds to me that you were lucky to spend so much time with parents who loved you very much. It is a rare gift to have a close relationship for children of royal houses, which are mainly focused on a strong line of breeding. Believe me, I know." These past two years spent in reflection had Hans come to grips with his unwelcome lot in life. He was not bitter anymore of his own unloved upbringing. His father was anything but kind and caring of him, and growing up, this Danish Prince always longed for more than the approval he never received.

Elsa's voluminous eyes glance over to Hans in curiosity, never once thinking to ask about this 13th in-line Prince's convoluted family ties. It was obviously a difficult subject to broach, and the diplomatically train Queen continued on her own trip down memory lane instead.

"You're right. I was fortunate." Elsa smiles, grateful for his sympathetic soul connecting with hers.

"I will never forget those years of Mama's beautiful lilting laugh at her own funny jokes that made us laugh along, although they weren't the least bit funny. Or Papa's smiling debonair mustache that tickled our noses whenever he kissed Anna and I '_good night'_." Elsa was on the verge of tears as she gazes over the rolling ocean waves full of so many emotions that his words had evoked in her.

"They never really disappear, if we keep them alive in our memories, do they?" Empathizing with her feelings the thought provoked Prince felt himself, Hans speaks directly to Elsa's throbbing heart.

She never felt so completely understood in a serious earnest conversation as she did with this man seated beside her. Elsa does not blush nor shy away now, but looks Hans squarely in his wistful eyes.

"True love never fades." A struck quixotic young Queen succinctly repeats the conclusion that she has come to over these past two years spent in the warm glow of her best friend Anna's endless love.

Elsa is now able to look across and face her inner terror of roiling ocean currents churning in the ship's wake with brave eyes that were no longer fearful, but determined to find her little sister and bring her home again.

The cold within Elsa's chilled body at the visions of the past haunting her mind ebb away like a soft, warm neap tide.

"It is getting late and you do need your sleep. May I see you to your cabin, Queen Elsa?" Hans gentlemanly sees the opening for the young lady to be taken below deck to her bedroom for some much deserved rest.

"Oh, yes, if you please, Kommander Westergaard." Elsa find a certain degree of secret joy in the naval title she had graced this capable young man with the command of a ship in her Navy.

Hans stands to chivalrously offer his hand that she accepts with an extended, no longer chilled one of her own. He lifts Elsa easily to her feet as she enjoys the sheer sensation of his warm hand squeezed around hers once again.

"And thank you for listening to my, no doubt, boring, self-absorbed babblings induced by my melancholic hallucinations." Elsa modestly conveys her gratitude to the tall thin man on whose arm she was proudly hanging on again.

"It was my privilege. And my pleasure." With a sincere smile, Hans ingratiates himself with a lowered head and flourishing bow to the lovely Queen.

Bolstered by his charm, Elsa giggles at the redhead's gentlemanly over the top civility. After giving one last longing glance towards the open sea that took her supportive family away from her and Anna for this brief span of time, until they all meet again, God willing, in Heaven's new world…

As for Hans, he was glad to hear this current Queen's similarly lilting laughter again, as the timid pair find some common ground of compassion to bridge the gap opened up between them recently.

"So…" Wanting to cheer her anxious soul, Hans dangles the sudden burning query in his mind as he securely tucks Elsa's no longer frosty arm under his warm stable one. He leads her down the schooner's passageway steps towards her cabin on the second forecastle deck.

"… Moustaches are debonair?" He asks with an intrigued crooked smile, considering the handsome features of his face, as he brushes his stylish trimmed sideburns back self-consciously whilst opening her cabin door.

"Yes. I believe they are." Elsa responds evenly, though her blue eyes were dancing with inspired mirth intentionally aimed towards the coxcomb of a royal prince, as she enters her room.

"For fatherly figures, that is. Good night, Kommander." She purposely adds quickly just before she closes the door firmly in Hans' flustered face.

"Hiya! Admiral!" Waddling down the hall seconds later, Olaf peeks his snowmound head around to salute with one hand and wave the other branch wildly at a befuddled Hans as the snowman nears the room. Pascal, his perch on Olaf's shoulder, had deemed to give this couple some private time.

The chameleon assimilates to the color of Hans' bright pink cheeks with a wicked grin on his lizard mug at the blushing man as Pascal, too, waves good night, Both had arrived to keep Elsa company for the night. The pair of sidekicks had wandered up from the orlop deck below where Kristoff and Sven were holding court.

The snowman scoots between Hans' long legs, and subsequently detaches his own nose like it was second nature, to use the carrot as the lockpick he found he was quite a natural at. Quite serenely, with a placid smile back at Hans, Olaf opens the cabin door and waltzes right into the bedchamber where Elsa was tantalizingly disrobing for bed.

Though Hans only unintentionally glimpsed some vital points from behind the Queen's back, he instantly swallows hard and turns away. His light finger that had been grazing his now fiercely reddened upper lip in imagination of the invisible facial hair in mind's reflection, self-consciously yanks away. He quickly spins on his tall booted heel in retreat down the hall of the lower deck and back up to the ship's bridge where the somehow yet innocent young man was more at home in.

* * *

On his way back up to the Gler's bridge, Hans passes by one quiet cabin chosen as the most comfortable for the injured husband of the married couple who would share the luxury of its plush officer's compartment bed.

Had he been awake enough to brag about it, the proud of his own hirsute facial adornment's enviable still-growing-back-in best feature man had come to be agreeable with the fact that he would soon be labeled as 'fatherly' himself, as inexperienced in that role as he may be.

Princess Rapunzel of Corona shifts her weight from atop her husband's snoring chest. She knew she should be resting, but the lively unborn child kicking in her womb had other plans than being 'restful' this late night.

"Oof." Green in every sense of the word, though the seasick powders Eugene had finally located earlier were helping a bit, Rapunzel wasn't sure if it was normal, or way too early, for this anxious baby of hers to kick start its tiny presence to make itself known. But the sensation of her stomach being love tapped from the inside out by little itty bitty fists amidst her constantly nauseated feelings of sick was undeniable.

But hearing rumors from the lady servants-in-waiting of how much trouble her mother had in delivering her, death nearly claiming Corona's Queen. And had it not been for that secret magical flower that the Lord's restorative sun blessed with special ingredients for healing, Rapunzel herself may not have been born.

And that perplexing frightening thought of dread was especially freaking this unsteady young woman out this night, while the waves rocked the ship in dizzying nauseated back-and-forth motions.

"YAWNNN!" Was it her gentle movements on his sleeping chest? Or the softly spoken sound than his pondering year? Perhaps it was the disturbed state of her worries soul felt in his heart that beat with love for the girl with the magic—even minus the hair—that stirs Eugene Fitzherbert awake with the big long yawn.

"Can't sleep, Liebling?" After a few moments of gaining his sleepy eyed bearings to the ship cabin location, Eugene utters his bedroom nickname for the reclaimed little woman lying atop his manly bare chest and ample pectorals. The pleased man then stretches his long limbs out.

"Ouch, that still smarts." He murmurs, amused more to himself, than to her, as his now fully awake eyes glance down at the freshly changed bandaged upper right arm's aching – yet uninfected – bullet-ridden bicep.

"Ooh, poor sweetie." Compassionate Rapunzel was still able to come out of her own anxious musings to empathize with her injured love's discomfort. She kisses the top of his newly cleaned bandage on his arm tenderly 'to make it all better'.

"God, you're beautiful wake up to." Flynnigan Rider, who was '_not too bad with the ladies'_, cajoles, without flinching, despite the slight pain in her tender touch. The half Preußen man cranes his neck to capture his doting wife's lips for a better purpose, as Rapunzel leans down to him.

After their long, full-mouthed kiss wraps up, the breathless brunette plops her head back down onto her love's heaving chest. Eugene merely starts to pet her super short cropped hair, running his satisfied fingers through its silky strands, as he turns it over in his drowsy mind if she was as amicable to get even closer.

_After all, what was the point of being married, if not to enjoy the palace perks?_

"Do you think I'm going to die having this baby, Eugene?" The morbidly grounded whispered question brings all other romantic procedures to a grinding halt.

A startled Eugene immediately sits up straight, his eyes wide. He pulls his anxious gal up with him to lean against the bed's backboard.

"Now there's a positive '_Good morning, my darling'_ how-do-you-do." Eugene blinks several times at Rapunzel's unpleasant sudden, out-of-the-blue musing.

"Look, Blondie. Everybody has a baby sometime. Well, everybody of that delectable female variety, that is. It's a perfectly normal progression of life. Or so I'm told. You're a healthy, _extremely _fit young lady. So why be worried? I'm not worried. You'll be fine!" Expressively worded Flynn's arrogant bravado comes in handy for the insecure wavering minded girl who never was quite certain of herself, even before her biologically challenged hormones kicked in with this pregnancy.

"You're not worried that I'm gonna die, like my Mutter almost did?" Rapunzel swallows back that bilious feeling in her gut to lift her head to meet her husband heavy lidded golden tan eyes.

"Nope. If you're sturdy enough to survive having a dunderhead like me around for over five years, you're surely strong enough to bring our little pipsqueak into the world, right?" Eugene pats her head back down to listen to the steady sound of his heartbeat again with his interesting brand of optimistic assurances.

"Besides, you've got to stick around to keep me in check. I might go bad again and take that winding rocky path of wicked thievery if you're not here to rein me into the straight and narrow." The former criminal marginally threatens and teases of his wayward soul bowing to 'the easy way' again without his loving wife's virtuous guidance, to lighten the woman's dour mood, if nothing else.

"Okay." Rapunzel answers him in that innocent little voice that said she wasn't wholly convinced. But for Eugene, it was good enough, and he begins to indulgently resume his nibbling of her slender neck that was totally free of any curls of hair-fall after the tress-destined girl's latest jaunt to the barbershop.

"But, Eugene, do you think I'm really cut out to be a good mother?"

_All right. This obviously wasn't going to be a fun and games kind of evening._

Flynn gives it up to lean his stiff back to the bed, arms slung over his head in defeat.

_Ouchy…_

"Of course you will be, Brownie! Come on! You practically invented the self-taught-gal-who-can do-anything phenomenon!" He exclaims emphatically. "From painting to crocheting to sculpting to playing music. Never mind the whiz of a little cleaning expert and cook du jour that you can count among your other fine abilities as '_mein liebhaber frau'_." The appreciative husband gently touches his wife's slightly bulgy tummy with the tender caress and the affectionate terms of endearment in their native Preussen Germanic tongue.

"But I don't even know how to be one! After all, I just met my real mom when I was, like, 18. And growing up in that tower with Mother…"

"Gothel was definitely **not** an award-winning sample selfless motherhood, no." Eugene interjects, his mouth curling sourly at the distasteful memory of that wicked witch who stole Rapunzel's happy childhood from her for her own nefarious selfish purposes.

"I'm not sure where to even begin with a new baby." The uncertain brown haired girl bites her pink rosy lower lip until it was all blood drained whitish as she stares down at her unbuttoned open tummy with gripped trepidation.

"The same place everything good starts—with a dream." Although he prided himself to be a sane pragmatist, Eugene Fitzherbert was a beautiful dreamer truly inside, though he would deny it to his dying day.

For his most precious, beautiful fantasy was lying in his grateful arms, soon to bestow the once unclaimed, lost, unloved lad with another new dream that they forged out of their great love together.

"Du bist mein traum, Rapunzel." Flynn Rider's usual sarcasm and biting witticism façade falls away to reveal a gentle hearted genuine spirit, who has not only found his new dream, but has come to the realization, even after five years of marriage, that the former thief still loved her more than all the silver and gold the world had to offer. Even more than life itself.

"You will be a wunderbar Mutter, Blondie." Spouting words of supported love in Prussian Deutsch, Eugene uses his clever hands to fondle through that mass of short cocoa waves. Rapunzel revels at her husband's loving, reassuring touch.

"_Ich liebe disch…" _Eugene whispers the timeless words of love in any language as the young couple close their eyes for rest in one another's assured arms**.**

Even the small baby growing inside her seems to respond to its new _Vader's _comforting words and caresses, as the tiny being forming within Rapunzel's stomach that Eugene was softly massaging, falls into a restful incubating repose, giving the unborn child's young _Mutter_ some physical relief at last.

Although finding reconciled happiness in each other again, all marital strife surpassed, both husband and wife give some thought and prayers towards another concerned worry – for their missing younger cousin as the next day's approaching storm looms closer with each passing hour.

But the pair in one another's loving embrace knew they would surely face it this time together as one family unit, for the sake and salvation of that effervescent little pixie…

* * *

Now the final member of this naval ship's rescue team could neither sleep, nor relax this midnight hour. For the other half of _his_ soul was still in peril and not able to bring _him _comfort, as the other couples found succor consolation in each other this night.

Kristoff Bjorgman leans his rugged, ripped body rigidly against the ship's lower deck interior barrier wall where he had strapped several crisscrossing harnesses and tethers around the engine room's machinery to keep poor unsteady Sven safely able to stand, sit, or walk around a bit in the semi fenced in area of this orlop lower deck.

["You should try to rest a bit too, old buddy."] After he had munched on the new carrot that a wandering Olaf had almost magically continued to produce all day long from the Gler's well-stocked galley, in preservation of his own favorite orange root vegetable, Sven had kept one constant vigilant eye upon his restless ice harvesting partner.

Kristoff had uttered few words to his reindeer pal over the past few hours. It was as if the big blonde man was attempting to channel all his thoughts and mental energies out the small side scuttle window that afforded those below deck a limited view of the oceanic world swirling outside the engine room's large cargo hold berth.

Kristoff's chocolate brown eyes had been transfixed to his post at the small circular watertight brass protrusion that was bolted securely to the ship's exterior hull. And Sven was starting to worry.

["What you see out there, Kristoff?"] Sven ambles over to the side wall where Kristoff was silently perched. The reindeer peeks out the small round window's two inch thick glass to gaze out over the dusky ocean's undercurrents, following his buddy's trained look.

But it wasn't what Kristoff was not seeing. It was more of what he was _hearing_.

"Can't you hear them, Sven?" Kristoff had been eavesdropping on underwater conversations and incessant prattle between passing playful dolphins and scurrying fishes of all shapesas they migrate either East or West of the Ice on their own summer swim to different climes.

The mountain man had intuitively sensed how the steamship's new fangled circulating mechanical propeller both caused fascination and fear among the undersea residents in this area of the Norwegian Sea.

The ice harvester had even smiled to listen to curious wide-eyed harp seals tease one another with their vibrissae—whiskers that endowed this earless breed of seal with extrasensory awareness of vibration— about how close any dared to come towards the intriguing vessel.

And if he focused long and hard enough, Kristoff was privy to it all.

"I never knew there was such a whole new world of life down here under the waves, Anna." Kristoff marvels in awe of God's infinite majesty revealed in even the smallest krill and seahorse He created to live out existences never known to man.

Kristoff was now coming to conscious recognition of the splendor of it off with his new hidden 'Wind Whisperer' talent opening up.

But as he looks forlornly at the empty space beside him where a special little bright-eyed young lady usually filled in the blanks, Kristoff's only wish was that the bulk of his heart which Anna held in her playful hands would be full and complete again soon. Then he and Anna could spend a lifetime discovering this wondrous magic he was just scratching the surface of together.

Though for now, separated and afraid for her life, Kristoff could not think of much beyond Anna's absence, as the once solitary man aches for his love, who was not right beside him as she was always destined to be…

* * *

"Salutations, Snow Prince! I was the first to know it was you calling!" A high squeaky voice rings inside Kristoff's already swimming head and paddles through the noisy minutiae to grasp hold of the blond man's full attention. One of the ice bred harp seals, with a distinctive horseshoe pattern on its saddleback, swims right up to the porthole glass to keep perfect time with the steamship's swift 35 knots speed. But this, albeit small, silvery gray earless seal took pride in being the quickest of her litter.

"You know me?" Kristoff, though dabbling in this new psychic link he had developed for communicating with birds and animals – and now fish too, it seems – was still surprised when the creatures responded to his silent projections sentiently.

"The white lady told our kind to watch over you since before I was born! I'm excited to be the first Saddleback to actually make contact with the legendary Snow Prince! " The sonically vibration sensitive young seal was as zealous as she was fast, swimming as Unni answers Kristoff's mental questions without missing a beat in keeping up with the moving craft.

"The Snow Queen, silly! No one said in the legends that you'd be so cute!" Unni the seal's vibrissae whiskers tittle in the water as she giggles at the funny dense human with the adorable dimples who appeared all distorted and warped when he and that big donkey beside him move behind the thick porthole class.

"Anyway –" Blushing at how even a female seal could make him feel inadequately uncomfortable, Kristoff shakes off any residual curiosity that the mention of that supposedly mythical woman of the North brought on.

It wasn't the past he was concerned with after all. It was his future with Anna that he was planning to get back. She was every dream he ever had.

"Have you or any of your friends seen another small steam craft come this direction in the past few days?" The tall man asks in all seriousness of the Norwegian special breed of earless young seals who seemed to understand his psychic projections quite well, because her other senses were heightened with little physical auditory ability. This seal in particular possessed an innocent curiosity that reminded Kristoff a bit of his Anna along with her big, enlarged, captivating pupils when she too was curious.

"I haven't personally. But please wait a minute, Your Highness. I'll ask the others."

Modest Kristoff chooses to ignore the honorific title rather than waste time in argument with the eager seal, as Unni's small lithe silvery body winds away from the schooner, disappearing above the waves at quicksilver speed.

"Greetings, Honored Snow Prince. The white lady told our kind to watch over you since—" An invariably larger Minke whale's pointed snout now appears in view of the porthole side, as his deep, deep low voice slowly speaks directly to Kristoff's brain.

"Yeah, yeah. Your friend did that already." The raring-to-go, impatient young man sighs in repetitive exasperation.

"So, have you seen a small steamship going north with the peg leg pirate, a dark Caribbean, and maybe even a little orangey haired girl on it recently?" Kristoff mentally projects, his synapses firing away to the 4 ton 30 foot whale that was trying his darndest to somewhat keep up with the quickly speeding Gler.

"Yes. It was moving towards that island chain in the Northwest from here. That pretty little girl was swabbing the deck, singing like a mermaid on the top of that scary whirly-whirl boat. She was later seen talking with a dark skinned big man when I came up for air, last morning." The whale, it his slow plodding way, associated the steam ship's propeller with what he termed a 'scary whirly-whirl'. The Norwegian Minkehval whale talks as slothenly as his large lumbering dark gray body dorsal fin's were flapping to stay on course with the Gler.

"Last morning?! That means we're only a day's journey behind, Sven! And with this faster ship, we should be able to overtake them in no time! We're getting closer to Anna, Sven!" Although sometimes the 23-year-old could be seriously adult, there were still moments the youthful blond boy could act immature. As, in his relieved joy, Kristoff throws two musclebound arms around his reindeer's furry neck in a hearty laugh's glee.

"Thank you all! Now we are sure we're going in the right direction! Hans has got to get this ship to move faster!" Kristoff, in excited agitation, nearly beheads himself on the lassoed tethers strung up to keep his wobbly legged Rangifer vertical.

Untangling himself from the roped in section in deft movements, the human dashes his strong legs in long strides, several paces at a time, across this lower orlop deck. He pounds his big 'square-shaped' feet across the deck and up the side service ramp, like a possessed madman, to instruct the commander of this vessel to accelerate the ship on high speed so the young new husband could catch up to the kidnapping pirate ship, thrash the pirate within an inch of his life, and rescue his new wife.

"We'll keep a weather eye on her through our ocean network, Your Highness." The lethargic words of the huge creature come out too slow for Kristoff, since the tall young man already had his dispersed mind moving on to other pressing priorities.

"But beware of the Maelstrom, young Snow Prince! It greedily devours when you least expect it!" The Arctic Minke whale's deep bellowed warning of imminent danger, well known to residents under the sea of the fear striking inexplicable vortex hole in the middle of the ocean that's been known to even swallow up whole giant Rorquals, is dashed dismissively upon the pounding waves as the HnoMS Gler races recklessly forward towards its danger with a courage to dare the odds in full chase of recapturing a beautiful dream…

* * *

_il rapide velocissimo__tempo_**_\- _**The extremely rapid beat in Italian music

_Norsklandkrabbe – _Danish ridicule for 'Norwegian landlubber'

_Ich Habe Einen Traum – '_I Have a Dream' in Germanic Prussian

_Liebling_ \- Darling in Germanic Prussian

_Preußen _– German state of the kingdom Duchy of Prussia

_mein liebhaber frau – _my lover wife in Germanic Prussian

_Du bist mein traum_ \- 'You are my dream' in Germanic Prussian

_wunderbar Mutter -_ 'wonderful mother' in Germanic Prussian

_Vader – _Father in in Germanic Prussian

_Ich liebe disch – '_I love you' in Germanic Prussian

_Vibrissae –_ marine mammals' sensory whiskers

_Unni_ – small creature in Saami

_Rangifer - _species genus classification for reindeer

_Rorqual_ \- species genus classification for whales


	34. Chapter 33 - Touch the Sky

We do not own "Frozen" nor any of its characters.

""**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act II**

**Chapter 33**

**"****Touch the Sky"**

The Norwegian Sea's sparkling blue summer waves crest about the shoals of an island no more than fifty nautical meters ahead in the morning's first light.

The peg legged captain of this small steam craft had stayed up all night in anxious anticipation of this day he had fought for, cheated, and clawed his way through anything and anyone that stood in his grimy way towards for years, if not decades, of research and study on one particular subject.

And this would be his moment, at long last, that the wily old black hearted sea ghost would finally see his greatest wish come true.

_Zis day... Zis day will finally be __**mine**__ to grasp in __**my**__ hands! _

The golden orb of Arendelle's holy regalia was held greedily in the contorted shriveled hands of Dutch Capt. Cornelius Jol III–a.k.a. Captain Houtebeen—the last in line of the infamous family of buccaneers, turned corsair, turned privateers, turned pirate.

Within his aged grasping twisted old appendages, Houtebeen clutches the stolen ancient relic and then extends it high up to the sky, as if he were encompassing the sun itself in the rounded golden orb's interior cavity.

And although the old peg leg pirate had a fiery temper to match his wild-haired redhead, many years of trials and failures had taught the seaman, well passed his prime, a certain degree of patience before the eventual pitfall.

_But not zis time! This time I am too close! This time, Houtebeen will triumph!_

"Prepare to weigh anchor, Job! Zen wake za wench to help ready for disembarking!"

At his captain's barked orders from the steering column on the bridge, the dark Caribbean then moves to the small hatch on deck that had provided shelter from the baking late July sweltering sun for the young Princess.

Anna had been kicked out of her slumbered spot in the bridgehouse due to her excessive snoring that had annoyed the grumpy old Captain so much so, that the deep sleeper had to be removed bodily by Job. The first mate had then stashed his coal shoveling assistant under the hatch in the aft of the main deck towards the rudder tail shaft, where the whirring propeller had lulled the noisy sleeper into an even deeper sleep.

_**YAWN!**_

"Ohh! Good morning. Are we there yet?" Stretching the tired muscles in her arms out after shoveling coal like a madwoman all last night, Anna's leisurely actions proved how unafraid this plucky gal truly was. For she was absolutely that certain her Kristoff was on his way to pick her up and take her home.

_So what was there to be afraid of?_

Her braids all frazzled and askew after last night's sweaty overtime job feeding the hungry coal firebox, Anna sits up from her crumpled up state on the hatch's narrow bench position. Her partly inquisitive, but mostly still sleepy, eyes gaze up (okay, only the right eye manages to remain open for long) to the shadow that Job's wide and tall frame was casting over her little nook against the bright morning sunlight.

"I'm hungry, Kai. _Yawn!_ Ask Gerda what's for breakfast, please." In her drowsy delirium of sleeping while sitting again, not-a-morning-person Princess Anna mumbles to her supposed lifelong faithful servant, as both eyelids lose their hard-fought battle to stay open now.

The black coal-streaked cheeks and messy haired head bobs up and down, as its orangey mass of curls longs to lounge for rest again against the makeshift pillow of his own headscarf that Job provided earlier for her comfort.

"Da Cap'n wants little missy ready to be leaving da ship soon when we get to land." Job patiently explains as he goes about his many one-man tasks of running the ship as his sole responsibility.

"Oh, good. We're landing someplace… _Yawn!_ Any chance for some of Gerda's krumkake left over from dessert last night, Mama? I have a sweet tooth in the morning. Actually, I have a sweet tooth all day – that's why I must love my sweet honey bear Kristly so much…" Her eyes were still tightly closed in her nonsensical sleepy baby gurglings at the mention of food plus her true love, when Captain Houtebeen's scratchy sobering voice calls Anna back her senses.

"Vat is taking ze annoying child so long to awaken? She could not have tired herself in cooking zat mess for our supper last evening! Tell her zis is no palace tea room! Get to work, Mislukkeling Meid!" The aged pirate was still sore at Anna for wrecking his favorite 'dildkartoffelog' recipe of his dead cabin boy, who could at least cook well.

"Okay, okay, grumpy gramps, I'm awake!" Anna grumbles, as she wipes the sleepers from her eyes.

"What can I do to help you, Mr. Job?" Sour to sunshine in ten seconds flat, Princess Anna, despite her quick temper, was not shy of hard labor to lighten another's load. She scoops up the coal shovel she'd dragged to exhausted sleep in her one hand and reaches out to touch the large handled hawser rope with the other upon dizzily leaping from her slumbering nest too fast.

"You go down below and pack up all da food and water supplies _real carefully-like_. Who know how much remain on da island since last we been there." Job shakes his black mane of hair almost distastefully at the unpleasant memory associated with this place he wanted no part of, it seemed.

_Oh, well. Darned if I know_.

In her mind, Anna's rough Ice Harvester picked up lingo bleeds through every now and then, as she merely shrugs with a big mouthed yawn at Job's enigmatic words.

"Got it!" With a chipper morning determined smile flashed at him, Anna soldiers on. She was not suffering from some nutty mental syndrome to join the ranks of her captors, but she had a big heart enough to empathize with this giant of a man who had been good to her thus far.

Especially now, for she could see something clearly in the dark man's eyes that spoke of his chagrined, almost unwilling regret in partaking of some objectionable mystery this Mosken island held within its uninviting craggly rock volcanic mountain awaiting them.

* * *

Some hundred nautical kilometers to the south in the same Norwegian Sea…

"Can't you get this bucket to move any faster, Westergaard?" Kristoff, also getting up on the wrong side of the bed, (though he never slept at all last night) was not normally a confrontational type of man.

Unless he was dealing in money matters with shopkeepers, that is.

But he couldn't take much more of this long ocean voyage's endless wave after crashing wave with no end in sight. Kristoff had lived far too long speeding on his sleigh in the fast lane, relying on himself alone–that included trusty Sven, of course—to be satisfied to let someone else sit in the proverbial driver's seat and dictate the speed to which he could race to his love.

"This—ahem—'_bucket,'_ as you refer to this fine Naval vessel of the Queen's Sjoforvaret, has been running at peak speed for hours now since you came to the bridge and advised me to do so, Mr. Bjorgman." Kommander Hans Westergaard was standing rigidly erect at his post on the HnoMS Gler's bridge. He was reading the marine magnetic compass, wind charts and other navigational equipment on its panels with one observant eye, the other trained upon the sporadically choppy seas his Naval schooner was cutting through at a clipped pace.

"Then why are we slowing? It feels to me as if we were going faster before. Why don't you just crank your engine more or something?!" Obviously ignorant of naval vessels' rudder to wave velocity ratio workings, Kristoff brashly pounds a fisted knuckle hard to the pilothouse's steering dial. It was admittedly set on the 'FULL' indicator, but his hitting it would certainly make the machinery go quicker, in utterly youthful male response to adverse situations. The control panel shutters under his uncontrolled raw strength.

The frightened young helmsman Jan's wide eyes shoot up and over to his commanding officer at this rather violent mountain man's role on the ship in this non-naval chain of command.

"Ensign Jan. Steady as she goes." The true commander of the Gler speaks in a completely calm even tone, giving the order for the new coxswain to continue to steer as needed upon the current heading.

"Mr. Bjorgman. A breath of fresh air, if you please." Hans, ever the gentleman in his tall collared dark blue naval officer's uniform and elegant white gloved gesturing hands, invites Kristoff to join him outside the bridge wheelhouse. The big burly blonde had been crowding the intimidated teenaged ensign in for the past few hard-driven hours all the late night and even into this early morning.

Giving Hans a confrontational glare, Kristoff lets out a long exhale before he obliges to step from the bridge entryway to the top deck. Hans respectfully follows behind.

"Please try to understand, Sir. Due to a host of reasons, available wind conditions and the natural flow of tidal current shifts being the foremost factors, any ship's top speed varies from hour to hour. A normal layman would not be able to detect the change in speed. However, since you are a very keen individual in your sensitivity to nature's surroundings, you seem able to judge the result of the wind's vagarities. May I say, I am impressed." Prince Hans still retained this flourishing command of words that would either captivate or condescend, depending on his listener's disposition.

Now Kristoff, though a sweetheart at heart, was never a fan of Hans Westergaard. That, plus the fact that he was way too male to fall for this red-headed royal's good elocution and innate charms.

"Look, I don't need your—" Antsy Kristoff's nose was just itching for a fight this high-strung morning. And who better to pick it with as opponent than his formal rival? The six foot five inch blonde stops in his tracks to get right in the face of the man leading him out to the stem of the Gler's fore staysail and billowing jibs above.

"And were I in your unenviable shoes, I am certain I would also be understandably impatient to rescue the woman I love." Said in the present tense, Hans contemplative serious eyes soften as he looks up to the young husband, whose utmost concern and vexation for his new bride was, in the Danish Prince's eyes, even more commendable.

Kristoff blinks several times back at clear eyed man until he settles into a smirk.

"Yeah. Well, my foot size is way bigger than yours." Kristoff's thoroughly odd scoffing phrase now causes the eloquent naval officer to wonder in curiosity as the tall blonde ice harvester purposely stomps one of his decidedly extra large and wide feet to be placed beside Hans' fairly long enough, yet elegantly slim and thin, black booted foot circumference.

_And I'm not just talking footwear style here. _A puffed up Kristoff was obviously smiling to Anna inwardly at some inside podiatry laced joke shared with his missing other half that he knew she would find amusing.

A bewildered Hans cocks his redhead back at him, eyebrows raising as a naïve confused smile curls his lip now, too.

"And here, for a second, I thought you two strapping young lads were gonna have at it when I saw you both come storming out from that wheelhouse like that, with those querulous looks on your faces." The third Prince on this boat ride (through marriage or illegitimacy—take your pick) had wandered up to the main deck at his sweet frau's insistence. Eugene was told to see if any help was needed and to make sure all was going according to scheduled plan in their estimated time of arrival towards those coordinates he himself lifted from those kidnapping pirates' ship before he and his Lillebror scuttled the Pearl Lady.

_Speaking of Scuttle…_

Kristoff's extra sense starts to ring squawking feathers in his head as he turns it upwards to the sky.

Flynn Rider saunters over to the pair whose body language had just thankfully shifted from confrontational to congenial.

_Thank God for that. Between Kristoff's muscle bulk and Lillebror's concealed sword and dagger techniques, with my arm in this shape, I'm not sure if I could break it up without some trouble._

"So… What's our ETA, fellas?" Eugene just finishes saying when Kristoff, who had been keenly studying a derpy dizzy winged white bird flying in the ship's direction, suddenly grunts as if he were feeling a gamut of intense emotions that belonged to another part of his soul.

Holding his instantly throbbing head, the tall blonde finds the sudden burst of emotion extremely perplexing–and terribly frightening—for the disparate variety of sentiment they posed.

"Anna!" Sinking to his knees, Kristoff's pained eyes squint up to the baking morning sun in prayerful desperate hope for his love's safety.

* * *

_**Minutes ago…**_

"Hmm? What's wrong with my foot size?" Catching a stray thought here and there, Anna pauses in her stumbling track up the crackly rock hillside to air the sudden query aloud. She gazes down to her white ankle boots in wonder at the implicit direction of the voice in her head.

"Foot size? Did you break a heel off one of yer leettle booties, meisje?" Captain Houtebeen, unlike the orangey Princess, had the advantage of her hard trodden path up the steep mountainside, with Job's strong arms carrying the old man on their upward mobility journey.

Once the steamship reached shore, it safely moored near Mosken island's inlet, and the trio left the vessel to begin trekking up the rocky ridges of the treeless, barren, winding path up Wilhelmstind peak.

"No. Just marveling at this incredibly, really high peak we are climbing for unknown reasons in this burning heat. Why have we–_umph_!–changed occupations from sea pirates into mountain climbers—_oomph— _anyway_?_" Anna complains of her aching feet and the abnormally hot, over 75° July weather in the bright morning sun that the Norwegian lass was unaccustomed to.

"Not that I don't _love_–_argh!_—scaling peaks for kicks. I did just marry a rugged mountain man—so I **am** an old pro at climbing big hills. Oof! Is the air getting thinner up here? High altitudes—_huff-huff_—have this effect on me." A huffing and puffing all the way here Anna mumbles under her breath to ask a question from time to time. She exhales loudly in the abnormally hot summer weather, especially exhausting with several bags of food and other supplies weighing her down on this mountain climb.

Fatigued, Anna has to take a breather. The girl recklessly plops down atop the heavy water cask she had been hauling up this part of the thankfully gradual grassy knolled hill. She hurriedly twists up her two messy braids and ties them so they stick out and up with a quick sunflower hair pin pulled from her pocket affixed to them. Its blue green and yellow ribbons stream down over her sweaty brow with cute effect as her frazzled lips blow the cascading ribbons away from blocking her view.

"Whew! That's better! Isn't it like a thousand degrees hotter when your hair gets in your face—"

"D_oes _the child ever shut up?!" A gravelly voice Houtebeen complains of the running off at the mouth female hostage whom he felt more victimized by than it seems she of him in her nonstop noisy rant while they traverse the uninhabited Mosken island's Wilhelmstind peak.

"Be quiet, Missy. You just keep up." Job's deep voice authoritatively suggests to Anna who was still curiously innocent enough to stop to enjoy the sweet fragrance spicy scent of the Mjordurt's sweet clustered blooms that looked like cotton balls more than flora.

Job pauses beside her to scan the green moss and lichen covered rock face to the west. Spotting the cairn pile of rocks he himself had erected there as a marker to the route junction some time ago, the big Caribbean man makes a sharp turn to the left on their, yet by foot, ascent of the growing steeper by the meter gradual climb up the mountain.

"Right. I'm right behind you. Was I babbling again? Elsa says I'm funny when I talk to myself." Anna says more to herself under her breath. With one final longing glance back down to where she was midway up the almost 1300 meter tall mountain peak, that was Mosken island, to the sundrenched ocean below, she gives a frustrated sigh. "Okay, let's go, legs. Come on gang!" Anna commands her pack bag entourage as she scoops them back up over her determined shoulders and weighed down arms.

Energetic Anna didn't mind the heavy work so much, but she did miss the hero who had generally carried everything needed to be carried for her these past two years together.

_My Kristly is coming for me for sure! You just wait and see! "_Umph!"Anna lets out a grunt as her already tired out arms and legs stomp up the increasingly less verdant mountainside.

"I'm coming, I'm coming!" Anna tries to sound perky as she gathered herself and her satchel to follow Job's lead. But when she passes by that interesting formation of marker rocks, the spunky brave girl reaches for something deep in her skirt pocket's fold to casually drop atop the stone pile. Our orangey ray of sunshine then begins innocently whistle as not to draw attention to her own colorful addition to the route marker, as she guiltily scurries away from it to catch up to where the first mate was carrying his one legged Captain up to the peak.

Job heads towards the more craggly rock high spur of the mountain face, crushing the last remaining Skogstorkenebb violet mountain meadow flowers in the pirates' careless intruding wake.

Trudging along, a loaded down Anna follows Job and Captain Houtebeen up towards the headwall upper section of mountain terrain that was definitely steeper than before, as she blindly follows until she was standing before an imposing sheer cliff edge.

"Whoa. Do we have to go way up there?" Anna vocalizes in a daunted small voice when the straggler finally catches up to the men, only to be greeted by the quite mind blowing rock face's vertical height. She follows their gazes to the overhanging precipice above with a low whistle.

"Ye never climbed a wee cliff before, Meisje?" Houtebeen taunts, finding some sick gratification in stoking the poor girl's fears.

"You kidding?! I told you—my guy's a lifelong Mountaineer! This fella's a piece of cake for experienced climbers like me." Anna competently shrugs off the old man's goading provocation.

Putting down, none too lightly, the food baskets and water keg supplies, Anna spits on her two hands and rubs them together like an old pro's preparation for greater friction grip would do.

She astounds both pirates by gung-ho throwing her bloomer sporting legs up and she manages to scale free climb ascend a whole six foot of the gravelly rocks jutting out at the cliff's base with arms and legs spread out quite unladylike.

"Ha ha ha har! At least ze girl is good for a laugh! But don't let her kill herself yet, Job." Captain Houtebeen says with dark amusement.

"You be getting hurt like that, Missy Anna. You wait your turn and Job will winch you up dere in no time." The tall Caribbean puts down his chortling Captain to sit on a nearby boulder. Job was starting to rig up some sort of seat and pulley system produced from his backpack to get the handicapped pegleg up to the ledge of the 70 foot-high precipice above.

Job then walks over to reach out and simply grab hold of one of Anna's flailing legs that were searching futilely for a foothold. She was sprawled across the stark rock face where she had scaled a few meters up, but still was in his long arms' reach.

"Hey!" Anna slips and falls into Job's waiting arms. The wind knocked out of her from the dizzying 'high-altitude' drop of all of 8 feet up, a starry eyed Anna opens them in full expectation to see her handsome golden Kristy gazing down at her clumsy self with that admonishing yet adoring look on his sweet face.

But it was only Job's decidedly not pale mug staring back at her with much less than adoration.

"Stay down now. No climbing." Job tersely instructs as he was about to dump Anna unceremoniously to the ground.

"Here. Put ze leetle Princess on my friendly lap and ve'll ride up the pulley together, real cozy-like." The cunning Captain cajoles as, backing away, Anna makes a disgusted grossed out look at his perversely ugly smug face welcoming her with a pat on his old one-legged lap.

"Da pulley might not work right for the extra weight, Cap'n." Job tries to dismiss the idea, much to Anna's relief, but the older man's beady dark eyes were insistent to his first mate.

"Only a few minutes, Missy. Just keep your legs tucked in between da bars and don't let go." Job mumbles in her ear as he dutifully places Anna's shocked body to sit upon the peg leg's lap. Job then goes back to securing the thick climbing rope he had specially lassoed down from its camouflaged space in between the protruded rock face with the expertly thrown grappling hook. Once the heavy duty rope was secured around the device, Job hefts Capt. Houtebeen and Anna both onto the pulley seat at once.

"Hello, Meisjes. Has been a long time since a girly has been on Houtebeen's lap. Lucky lady." His missing toothed smile was more insidious than his bad rum soaked breath as he looks at her close proximity and licks his depraved old chops temptingly.

"Yuck! You just keep those dirty old hands away from me!" As fiery as her orangey hair flaming in the sun, Anna viciously spits out before the lecherous criminal has a chance to even lay one finger on her. Before the pirate could dare to cross her threatening glance, Job pipes up.

"Hold tight to the seat, Cap'n! Ye might be a bit unbalanced now for toppling over with the girl's extra weight, too." Job warns as he begins to strong arm winch pull the double rope's end he had on this end that he had swiftly attached to a series of hooks at the sides of the bench seat.

As they begin to ascend, Houtebeen's wandering hands immediately grab hold of the contraption beneath him, fore and aft, as it starts its natural quaking wobble upwards.

The pegleg, wary of gravity for some 40 years now, had an involuntary self-preservation reaction that trumped any further carnal needs, and smart man Job calculated on that too, banking on his warning skepticism's effect on the depraved mind he had come to know how to manipulate so well over these last 20 years together.

_**PULL! SQUEAK! PULL! SQUEAK! PULL! SQUEAK!**_

Anna watches with surprised eyes, how, with each powerful even tug Job accomplishes, she and the old pirate are elevated up several feet at a time through the air. With Job at the helm of the ingenious thick rope and metal contraption, Anna and Houtebeen's fate was relying on the powerful brute force of the man's hands not to slip and let the pair of them, now some 30 feet plus up aloft, fall to their plunging deaths.

Though Houtebeen had suddenly gone silent from his jeers and cackles, eyes tightly closed with white knuckles clenched about the seat of the winching device, Anna thought the exhilarating ride was amazing!

She notes in impressed curiosity how this converted ship windlass invention of Job's, that worked somewhat in a window washer's ramp idea back home, but more personalized and quicker, was downright nifty!

She keeps her legs in as told as they lift parallel with the cliff close by, yet Anna couldn't help but fearlessly stand up from his lap to spread her excited arms out to touch the hazy blue sky that she never felt so much a part of than right now. Anna felt so alive in this thrilling moment of ascending higher than even Arendelle Castle's tallest window peaked ledge that the spirited girl loved to sing and dance upon for the sheer feeling of being free.

"I will ride! I will fly! Chase the wind and touch the sky!" Anna can't help her spinning mind from singing out a wild heart's rebellious tune to the vast sunny blue as she stretches up into the sky on her fearless tippy toes, higher than she'd ever risen before.

40 feet. 50 feet. 60 feet. 70 feet straight up! With one palm holding the seat's metal railing, Anna stretches her other hand way out to touch the sky as their pulley driven man-powered carnival ride rises all around her wound up excited elevating body.

"Na, na, na, na…"

The contraption finally reaches the precipice summit to where the infirmed old pirate, with great difficulty, usually had to utilize all of his upper muscles to hoist his inferior body up from the seat to the cliff's edge while Job climbed the rope alone.

Houtebeen grumbles to himself, expecting the unmolested girl on his lap to at least give him the common courtesy of helping him out to the ledge. But the free spirit in Princess Anna had other priorities in mind.

"Whee! That was fun! Let's do it again!" Anna was treating her captivity more like a vacation as she bounces out from the hauling apparatus' seat (knocking the frustrated pirate off balance, much to his swearing chagrin) and rushes upon the ledge's rocky loose scree pebbled ground, slipping and sliding along with her arms straight out to embrace the wind whistling all about her like a young child would. For inside, spirited Princess Anna of Arendelle would always still be that bright eyed 8 year old in her love for the innocent joys of life.

It never did cross the mind of this guileless royal child that her wicked kidnapper's very life and death in the balance was, in this moment, at her discretion. For the evil unguarded pirate was precipitously dangling on one wobbly leg near the 70 foot precipice's edge, teetering dangerously over, if only someone decided to give the cruel man a slight push…

* * *

"Oh! Let me help you!" Princess Anna was not that vindictive though. She was still a genuinely good little heroine against _this_ particular red headed villain. She probably wasn't that corporal punishing with the other redheaded villain either, when it came down to it, as much as she convinced her angry mind she could be to '_that_ Hans'.

Anna dashes to the cliff's edge with a helpful hand outstretched towards the pirate, who greedily accepts it with a grasp and pulls himself onto the land using Anna as ballast.

With his one good leg firmly on terra firma, Captain Houtebeen leans down on Anna's shoulder as he catches his lost breath. The peg leg pirate makes the lithe young girl his walking stick/cane in the necessary instrument's place until Job would arrive with the balancing tool strapped to his back, among many of the other supplies he could safely carry up the grappling hook rope line. Job would have to climb without a belay partner to steady his rope on either end again to fetch the remainder of their gear. But the industrious Caribbean man was used that, too.

When Job finally arrives from his solitary climb, Anna is relieved to be rid of the foul-smelling breath of rum pirate on her shoulder, who had been leaning on her in a state of resting tired aged eyes in place of his cane.

It made it impossible for the independent girl to roam the mountain's higher level spur ridge, especially that intriguing concealed crevasse opening's widemouth ingress that was beckoning her inquisitive eager-to-discover-new-things mind to enter its mysterious darkness.

And that's exactly where Captain Houtebeen starts to head once he is reunited with his trusty walking stick.

"Come along, Missy Anna. Cap'n says ye be needin' to go in there too." The first mate's rough voice is betrayed by his kind eyes that land upon Anna with something akin to… pity… in them.

"Okay." Anna hadn't been afraid of the dark since she was—well, she never was afraid of the dark like most other children had a deep-seated inherent fear of it. But there was something about this dark chasm of that eerie cave's entrance that positively sends chills running up and down the girl's tingling spine.

_What's inside there that's got me so spooked? Oh Kristly! Your Anna's a nut! But I've never been so afraid of what I'll find in the dark my whole life…_

* * *

"_Chim-chim-chimney Chim-chim-cheree, a seagull's as lucky as lucky can be…"_

Across the wide expanse of the Norskehavet— the Norwegian Sea, a warm North Atlantic current ensured the ocean's relatively stable high temperature. Even though the Norwegian sea was within the Arctic Circle in this area, the transition zone between Boreal and Arctic currents allowed for flora and fauna of both climactic regions. Since they were ice free due to the converging seas' semi-diurnal tide, these coastal zones were rich in fish for spawning.

And wherever you find multitudes of fish near the surface of the waters, you certainly find multitudes of seabirds ready to snap them up.

Counted among them today was a certain dizzy black-and-white feathered seagull friend who had been caught up in the skerry's flurry near the bird rocks outside the island of Rost that our sail steamship schooner was passing.

["Scuttle!"]

Eagles, cormorants, colorful puffins were amongst a variety of other sea foul gathered in thick flocks around the rock skerries that were alive and rich with life above the world's largest deep water coral reef.

Scuttle had been trying to weave his awkward wings around the masses of seabirds in their food frenzied excitement, but each hungry feathered foul seemed to have his or her head up their—

["Tails up, ladies! The Scuttle Recon is coming through!"] The klutzy seagull finally manages to dodge and bob his serpentine path in the sky toward the approaching vessel.

"Scuttle! Where have you been? I've been looking for you guys for days!" Kristoff had decided to stay up top deck try to call out for the birds who had promised to keep a lookout for Anna. With all the emotional upheaval she was experiencing right now— the intuitive new husband could feel it deep in his bones— Kristoff wanted to have a bird's eye view on his missing little wife all the more desperately.

["You wouldn't believe the traffic jams I've run into today! Sheesh! You think there was the sale on tuxedos for those vacationing penguins back there! Ha ha ha, I kill me!"] The bird had fancied himself an old-time comedian, but Kristoff was not amused.

"Have you seen Anna yet?" All serious, Kristoff felt like throttling the answers out of the dumb gull as Scuttle abandons the conversation when Olaf waddles up the companion way ramp to the foredeck.

The big blonde leans over the edge farther to converse with the bird who had landed on the spiked bowsprit of the Gler.

"Scuttle! Hello out there! Where's the rest of your recon team?" Olaf asks inquisitively as he his feet roll up beside a frustrated Kristoff.

["Oh, those silly birds couldn't keep their minds on the mission if I brought them back here! This place is a riot! Now I'm glad I left them on point on the island to keep watch if our targeted little lady gets on the move from that old ship we zeroed in on. As the fastest flyer—and brains-of-the-covert-operation leader, if I do say so myself—I just ventured out to give you guys the latest update on our expedition, Prince my Kristly."] Scuttle salutes in his silly drunken way to a rolling eyed Kristoff.

"Never mind that! Is she alright? They haven't hurt her, have they?" Kristoff airs his innermost worries, his big hands balled up in sweaty fists shaking as he anxiously awaits the response.

["So far, the Scuttle Recon has spotted your pretty Princess songbird, fine and fit to carry baggage, singing all the while she was disembarking from that steamboat with two _very_ suspicious looking characters. Especially the ugly old guy with the patch on his one eye. He walked a bit _funny_ for a human, if you know what I mean. I wonder if he's just pretending to be a real human. Maybe he's actually a merman, the way he stumbles about on land…"] Off on a tangent, the addled brain seagull covers one eye with a dark feather and hobbles on one spindly leg in mimicking charade. The trying-to-be-helpful dumb fowl rarely could see the forest for the trees, made obvious in his quizzical expression concerning the peg-leg pirate's obvious human immobility issue.

"You've found Anna, Scuttle! What was she singing? We love singing and dancing in Arendelle." Olaf rivaled the seagull in attention value as Scuttle flutters onto the snowman's extended branch arm.

"Are you really able to converse with that the seagull, Olaf?" Traversing the deck softly from behind them, an intrigued Elsa asks as she joins her cabin mate snow creation, with Pascal on her shoulder at this early morning hour.

"Yup! It was Kristoff who introduced Scuttle to me. And we've all become great friends ever since." Olaf beams up at the Queen and then gives a smiling nod to bird and then the hesitant man. As for Kristoff, he was not quite ready just at the moment to spill his guts about his strange new power.

"Kristoff? Wait, I'm confused. Are you saying Kristoff can communicate with this bird, too? How is this true?"

Her magical talking snowman was one thing, but this? Elsa gazes in curiosity at her new brother-in-law.

Kristoff lets out a pent-up sigh, knowing it had come out sooner or later.

_I guess. But I don't like hiding things._

"Look. It's a long story that I don't totally get yet myself, Elsa. But I've met someone from my past recently when Sven nearly got washed down the fjorden back there and old Ragi saved him. Old Ragi is a wandering minstrel, always around when I was growing up with the Ice Harvesters and I think…I think he might be my real Dad…and it looks like I've inherited this weird '_Wind Whisperer', 'one with nature' _ability from him. Even when I was a kid, I always _did_ feel a bond with Sven, like I could hear him and he could understand everything I was saying. And it turns out we can." Kristoff thought it would be harder to explain than that, for he was a plainspoken man trying to explain a subject anything but plain.

He takes another deep breath and turns to the winds for the right way to honestly describe all of this unique aspect of ability that Ragi opened up for him.

"Your biological father?" Elsa's eyes stare at him in wonder with the word '_Wow'_ murmured on her purplish lips. She knew about Kristoff's being an orphan raised with the Ice Harvester mountain men since he was a very small boy, with perhaps some Saami roots. Elsa had even met his decidedly different adopted rock troll parents, Cliff and Boulda.

_But this paternal relation with some remarkable extraordinary ability?_ The Queen of this land, with mystical capabilities of her own variety, contemplates with quiet regard up at him.

Kristoff hadn't even told to her the part he was still struggling with to perceive himself about the myth of the legendary 'Snow Queen' that Ragi and the creatures Kristoff has met along the way keep inferring he had some deep connection to.

"Yeah, I've been thinking about what he said...All I know is all of a sudden I can hear the animals in my head—not just Sven, but birds, bears, seals, whales—you name it, like he does. Yeah, I know it sounds crazy, but I've been talking with them all this journey, and the creatures have been helping me point the way to Anna. Just like Ragi said they would, if I listened close enough." Kristoff was still trying to come to grips with this new facet of himself he never knew.

"That's a wonderful gift, Kristoff." Gathering herself, the pale woman takes it even better than Kristoff had expected. But Elsa was his Anna's sister and her best friend. So who better to understand than someone who loved her and longed to rescue her as much as he did?

She even smiles at the cross-eyed seagull with a reluctant bitten lip grin and fingered wave of her elegant hand. Why wouldn't she believe him? After all, Anna's level headed husband never took to flights of fancy before. There were more magical things under God's wondrous sun than the calm young Queen knew the world would ever grasp this side of Heaven.

["Sir Scuttle, at your service, Beautiful."] A flirtatious eyebrow raised Scuttle gives Elsa a saluting wing and a wink. The confused young woman gives one of her nervous little giggles behind a muffled hand at the comical bird's odd actions, though she did not hear a word he said.

"So has this… Scuttle…friend of yours, located Anna yet?" Giving the seagull a wary glance as she speaks over his head to Kristoff, Elsa, keeping an open mind, magnanimously tries to join in the silent one-sided conversation.

"Was it Mosken island where you saw Anna and those two pirates leaving the ship?" Kristoff poses the open question to Scuttle who slowly nods his head up and down, mouthing _'Mos-ken-Is-land'_ purposefully slow to be clearly interpreted. His birdbrain was just starting to get that some people, like Queen Elsa, couldn't understand him.

["Beautiful, dumb blonde."] The old-school birdbrain murmurs to himself, causing Kristoff to almost smile when—

"Argh!" Kristoff grunts as he falls to his knees on the deck, holding his head at the maelstrom of raw emotions that suddenly stream through his open mental receptors reaching through his bond with his new bride.

"Kristoff?!" Elsa and Olaf both rush to him, and the pale young woman kneels to the deck planks stabilize his wracked shoulders.

"Oh, no! Eugene, what can we do to help him?" A struck worried Rapunzel clings to her concerned husband's one good arm as the couple was just making their morning appearance on the top deck when all this uproar began.

"Mr. Bjorgman! What's happened?" Stepping out from the bridge at the disturbance outside, Hans, sensing his Queen was in distress again on the foredeck, races to her side where the platinum blonde was kneeling to support Kristoff's involuntary shuttering of every rippling muscle of his body.

"Get me to her—now!" Kristoff spits out, eyes clenched closed, hands spread over the deck boards in total turmoil.

"Please bring me to Anna…" The big blonde boy was secure in himself enough not to care of anyone – even other men – saw the tears in the young man's desperate eyes spill over as he looks up directly into each of theirs. His eyes finally lock with Elsa's, as Kristoff clutches a strong hand to his heart, where a plethora of emotions someone dear to him must be intensely feeling somewhere out there was experiencing. So he could feel them too through his true love's bond with Anna.

Eugene, Rapunzel, Olaf, Pascal and Scuttle all look to Elsa's frantic fear stricken eyes for her queenly direction. But all she had to do was gaze upward to see Kommander Westergaard wordlessly swinging right into decisive action for her with just one glance passed between them.

Hans' long legs take quick strides to return to the bridge where the Gler was already under orders to not to spare the knots at full steam. The newly appointed Sjoforsvaret Kommander now gives the extraordinary fierce firm order to 'Flank speed!' and subsequently, 'Take point-of-sail!' to veer off track at a diagonal 45° angle orientation. Hans then places the command to slowly ease the ship into a full 'beam reach' right angle on the starboard tack.

It may have been an unorthodox method of utilizing the vessel's close hauled trimmed sails efficiently abeam of the higher wind velocity, but the naval man's clever calculations of the changing tides in their favor to traverse the wind at their back made this maneuver inspired.

Hans quickly scans his latitude wind chart and double checks the Mercurator projection maps on the bridge's control panel to estimate their current correct course.

It all paid off dividends as the helmsman steers, as directed by his Chief Officer, across the remaining nautical miles at full maximum speed, the Gler gaining extra momentum on the course toward Mosken island's rocky shores…

* * *

_**Previously…**_

_Drip. Drip. Drip._

Anna inwardly shivers at the damp cave's lack of natural luminance.

Job's lit torchlight casts shadows across the dismal silent atmosphere she had been enveloped in. The dark cavern's eerie interior was almost stifling the young girl who longed for noisy wide-open spaces.

"_Hmm…hmmm…hmm…hmmm…"_

"Mr. Job. Do you hear something in here?" In a hushed whisper, Anna adjusts the multiple satchels slung around her neck and back that covered her one ear. Straining, she wanted to get a better listen to the haunting unearthly murmur of the ageless melody she imagined she heard echo through the cavern faintly below the sound of those endless water dripping stalagmites.

Brave little soldier Anna was secretly glad Job had returned to where he had instructed her to _'stay put with the supplies'_ a few minutes ago, when he and mean old Captain Houtebeen had continued on through the maze of the puzzling cave. All the trio's wandering around the dark cavern's confused twisting and turning passages, down various shady tunnel shafts that led them deeper and deeper into the dearth, Anna would not be able to find her dizzied way back outside anyway, even if she dared try to escape.

"Dere be ghosts of da past in places like dis." The superstitious Caribbean responds in a foreboding tone of voice, as the whites of his eyes against his dark skin in the ebony dark blink back at the unnerved girl sitting straight up rigidly on one of her food baskets, all white knuckled and jittery.

"Well, that's a comforting thought. Thank you very much for that." Anna sardonically comments under her breath as she purses her lips in a pouty pucker.

"Wait! Where are you going now?!" She cries out when Job and his lit torch begin to move away again.

"I just be checking on ye. Gotta go back to da Cap'n now." He states before disappearing into the pitch darkness again.

"Right…I don't need to be checked on, like a baby! And I'm not afraid of your ghost stories like some wimpy little girl—"

But the elongated shadows of the hanging stalactites above her head seep above ground water into the closed depression of the talus cave. Just one well-placed drip is all it takes to cause the edgy Princess to jump nearly ten feet in the air when the damp cold water splat lands on her nose.

_**SPLASH!**_

"Eek!" Brave Anna lets out a small squeak as she abandons her packs and dashes blindly towards Job's trailing light source down that interconnected passage tunnel of the dormant volcano, deeper towards those beckoning sounds calling her.

* * *

"Please! Have you brought the medicine?! Please, let us leave this horrid cave, I beg of you! He has already told you all he knows of the legend. I fear he may not hold on for much longer in here…" A woman's muffled sobs amidst a man's low painful moans were vaguely able to be picked up by a sneaky Anna's rushed forward hearing range as she nears the small tunnel shaft Job was returning to.

The pitiable sound was urgently plaintive in its frustrated distress, more evident with each step Anna took towards the narrow tunnel shaft. But the melodic voice still retained, amidst apparent anxiety, a certain frail sense of refined deportment that Princess Anna of Arendelle was certain she had heard somewhere before.

If only once upon a dream.

That singular velvety voice was so familiar to Anna's heart that her mesmerized ears refused to register what they were hearing for the staggering incredulity of it all.

The disoriented girl, after a pause in dizzied blank deliberation, was as certain, as she was soulfully absolute, that she recognized the owner of those lovely, yet intrinsically sad tones.

Though she dared not believe what it was telling her pounding heart, for fear of the dreadful thud of harsh reality, should the fantasy come to crash about her innocent shoulders…

As if in a different dreamlike plane's stupefied daze, Anna, by rote, coarsely pushes right past Job, in undeniable pursuit of something her strained ears were trying to distinguish in disbelieved hearing that her wide brilliant aquamarine eyes, adjusting to the lack of luminescence change, would irrefutably affirm to see…

* * *

"Niet, Madame. No medicine. But Captain Houtebeen did bring somezing very special for you both, to be sure, to ease his heart to be seeing za need to do zings my way even better." The peg legged pirate's speech doesn't miss a beat. He, facing the tunnel opening where a stunned silent Anna had just barreled past Job through, physically demonstrates his wicked intent.

Houtebeen gives the petite dark haired figure obscured before him a grotesque toothy grin. He then swiftly slides his handicapped body across the small cavern egress forward and past her to grab a disoriented, shocked Anna's arm forcibly towards his foul-smelling form. In the next motion, Captain Houtebeen savagely shoves Anna down to the cave's dusty sand, clay and silt floor.

"Hey!" Shaking her braided head from the dirt, feisty Anna was more angry than afraid of her captor. But soon, both of those emotions would be utterly overruled by one sentiment far more intense.

The little princess' headspun eyes blink back the immediate tears forming within the flickering view of the torchlight to gaze up into the warm welcoming eyes of—

"Mama? This isn't a dream, is it? You're really alive!" Anna felt like a tiny little girl again, as it was unquestioningly now her dear Mother's loving embrace that scoops up her poor child from the ground to wipe away the dirt streaking across Anna's stained wet cheeks.

The overcome elder woman smiles and laughs and cries simultaneously as she hugs her offspring tight to her chest with even more unbidden sobs than before.

"My little girl, my little girl. I thought I would never see you again. Why are you here, my Baby? He hasn't hurt you, has he?" Queen Idun of Arendelle openly weeps into her younger daughter's caramel hair as she embraces Anna so fiercely she feared she may break the poor girl in half. But in her joy, the devoted mother couldn't help herself from continuing to do so.

Over five years—five terrible, agonized, tormented years in shut-off captivity here in this dank, dark cave—have passed since Idun held either of her children in her arms, and she wasn't about to let one part of her dearest dream go now.

"Mama, I've missed you so much." Emotionally spent, Anna too shares in her reclaimed, lost-at-sea parent's warm loving embrace. Anna wraps her arms so tight about her mother's tattered yet still elegant lilac and indigo gown, breathing in the familiar scent of her beloved parent's dark chocolate hair, now in a frazzled up-do bun.

The two teary-eyed females kiss and hug and look one to another with elation over and over. For each still secretly believed each kiss would be their last before the spell would be broken again.

How many times these past five years, did Anna lift her hands to the sky to reach for her thought long deceased parents in Heaven? And they had been right here, under this evil man's thumb, all the while? The enormity of the weighty thoughts were too much for the young girl, so she buries her face deeper into her Mama's hair, soaking the Queen's lovely brown with her unabated tears.

"Now ain't zat a beautiful scene of _Moeder__ en kind,_ Job? Whoever said zat old Houtebeen vasn't kind-hearted?" The ridiculing pirate feigning soft emotion saccharinely sneers at the tender pair hugging one another, kneeled close together on the cold dirt-packed ground, then pulling each other back from Houtebeen in fear.

That's when a small voice from the rear of the cave begins to stir awake.

"Idun? Idun, my love, are you safe? Please say you are and I will be content. Keep away from her, pirate!" A feverish baritone male voice protectively interrupts through his own febrile state upon sensing the depraved intruder nearby his precious wife.

His pale cyan eyes flutter open, though his vision was far too blurred to focus on the pirate or anyone else in the cavern.

"PAPA! What's wrong with Papa?!" Anna cries out as her enlarged pupils would only leave her dear Mama's embrace to be reunited with her other cherished missing parent.

The girl crawls madly across the dusty pebble scree floor until she reaches the makeshift cot of sorts fashioned from meager bits of clothing—a fancy yet ripped decorated overskirt, a crumpled up navy blue royal tunic—as pillow and old sails for bedding that were placed upon a protrusion in the dark corner of the cave forming a shelf that was, over time, carved out by runnel eroded bedrock.

There upon it, once robust and strong, noble King Agdar of Arendelle lay in a weak feverish state of semi-consciousness.

"Papa!" Anna throws herself upon her drained of color, pallid faced father's ailing hard-breathing chest. She fully expects her wonderfully caring Papa to just fold her up in his loving bear hug embrace, as he always did when she and Elsa were little girls and ran to him.

"Anna?" His beautiful voice was still just as Anna remembered, but the King's immobile body seemed coldly pinned to the bed.

Anna gasps in horror, when a feeble smile is all Agdar could give. For looking closer down at him, Anna sees the rest of the King's agile limber body was half the man he used to be.

Literally.

Anna stifles a scream to realize her Papa—her tall, strong, straight-backed handsome Papa—was missing half of his left leg below the knee. And all of his left arm, it was now but a stub that would never be able to lift his bouncing babes high up into the air, as he loved to play with his adored children in their youth, ever again.

His fine-looking face was gaunt and thin, his proud well coiffed locks, much resembling Anna's in caramel orangy-tan color before, now an ashen pale blonde, more likened to Elsa's mane of platinum hair. Papa's debonair mustache was untrimmed to a full-fledged peppery grey and golden blonde beard now.

Yet the sparkle in her father's eye, though dulled and feverish, still glowed in that special way at her when the King of Norway's gaze finally finds the strength to affix fully upon Anna.

Her worried-browed, tired-looking Papa was still alive enough to give praise to the Almighty Father of all above for love's miracles, despite the broken weariness of this life's physical body.

"God is so good to let me hold my baby girl one more time, before the end." After patting Anna on her weeping cheek, King Agdar's one working hand reaches up, if just to touch the unseen sky in gratitude to the Father Above…

* * *

_Mislukkeling Meid_ – Wastrel wench in Dutch

_Dildkartoffelog_ – Danish dill, onion and potato souffle

_Klein meisje – _Little girl in Dutch

_Frau – _Wife in Germanic Prussian

_Lillebror – _Little brother in Danish

_Meisje_ \- girl in Dutch

_Sjoforsvaret – _Norwegian Naval Forces

_Niet_ – No in Dutch

_Moeder en kind –_Mother and child in Dutch

* * *

How's that for a season-ender cliff-hanger to Act II?! ^O^

Fathers are the theme of today's story! Wow! Good timing again! I don't even plan these things!

I believe this chapter is fitting for this weekend's special day when we all pay tribute to our first hero, our protector, the leader who taught us right from wrong, the strong shoulder to lean on in times of fear and doubt.

A Father is the caring man who can pick us up when we fall, and hold us tight to swing high in air and make us feel tall too.

Anna loved her dear 'Papa' for all those things and more growing up so tight-knit close. And now she's found him and her sweet Mama alive again! Shipwrecks are fickle things, aren't they? And life threatening dangerous for poor disfigured, maimed Papa…*_- There's a lot more in store in the mystery department here concerning the King and the pirate…

We'll see what exciting events unfold for this reunited family (I can't wait 'til Elsa finds out, too!) in the next chapters of "Frozen Again: The Greatest of These is Love" Act III !

Happy Father's Day! We love you, Daddy! May God, our wondrous Father of all, bless you now and always!


	35. Chapter 34 - Act III: Ghosts of the Past

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act III**

**Chapter 34**

**"Ghosts of the Past"**

…_'Tis, I will pray to God on high,_  
_That thou my constancy may see__  
_And that yet once before I die_  
_Thou wilt vouchsafe to love me__...

_…_

The swaying trees, tweeting birds, and busy bees added all of nature's sounds to the pretty surroundings beneath the sun-drenched clear beautiful sky where a lilting tune being sung added to the ambiance.

Between the green green grass and the balmy warm breeze that had played tricks on the rabbits, weasels, badgers and marten as they scurried to enjoy the unblemished landscape's season of warm and plenty, it was hard to believe that the summer of this northwestern European kingdom was nearly at an end.

It was absolutely the most perfect time of year for a most perfect European wedding.

But the only one person in the rejoicing kingdom not enthralled with the splendor of it all—

Was the sister of the bride.

The young woman gazing out over the mossy knolls of these wooded marshland fields wished this summer didn't have to end at all, for one specific selfish reason in particular.

"Why do we have to grow up and ruin everything?!" The younger of the pair of princesses halted abruptly in her musical humming to wonder aloud to her more tranquil elder sibling.

The girl of no more than sixteen flopped down to the picnic blanket as she forlornly threw down the flower bouquet she had been painstakingly gathering. She had dragged her older sister through the wide open fields of this Prussian marshland for the past hour or so of aimless meanderings, but was still discontented inside.

Those wanderings had taken the lithe young woman towards the far-off sea in search of flora and freedom from the stifling water that surrounded Corona castle down the way she'd been holed up in.

There, in a few hours time, a royal wedding would have taken place.

_In a few hours time, my best friend will be leaving me all alone_…

"Do you always have to be so over-dramatic, Idun? You promised me a beautiful bridal bouquet if I came out here with you on _my wedding morning_—not a wilted handful of broken-headed weeds to tumble off and spread their merciless pollen all over the church as I walk down the aisle." Princess Arianna Primrose of Sweden had paused in her adjustment of her bridal 'crown,' made of entwined myrtle leaves, to both tease and berate her large rounded-eyed dramatist of a little sister.

"These are NOT weeds, Primmy! They're the Good Lord's bounty of fresh field wildflowers! You know it's good luck to carry the sweetest scented wildflowers from the land you're going to live in for your bridal bouquet, if you want to have healthy children! _Not that ole' Fritz will be much of a contribution there…"_ The indignant dark brown haired other Swedish Princess had a bad habit of murmuring things she knew shouldn't be said under her lively breath, whilst chewing on a sweet blade of fresh picked grass, if only to irk her by-the-book big sister's Victorian sensibilities.

"When we're in public, Idun, you must call me 'Arianna'. And I wish you wouldn't put every leaf and petal in your mouth, little syster. They may be poisonous. Besides, it's disgusting when you spit them out, like a common farmboy." With a wrinkled nose at the unladylike practice, Arianna sighed at her flighty sibling. The 'prim' older Princess was just about gave up on correcting Idun, who always persisted in calling her big sister by that fond, yet annoying and humiliating middle nickname since she was a tiny rebellious girl.

For as long as Idun could remember, prim Arianna Primrose had played the dual role of older sister and mother figure for the headstrong girl since their actual mother died when Idun was a wee babe from that terrible cholera epidemic that had swept over Scandinavia and all of Europe.

That left ten-year-old Arianna with the unenviable task of raising the vibrant wildflower of a child named 'Idun'—which aptly meant 'ever young, rejuvenating one'—in their dear _Mor's_ place.

And though Arianna loved head-in-the-clouds, starry-eyed Idun as an inseparable best friend of a little sister, the pragmatic older Princess of Sweden always felt an overwhelming responsibility to dote over the vivacious young girl more like a guardian. Especially since the King, their _Far_, never was quite the same since the debilitating cholera had altered his feverish mind, and he, now wifeless, knew very little of how to raise children. It took all of his failing faculties just to attend with affairs of state, never mind tend to two vastly different growing daughters.

And the ever young, energetic bloom called 'Princess Idun' was a handful indeed, for any single parent.

"What are you cruelly inferring about kind King _Friedrich_, you little hoyden? My fiancé is a gentle hearted wonderful man, and I thank you not to refer to him as '_Ole' Fritz'_, nor deride his…dare I say it?—his _virility_." A horrified at her own seedy usage of the proper language of the Victorian Era, Princess Arianna chided the teenaged girl on having more respect for her elders. Plus the deference Idun should be showing her elder sister's perfectly logical and long expected engagement to the sitting bachelor King of Prussia.

Yes, King Friedrich was a good twenty years Arianna's senior. But his tender heart and thoughtful inventive ways of securing the affections of the practical level-headed 24-year-old woman—_almost deemed an 'old maid' past marriageable age!—_endeared this unlikely suitor to prim bossy Arianna in matters of love.

"But he **is**, Primmy! Four and forty years old constitutes fairly 'old' classed for me! But I suppose you've always wanted to use Grandmother's wedding ring for something beyond a huge rock paperweight. So any King will do—even funny, rotund, Henry the VIII impersonator, Ole' Fritz—Oh! Isn't that golden flower peeking out from that ledge over there breathtaking?! Look at how it glimmers in the sunlight! I MUST have it for the centerpiece wildflower of the '_most beautiful bridal bouquet'_ I promised you, Syster!" Her melodic voice almost sang as it jumped from one subject to the next at dizzying rate. Idun suddenly hopped up from the picnic blanket where the Swedish sisters had been sharing their final hours together as unattached, carefree, single ladies that she had been dejectedly lounging upon.

"Idun! I heard you say those awful things about your future brother-in-law under your breath, you forever incorrigible brat! _How am I ever going to find a proper Prince to marry you off to, when you have such a wicked way with words in your unsuitable opinion of men?!_ Don't you ever let my Friedrich hear you say such things in public! You hear me, young lady?! I've had a hard enough time convincing the poor man that _**he**_****was **not** too old, and that the **King** of this fine land was good enough to marry _**me**_!"

Her myrtle crown in ordered place atop her head, Arianna dusted herself off as she slowly stood in a more regal stately way befitting a royal Princess—_soon to be a Queen_— than her waify little sis. Arianna shook her exasperated head to watch her naughty younger sibling heedlessly hop, skip and jump to race across the swaying tall grasses in leaps and bounds like a prize racehorse.

But with the wind whistled through her coming undone loose haired bun, her long proper skirt hiked up scandalously well above her ankles, Idun giggled her giddy way along the sea cliff lagoon's edge overlooking the Curonian Spit, feeling just as free spirited as a filly.

Little did either sister notice they were being closely monitored by more than one surreptitious pair of covertly watching curious eyes upon them this sunny morn.

"Oh, do be careful near that steep ledge, Idun! It's dangerous to get too close to that cliff's edge! You have enough flowers already, silly! Let's start back to Corona Castle! My Friedrich might worry if my Maid of Honor arrives at the altar all bruised, disheveled and mud-soaked to the skin for tumbling over the edge of one of his sea cliffs into that murky lagoon down there. All for a single dumb flower. Look at how boyish you're acting!" A bit of a pessimist by nature, Arianna lived up to her imperiously prudish 'prim' name as she reproved her impulsive sister, aghast.

"This is 1828, Prim! These are modern times, and I'm not listening to your mollycoddling anymore, Fussbudget! And neither is this stunning golden lily blossom! _ergh!_ I can almost reach her! Just a little more…" After rolling her voluminous indigo eyes, she quickly clambered down to a lower ledge, Idun had then stretched her thin girlish arms out over to an equal level opposing ridge where the supernatural golden bloom had singularly grown.

The mysterious blossom resembled the Campanula Rapunculus lily, but even more glorious as its six golden and wine centered petals swayed as if in a rhythmatic dance. Its pistils seemed to almost give off a glow as they twirled pirouettes when the girl who loved to sing when challenged began to verse her most favored haunting tune, always ready upon her silver tongue...

"_Alas, my love, you do me wrong to cast me off discourteously.__  
_For I have loved you for so long, delighting in your company._  
_Greensleeves is my delight_  
_Greensleeves is all my joy_  
_Greensleeves, my heart of gold_  
_And who but my lady Greensleeves?"__

Mystified by the iridescent glowing blossom's bewitching swaying, curious Idun had reached out to touch the flower that had caught her eye from across the field, as if the shining bloom itself were calling for her to come and sing to it and unlock its mysteries...

_**CREEAAKK! RRUMMBLE ...RRUMBBLE…CRRAASSH!**_

"Hmm? What's that noise?! Rockslide?! **IDUN! Get up from there**!" A panic-stricken Arianna's sudden scream broke the entranced spell of the golden glowing aura of that the sweet flower's wafting scents swirling around Idun.

A baffled Arianna first heard the thundering stones set a-rolling down the hillside, then witnessed in shock and horror the bevy of rocks and boulders that came roaring directly towards the ledge. There, her unfortunate sister was sprawled out and vulnerable to be crushed and most likely knocked off the 50 foot ledge to the craggly rocked shallow coastal lagoon below to her certain death.

"**IDUN!"**Arianna cried out frantically as she tripped over her own long skirts to run towards the edge several meters behind the rockslide towards her dearest little girl.

_**WHOOSH!**_

_Brrr…_Princess Arianna only registered a sudden cold front in the fierce wind that raced madly past her at an amazing unclocked speed. Her wild mind spun amidst the deafening thunder of pounding hooves and kicked up dust in the dizzied chaos surrounding her fearful anxiety for her poor beloved sister's welfare.

"Quickly! Take my hand!" The commanding deep voice from somewhere above and behind her prostrated over the ridge ledge body is all that disoriented Princess Idun could focus on above the din of rumbling rocks and crashing mineral agate against the waves below.

As if in a dream, the independent girl immediately did as directed by the velvety baritone and outstretched gloved hand reaching down from the overhang escarpment where the stranger had dropped for her on bended knees.

In one fluid motion, the tall slender man agily lifted the young woman from the precipice below upwards to his surface level as if she were weightless. The mysterious gentleman had swiftly pulled Idun up to sidestep the danger, as if in a fluent waltz in his arms to the safety of his strong chest.

_**CRASH! BANG! SMASH! SPLASH!**_

Rock after boulder and large stone after stone went crashing over the side, uncomfortably close past the embracing pair, over the cliff edge into the sea's jutting out embankment below. The falling rocks created huge waves and roiling foam in their 50 foot descent into the dark lagoon.

"Are you unhurt, Princess?" Still within a mystical entrancement, her young life flashed before stunned eyes when she turned back at Arianna's screech to see those big boulders coming at her, Idun only faintly heard her rescuer's distinguished voice now in soft tender tones breathing in the flowery scent of her hair tufts above her circulating head.

Idun had tried to come back down to reality after that harrowing excitement, but everything about this enigmatic newcomer was a contradiction that sent every one of her senses reeling anew.

She breathed in the rich, yet subtle scent of his overpowering cologne, whilst she listened to the gentle, yet powerful lilt of his commanding voice.

The wild, yet calming beats of his heart echoed in her ears as the cool, yet warm touch of his strong hand beneath those elegant white gloves belonging to the Naval uniform of a royal officer wrapped intimately around her trembling palms.

Yes, this truly heroic and dashing young man was undeniably Idun's ideal Prince Charming.

Appealing to the critical eye was the shape of his handsome face offset by that debonair mustache just coming into fashionable style that proved that this young stranger was worth taking a long look at.

"I-I'm fine…I think. _Fantastika_…You're much stronger than you look." Idun's now demure doe eyes were at first shy to meet her esoteric savior's crystal clear pale icy blue gaze, partly because she had never encountered such a beautiful specimen of a man before.

As for the other part why, as the attractive nobleman lifted her stumbling wobbly-kneed body in his capable sinewy arms, he virtually sent chills running up and down her spine as Idun never experienced before in all her young life.

"I suppose I do appear a bit of a '_Bully trap_,' as my fellow sailors in the Navy would say. That is, I imagined they would say, if they dared the disparaging challenge to my face. But I have found, the trick is to use this somewhat foppish appearance to my advantage, and surprise them all with my self-taught skills and hidden talents. As you can see, I foolishly imagine myself clever." He chuckles with self-deprecating humor that made him all the more desirable in Idun's awakening eyes.

"But, alas, no one in the Sjoforsvaret would be foolish enough to tell their fleet's future 'Admiral' the truth, never mind treat him like another normal fellow. So I never do have the chance to find out my real worth. Oh, well, I guess I always knew I wasn't born to be a regular man." He mused with contemplative inward thoughts and a disarming smile.

"Why am I laying all these mundane personal problems on a young Princess I've just met? Pardon me, Princess. Please allow me to say, I am heartily glad you are in one piece, Your Highness. And one lovely piece at that." By now, verile 19-year–old Prince Agdar had thoroughly turned 16-year-old Idun's impressionable, independent head with his heroic agility, droll wit and undeniable charm.

Not to mention his stunning good looks and magnetic personality that drew her to him like a moth to a flame. On top of all that, there was _that_ certain spark of instant electricity that had flared between this previously unacquainted couple when their hands touched that Idun's heart was suddenly palpitating for the sensation thereof inexplicably.

Everything about this mysterious Naval Officer from across the sea thrilled Idun to want to learn more about him, in ways the self-sufficient young female not believed possible, considering her skeptical view of men as a whole. But there was definitely something special about this handsome stranger standing before her that Idun couldn't quite put her finger on, beyond the doubtless physical attraction she instantly associated with the svelte young hero.

It was as if his very soul was crying out to hers, to rescue him, now in return…

Agdar smiled down to Idun, still soft in his arms. His pale blue eyes were for her alone, and it seemed that he could not tear away from gazing upon the opportunely rescued girl.

"The Princess is safe, thanks to you, Crown Prince Agdar! My bride-to-be and I are eternally in your debt, Sir, for your rapid response in saving our dear little sister from this strange, highly bizarre rockslide. But I, for the life of me, cannot figure it out. This lovely area near the Curonia Lagoon and Spit overlooking the Baltic Sea is usually so peaceful…"

Just then, King Freidrich Wilhelm IV pf Prussia gallantly came tromping across the field and towards the cliff's edge on his favorite large white Percheron sire horse with a haughty attitude named 'Saximus'. A concerned yet grateful look had crossed the King's noble brow as he looked to his Arianna with adoring puppy-dog eyes.

"I only praise God that He placed us nearby to this vicinity to render aid, Your Majesty. It was Providential that you wished to kindly show me the splendid sights of your scenic countryside this tender, propitious morn."

The handsome well-spoken young Prince of Norway had answered King Friedrich at this miraculous end to the tour that the friendly ruler of this neighboring country offered to take his royal visitor from the North upon.

Or maybe it was King Freidrich's secret plan to get out into the fresh air on this happiest day of his past-his-prime life, if just to catch a glimpse of his traveling bride the Good Lord had blessed him with to accept his hand in marriage.

Either way, Prince Agdar was correct in calling this destined meeting 'the Holy Creator's doing'.

Although, an unknown mercenary touch of evil, still waiting in the shadows, may have had a role to play in His intricate plan.

Observant Agdar was almost certain that, from the corner of his eye, he thought he saw a cloaked dark shadowy figure rush away when they arrived, from a long lever unbalanced pile of rocks. With leverage working, that malignant shadow caused that giant boulder to roll down the hill in its destructive attempt to slay the sweet Swedish Princess.

_Why would anyone wish to injure this beautiful pure maiden?_Prince Agdar fixed his steely eyes upon the loosed mussed soft brown pile of hair that flawlessly framed the lovely face of the petite young woman in his arms. Agdar decided then and there that this imperative rushing emotion that pounded in his chest with a burning heat he never felt before in all of his cool concise life, was telling him that this was the one and only woman for him.

He would care for her, protect her, learn how to be filled with her glowing warmth and hold her tenderly to him close for the rest of his days on earth…

"Come, Princess. Ride with me?" Prince Agdar tentatively yet confidently asked Princess Idun, as he strode with her lithe form still secured intimately in his arms. He carried her away from the precipice towards the waiting steed he had abandoned to leap with his own physically fit legs in gallant haste to save a Lady Fair from a terrible fate.

"Anywhere you go, let me go, too." Lost within the dashing Prince's dazzling pale blue eyes, Princess Idun responded in dreamy dramatic tones, falling in love at first sight, though she scoffed at other weak silly girls for professing that farcical condition before today, as Agdar put finish to all that with a sweeping kiss to the back of the Princess' astonished hand.

But those other girls never met athletic, intelligent, gorgeous Crown Prince Agdar, nor his stunning icy crystal blue eyes, full of stimulating mystery, did they?

A smitten Princess Idun of Drottningholm coquettishly had chewed on the piece of torn flora between her fingertips instead of addressing her unfolding emotions. As was her subconscious habit, in answer to Prince Agdar of Arendelle's openly flirtatious invitation as he effortlessly hoisted her away with him.

Arianna and her congenial husband-to-be exchanged a hopeful shrug to one another as they watch the comely young man holding the, for once, struck-dumb-to-hold-her-witty-tongue teenager.

Agdar mounted himself and Idun gracefully to his mighty steed and the new couple rode back towards Corona's Castle where a royal wedding—that was no longer so unwelcome for the new company Idun would be keeping from now on—was about to take place.

A happy occasion that a certain ancient grasping soul, who had watched from the lagoon cliff's shadows, would not be attending.

For the run-down ages old hag, unbeknownst to either of the two meddlesome couples interrupting her visit, had waited until the foursome were well out of sight before she rushed over to her precious golden flower. This day's blasted sea wind had inopportunely blown off the camouflaged cover of shrubbery and bramble she had planted there on that obscure plateau near the sea cliff edge, in hopes no one would ever discover it.

But that stupid young girl somehow spotted her personally claimed golden blossom's magical qualities, and threatened to steal it away from this clutching old woman.

"Don't fret, my Flower, Those rocks made certain that you and I would be together forever…" The white-haired elderly creature dotingly petted the golden lily's petals that seemed to shiver and shrink away from her ugly touch this time.

_GASP!_

Gothel gasps when she saw that one of the magic flower's shining petals had been jaggedly torn off.

In a gravelly coarse voice she anxiously began to hurriedly sing:

"_Flower gleam and glow.__  
_Let your power shine._  
_Make the clock reverse._  
_Give back What once was mine."__

"_What once was mine…"_

Golden streams of mystical energies flowed all about the decrepit old hag, until her bent frail form reverted back to her full supple womanly body, her frizzed grey-white hair renewed to a luscious raven black mane of curls, her face taut and beauteous again to her youth long ago.

Gothel's cracked dried out skin of her fingers, were moist and new again as she stroked her special rejuvenating magic flower with a relieved smile.

The revivified blood that flowed through her selfish evil veins was again as vigorous and fresh as the healing Sun's blessed golden rays gleamed over the countryside…

* * *

...

"Mama? That rotten old pirate's not going to hurt Papa, is he? Did he do…**that**…to Papa?" Anna's small frightened whisper as she thinks about her adored father's unthinkable injury, calls Queen Idun back from her wistful musings of cherished days of youth gone by.

"It was the shipwreck, mycket liten…Snalla Gud, hjalpa honom. (_Please God, help him.)_ Hasn't my poor Agdar suffered enough?" Reverting back to her Swedish tongue in times of quandary, where she also found refuge in her deep seated faith, Queen Idun whispers back in the cavern's eerie darkness.

Time and troubled tide had altered that wildflower of yesteryear into a more sedate calm motherly presence, though her fervent passionate love for her King was singularly immutable.

Anna and her mother were now outside the small shaft where the young princess originally found her parents cooped up in. After the initial mutual shock of his captives' discovery of one another, Captain Houtebeen had soon ordered Job to take both females away_. 'So Captain Houtebeen might be talking zome beezness__wis__za Daddy.'_

Idun, though wholly unwilling and quite vocal about it, had finally complied at her husband's insistence when the vile and vexed pirate had begun to wax curse filled threatening phrases in the King's ears only, concerning the tattered Queen and her vulnerable daughter at his fiendish whim, none too pleasant nor poetic.

The incapacitated monarch had found the resilience to sit up on his cave shelf ledge, with as much exertion as enraged umbrage, to at least be at man to man eye level with the depraved monster, and advise his wife to leave the two men alone.

Anna now gazes up to her little frail mother whose skinny arms and too thin shallow frame were snugly secured protectively about her child. That was all she could do, though the Queen was wild out of her mind that she was not allowed to stay with the other half of her soul at the unscrupulous villain's mercy in the other section of this blasted cave.

"Mr. Job? Doesn't he see how hurt Papa is? What does that mean old Pegleg want of my poor Papa?" Anna was bold enough to ask the big hulking sentry, who had been vacillating between guarding the huddled pair of women and wanly peering back into the cavern prison hold, in turns.

"I's be wishin' I's didn't be a a-knowing, Puella. I's a-wishin now dat Job never got involved in dis voodoo witchcraft. Dat what dis be! And no good ever come from dat kind of black magic. So I's fears for us all now. But I be sorry most of all to you, ma'am." There was sincerity behind the whites of Job's dark eyes in this shadowy recess of the cave, as the quiet giant of a foreign man gives the petite woman before him a respectful, regretful nod.

"Why, Mama?! What's he mean?! What's happening in there?! PAPA!" Anna's frenzied glance rotates from the cave entrance to the two people before her with purposely undemonstrative, averted faces as they hold back some deep secret, and were unwilling to share it with her.

The now terrified girl stares madly at the shadowed dearth of the talus cave shaft opening glowing eerily in Job's cast torchlight.

But feisty Anna was far too perturbed to maintain her hushed whisper for long. The energetic gal jumps to her feet and tries to make a run for the crevasse's shaft where her Papa was within that had served as both secluded prison and sustained refuge for this pair of royal rulers of this land for almost five long years.

But Job soon halts her in a long armed grab, his big hand cupping around her mouth.

"Not 'til da Cap'n be done talkin' wit' da King. Den we see what be wrought…" The Caribbean was still speaking in cryptic terms, as Anna's wide eyes above his dark hand constricting her yell, goes wild in fear for her dear Papa's unknown fate…

* * *

Once Kommander Westergaard had spotted through his trained long nautical telescope the pirate's small craft, with no signs of inhabitants where it was moored, the consummate Naval man directed his ship to surreptitiously angle the Gler's rudder around Mosken Island's shallow reef cove as not to be seen.

At Hans' order, at this half a fathom incoming shore depth, for the engines to ready to lessen to '_dead slow astern,'_ the schooner had begun to turn down the acceleration of its steam engine to instead utilize the ship's sails. That ingenious approach was in order to slip in more quietly to the sheltered downwind eastern side bay of the uninhabited island.

That way, the expert strategist ensured that the Gler would be virtually invisible to the windward west where the pirate ship was tethered to the island's shoreline with a mooring buoy, should the ruffians return to their vessel.

Almost as soon as the HnoMS Gler comes around the final swift angled current, an impatient Kristoff Bjorgman was chomping at the bit too much to wait for the others to disembark. He doesn't even pause to hear Hans give the command to the crew for the service boat/dinghy to be lowered, once the steamship comes to a complete stop.

In no time, the big burly mountain man was upon Sven's sturdy back. (Finally, the shaky rangifer had been accompanied to this top deck by a grumbling Eugene. The unlucky thief had been conscripted by his 'helpful' wife to be the one to give a final heaving push up the side service ramp at the stout skittering legged reindeer's undesirable rump end from the orlop deck below.)

Without a single stoic word, quiver of bow and arrows firmly attached to his long flowing cape's back, the Ice Harvester man and beast team start from the stern's far aft to get a running start aside the quarterdeck. They rush across the main deck beneath the billowing masts, jibs, and foresails until they had achieved just enough velocity speed to make an unexpected massive leap from the edge of the forecastle ship's stem.

Over the Gler's deck rail the valiant soaring reindeer king lands his buck with a gargantuan splash into the shallow depth shoals. Sven and his determined rider then take off bounding over the waves, almost riding upon them, for the muscle driven rapidity of his powerful legged jumps in a purposeful forward direction. Once closer to the craggly beachfront, they break into a run, full gait for mysterious Mosken Island's nearing inlet, with a fluttering, straight and true for once, Scuttle Recon right on his tail.

"Whew-wee! That boy does know how to make an entrance!" With an impressed hooting whistled comment, Flynn Rider, in his jaded snide way, smirks to his jaw-dropped wife as the couple watch the show from the front row. Rapunzel was standing beside her husband, an applauding Olaf and wide-eyed Pascal, near the ship's still pulsating, wind whipped fore-stem where the wowed gang had rushed to see that reindeer in Norway could really fly _and_ practically run on water.

"Come, everyone! We must keep up with Kristoff!" Queen Elsa, her patience, too, was tested for Anna's sake, now that they were so close to their target mission of saving their precious wife, sweet sister, and funny friend.

Elsa trembles with cold fear of the frightful indefinite path awaiting ahead—and it showed in her quivered voice, despite how commanding her statement was meant to sound.

The Queen of this Land—_and of his heart too_—was standing beside Hans in the ship's bridge doorway monitoring the ship's rapid speed the whole time. He immediately responds by ordering his crew in the engine room below, via the engine order telegraph's cavitate bell, along with a dutiful, compliant Ensign Jan here at the helm, to prematurely weigh anchor and unorthodoxly lower the ship's gangway of the Gler as it was still slowing to shore.

For Kommander Westergaard already understood his Queen's unspoken actions before she even flexes her delicate fingers over the sea's receding ebb tide in its first of two semi-diurnal cycles this day,

_**SCHICKKK!**_

Frozen verglas form a super-cooled concise two meter wide path on the ocean from the emanated power of her icy digits, to intricately coat the hyper-cooled normally warm waves at this time of year.

Until now. A thick layer of frost covers the calm waves of Mosken Island's eastern reef shore, just as the ship's wooden gangway plank smacks directly against this sector of the Norwegian Sea unnaturally frozen in solid ice, in perfect timing, as if she and he had pre-planned this all from the start.

Their minds so in sync, inspired by her mastery, cool, collected Commander Hans Westergaard was completely at ease with the Queen's ice prowess. He offers his inspired arm to a grateful Elsa, as he leads her from the Gler's bridge down through the ship to its exit ramp below deck already lowered to her frozen ocean road.

On his secure sinewy arm as she steps one high heeled well turned foot upon the ice trail walkway of her creation, Ice Queen Elsa of Arendelle leans on Prince Hans of the Southern Isles' firm chest for strength as she moves out onto the slippery ice with her head held high.

She locks her crystal blue eyes with his emerald greens in gratitude to see the same resoluteness of purpose to find Anna reflecting there, as the enemies turned allies, turned to something now far more transcendent, swiftly race forward with elegant certainty on one another's unswerving steadfast arm.

Soon following behind, with Olaf prompting the others to '_glide and pivot'_ on the uncanny new ocean ice rink he instantly loves, Prince Eugene and Princess Rapunzel, less at home on ice from their native Corona's more moderate clime, slip and slide in sporadic unison hand and hand.

The married couple manages to hold one another up when the other falls time and time again, as a giggling in his element Olaf and glacier-white-with-chilled-fear on the snowman's insane spinning and twirling 'shoulder' upper snow mound Pascal take up the rear.

They all rush across the glimmering ice path bridge Elsa cut across the ocean beneath the blinding afternoon sunlight as the rescue party traverses its glistening magic in a mad dash race towards the enigmatic Mosken Island's shore.

And they were all of one mind to liberate their beloved lost princess from that dastardly pirate's clutches and bring her home.

Flowing across the ice on one another's secured arm, Elsa and Hans take the point in leading the rest to follow a growing smaller in the distance, experienced mountain team of Kristoff and Sven's thundered path up the rocky Wilhelmstind mountainside.

None of them had any idea what intrigue awaited them on the other side…

* * *

…_But my heart remains in captivity..._

_For who but my lady Greensleeves?_

* * *

Mor- Mother in Swedish

Far – Father in Swedish

Fantastika – 'Wow! Amazing!' in Swedish

Mycket liten – little one in Swedish

Snalla Gud, hjalpa honom – 'Please God, help him' in Swedish

Puella – small pretty girl in Caribbean

* * *

And we start off on this Independence Day weekend with a BANG!

How's that for a chapter start to Act III?! Firecrackers and all!

Please review! I'd love to hear what you think about my newest character additions of poor King Agdar &amp; Queen Idun! I thought to introduce them, I'd toss in this flashback edition to their past love story beginnings! And a few familiar Corona (King, Queen, Mother Gothel) faces made some magic flower surprise cameos too!

Happy Fourth of July, Frozen friends! God bless you!


	36. Chapter 35- This is the Moment

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act III**

**Chapter 35**

**"****This is the Moment"**

In this summer solstice's hottest day of the year, the blazing sun hung high in the Northern sky over the uninhabited 1.5 square mile rocky island named Mosken. There was an enigmatic stillness in the very air of this remote location that had chiefly been left untouched by humanity.

The intimidating and mysterious Moskenstraumen, directly to the north offshore, as told by many sailors' frightful tales of impending doom and woe to crafts, warded off day travelers and many a-wanderer from ever exploring the small obscure island further.

Unless you were a traveler with mission.

After their impactful entry onto the eastern watery inlet's white rocked sandy beaches, Kristoff and Sven made a mad dash towards the Mosken island's enigmatic interior.

["Which way, Scuttle?"] Silently driven until this fork in the mountain road juncture, Kristoff quietly projects his mental thoughts back and upward. He trusted that the seagull was somewhere aloft at his back, though the mountain man's eyes never stray from their forward line of vision.

["Let's see… That patchy-pirate guy's ship landed over there… And your ship pulled in over here and… Yep Yep! Last I saw of your pretty Princess – loaded down with supplies too heavy for such a tiny girl, mind you me – she was climbing up that mountain over there… Well, somewhere, thereabouts… Or was it over there? I could've sworn that boulder moved since last I was here…"] Scuttle may have had a bird's eye view of the path the kidnappers took Anna up the Wilhelmstind peak mountainside, but the trying to be helpful seagull with a bad memory and even worse sense of direction had a penchant for bouts of being dizzy.

["Scuttle. Just give me a left or right general bearing."] With a beyond frustrated sigh at the inept fowl, a gruff Kristoff tries to keep his cool, though inside, his yearning heart was breaking to locate his missing girl and fold her up in his strong arms, safe and sound again.

["Umm…"] The dipping down dippy gull squints one eye to scan over the quiet moss overgrown rock-faced landscape. The white bird cranes his neck and gesticulates with his feathers until he finally comes to an animated conclusion.

["That-a-way!"] After a few hard knocks to his noggin, Scuttle wracks his rattled head to recall the funny configuration of the stony precipice that was jutting out in the shape of an upside down boot.

["I remember saying to myself that it's funny that it looks like a giant climbed up the mountain peak and left his one boot all topsy-turvy on the peak of that hill your little missy was starting up towards."]

"You're right, Scuttle! That part of the mountain does look like a giant's boot! Like a really big foot size 112, or maybe 114 in the color of a sandy tan, if you look at it from this perspective." Olaf's calm prattling voice comes up over the cliff edge behind Kristoff and Sven after he comes full skittering on Elsa's formulated ice slick.

The happy snowman assesses the seagull's point of view with a rather disturbing detached head inverted in his branch hands. The comical scene was made even more disconcerting by the strangely neck rotated, bug eyed, green chameleon on the snowman's headless shoulder.

["I'll try to find the rest of the Scuttle Recon and see if they've got any further information on our pretty princess' whereabouts! I'll catch up with you guys later! Just keep a low profile until then, Team! Over and out, Prince My Kristly!"] With a salute, the seagull flies into the opposite direction of the sun high in the sky.

Shaking his head at the sidekick banalities, Kristoff redirects Sven in the direction of the green mossy incline connected to the upwardly tilted western side of the island mount.

With his golden Saami longbow and arrows in their quiver strapped to his back flying in the wind, the Snow Prince and his speeding reindeer take off again, just as a handsome red head appears to peer over the cliff side.

With a naturally agile legged climb, Hans leaps onto the higher-level to let out a frustrated breath. He watches the reindeer and rider they were just about to catch up to race away again in a new direction entirely.

The Danish Prince gazes down at the decapitated Olaf and the unruffled lizard on his shoulder who remained standing there.

"Keep it together, please, Midshipman." Kommander Westergaard chides Olaf as the young man quite chivalrously leans back over the cliff rise to aid the lady he had been escorting as his skating partner on her ice path up to this rocky hillside.

"Kristoff?" Rising to the surface, as light as a feather Elsa asks as she pauses the stream of her focused ice powers and allows the dashing figure to physically take over and pull her strained body the rest the way up the steeper hill.

"Don't worry, your Majesty. Mr. Bjorgman just started in that direction. I'll keep an eye on his course, but I advise that you rest a bit. At least allow yourself a few moments in this bright sunlight to recharge. May I say, how impressive you have been to get us this far, so quickly." Hans speaks with genuine concern for the breathless young woman who was showing, in his opinion, an enormous amount of presence of mind and self-control in her anxiety to let loose all her pent-up fears in order to find her missing sister.

Especially now that they were so close.

"Thank you, Kommander." Her ice blue eyes normalizing at his reassuring calming words, Elsa affords a kind-eyed Hans a smile. Their hands still interconnected, he squeezes Elsa's yet frosty wringing palms encouragingly without flinching at her cold fingers' touch.

Their blue and green eyes lock within the newfound emotions awakening for one another amidst all this chaos enveloping them.

"It's nice to see you two kids holding hands, however –" A strained voice comes out of nowhere, interrupting the tender scene.

"– a little assistance for your injured-armed bro may be required about now, Lillebror."

Hans and Elsa break their deep eye and hand lock at the caught-in-the-act accusation spewing from the rocky hillside behind them.

"Ungh! Ergh! Eugene! You're too heavy for me!" Rapunzel was there at the edge trying her best the heft up her decidedly larger and heavier bodied spouse.

Clinging to the cliff edge, Eugene looks up to his own breathless lover with a cocky arrogant smirk.

"That's 150 pounds of pure sculpted core muscle at a perfectly toned 21.5 BMI, Liebling! Thank you very much." Insulted Flynn Rider, if nothing else, had pride in his gorgeous physique.

But the smaller framed young wife, herself infirmed with the early stages of pregnancy, was finding the task of relocating that indeed striking, yet destabilized, physique too difficult.

She already had exhausted herself in the exercise of crawling over Eugene's bent over elevating back to be boosted up to the high hill knoll followed by a nimble footed final hop up.

But with much pain etched on his gorgeous features, Flynn Rider found his busted right bicep _a bit of a downer_ when it came to a—what was before simple—climbing task for the natural in-shape former 'cat' of a burglar.

"Oh, yes, Storbror! Forgive my tardiness! Please excuse me, Queen Elsa." Ever the polite gent, with a quick scan of the departed reindeer team's directional track, Prince Hans respectfully bows to a smiling Elsa, with Olaf toddling at his tall booted feet. He then dashes back to assist his weakened big brother's plea for help up the rocky hill.

"Ouchy, Lilllebror! Be more gentle! I took more than a few falls for my blushing bride on the ice back there. By the way, you and that leggy Queenie could take this sort of thing up professionally as a perfectly well-matched skating pair. And beyond these new bumps and bruises, there's a bullet in my yet! Not too sure where my yet is yet, but—**oww!** Watch those branches, Snow pal! They're sharp!" Hans lifts the man up with a bemused smirk as Eugene makes cracks, caterwauls and complaints all while his younger sibling, with Olaf's 'help,' gets the noisy thief up to the top of the cliff in one whiny piece.

Pascal merely shakes his head at the man who still calls him a 'frog' from time to time as the lizard wipes his hands of him and jumps to Rapunzel's shoulder instead.

"My Eugene is too funny. He even makes jokes when he's in a whole lot of pain. I think he tries to – oh, hey, Elsa? Are you okay?" Rapunzel's amused smile at her erstwhile hubby's vocal antics as she wanders over to where the lone Queen was standing atop the hill vanishes the closer she gets her cousin.

That's when Elsa suddenly grasps her own head as if she was in an out of the blue world of hurt herself.

"I do not know… All of a sudden, I don't feel very well…" That's when Elsa begins to violently shiver. Goosebumps inexplicably covering the great majority of her rapidly blue tinged skin peek out beneath her purple and lavender trimmed high collar and long skirt. The Ice Queen instinctively wraps her arms around herself in response to her entire body quaking with the surge of influxed raw ice energy almost beyond her control.

Worried Rapunzel goes to the young woman standing alone on the barren rocky hill, but the aura of ice exuding from Elsa's every pore repulses the warm-blooded brown-haired Prussian princess back in cold shivers

"Elsa? Guys! Something's wrong!" Rapunzel yells loudly over her shoulder for help to the others when the platinum blonde's eyes flash with a pale blue white light that was blinding to behold. She watches Elsa's whole being begin to glow with an encasement of super-cooled jet streams of the air frozen about her.

"Stay back! I don't know what this is! Don't come near me! Please, just stay away…" Elsa shrieks and begs in panicked warning, feeling that unsettling déjà vu sense of when her ice powers first culminated. She was about to lose her well-maintained control.

But there was nothing she could do about it, because she didn't know what caused this wild surge so abruptly, nor did she have any idea how to stop it."

Rapunzel starts to reach out for Elsa until her husband's protective arms pull her back towards him before she got lost in the flurry of clouds of snow and ice and hail swirling about the uncontained Ice Queen.

Even Olaf, as he tries his best to get near Elsa, is blown apart and scattered over the hillside in pieces.

"Queen Elsa, find your inner calm!" It was left up to Hans to rise to the occasion, just as he was the only one in the past who dared to take rein of her complex emotional struggles with her expanding ice powers before. She heard only him then time and time again, so he was confident he could take up the case again now.

The redheaded man braves the pelting hail to move towards Elsa fearlessly. With both his hands up in the frozen charged air, Hans Westergaard gestures for her to ease back down from this unexplained outburst.

But Elsa's whited out frosted eyes empowered with a secret source didn't even seem to register what he was saying, or even see him as the gelid hurricane continues to increase about the pair of them. Hans fights the storm to get closer to her wavering and quaking lithe form.

"Snowflake! Please remember what we're here for! To save Princess Anna!" He tries to gain her focus but it only seemed to cause her to panic all the more, as he's forced away with a cold blast of wind.

"Elsa!" Hans strains his squinting eyes to see through the furious thrashing hail in the frozen fog flailing form. "I'm well acquainted with the storm you're going through myself!" He struggles to raise his lyrical voice to speak against the swirling blizzard's din, but perseveres nonetheless.

"Alone, confused, discarded, lost. I recognize you've felt that growing up, too. Because we're two of a kind—'a perfect matching pair,' I daresay, as my big brother just stated. And I believe he meant more than just in skating, if I discern my newest Storbror's insinuating humor." He tries to inveigle the wild eyed girl into calm remission with charm and wit.

"And I know, you know, deep down, that all that pain and so much more can be conquered by the true inner peace that only comes from the Lord."

"'Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you.'" (_I Peter 5:7_)

The handsome prince of the Southern Isles could look no more attractive to Elsa than in this moment of his genuinely spoken retelling of simple truth in the Biblical wisdom that cleaved through the ice storm veiled over her confused heart. His undaunted warm hands somehow make their way through the fierce storm to be placed on her frozen shoulders, as Hans' sweet voice calls her back to her senses. Elsa's hazy blue eyes finally clarify in the frosted curtain of ice that dissolves at last in his full valiant embrace.

The pair of them stand like this on the hillside, intertwined together for several minutes before Hans quietly decides she was ready to be spoken to.

"Snowflake? What just happened?" Hans softly whispers in Elsa's hair as he hugs her close to his warm chest to bring her back to sedate normalcy. He tries to revitalize her still too cool temperature by rubbing her arms up and down for the friction's heat.

"I don't know. I just don't know. It was as if I could feel…as if I were someone else for a moment. And I don't understand who or what or how. Only that we—**both** of us—are terrified deep down of what's to come. Of something beyond our control." Elsa's luminescent wide eyes, that had been idly tracing Rapunzel and Eugene's comical scrambling adventures in gathering Olaf's wayward parts rolling down the rocky hillside back together, now connect with Hans' contemplative gaze.

"'And the God of all grace, who added you to His eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will Himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast.'" (_I Peter 5:10_)

Enveloping her in his arms, the man recites the New Testament quote, as the young Queen attempts to steel herself in the King of Glory's reassuring grace that does indeed surpass all understanding. With his head bent protectively over hers, he knew that there were no limits to what he could—and would—do to keep her safe, and he silently asks the Heavenly Father to give him the strength and fortitude he would need to do just that.

Praying for her sister's safety, Queen Elsa of Arendelle looks upward to the sun beginning in its setting descent into the western side of the protruding rocky mount Mosken Island's eerie landscape, as the regrouped party again begin to trek toward Kristoff and Sven's raging path into the wind…

* * *

_Several minutes before…_

Not so far away, in the cool hidden recesses of the darkened talus caves above, Anna closes her eyes, still reeling from the unbelievable recovery of her thought deceased parents.

She leans her head upon her dear Mama's lap as the tired Queen strokes her baby girl's caramel hair to settle her.

The two females had been crouched together in the dank shaft on the cold dirt floor for a while now. She and Queen Idun had been evicted from the chamber at the old captain's command over half an hour of long discussion ago that they were not privy to hear.

Job had been keeping vigil over them in the stifling blackness. The tall first mate, after studiously unpacking some of the captain's belongings from the one bag of supplies he brought up the side of the mountain with him as if by rote, for he'd done it many times over the years they've haunted this cursed cave, was leaning against the entrance towards the narrow chamber as a guard. When his tasks were completed, Job silently started to whittle away at a small block of wood produced from his pocket.

Not more than indistinct murmuring between the two male voices could Anna decipher emanating from the cavern chamber down that long winding shaft. But her pricked up ears could every now and then, make out her Papa's often weakly choked out baritone. King Agdar was doing the majority of the talking, as if reciting some dialogue of poetry or prose aloud that Anna would keenly pick up in bits and bobs within the echoing cavern walls.

"Mama, what's going on in there? Why does he want to talk to Papa alone? And why has he kept you prisoners here for so long? How have you lived in this place? Why didn't we know?!" Anna begins to spout off a thousand unanswered questions at once to her poor spirit beaten mother. The older woman pauses in her songful humming and petting of her tiniest baby she'd missed so terribly these past five years that Idun could almost start to sob to feel her longing arms around her little Anna again.

"Still so bright eyed and curious of the world, my little dolly?" Queen Idun smiles in the face of her immense fears to give her child that special maternal look of caring, no matter what was happening around them.

Though Anna always had her father's shade of orangey brown hair, Idun could now see in the maturing young girl, the youthful version of herself reflecting on Anna's sweet yet spicy features.

"And already married I see. Is he a good man? I do wish I didn't have to miss your wedding day, _min liten flicka_." The observant mother lifts Anna golden ringed wedding band finger with a regretful, nonetheless proud look on her yet lovely features that begin to softly weep for the loss of important years.

"My Kristoff is the best ever. I can't wait for you to meet him." Anna nods, joining her mother in tears as she thinks of how utterly good her Kristoff is, how lucky she is to have landed him, and how proud she'll be to show him off to her parents.

"He's really big...and really tall!" With a disconnected, yet adorable, proud phrase to describe in extra large terms her beloved ice harvester in every way-body, heart, and soul-Anna squeezes her likewise emotional Mama's trembling hand with a silly girl-in-love smile.

"How is your sister?" The Queen then guardedly inquires of her other less open, yet infinitely more complex daughter, as eyes glance up in knowing that Job was listening to every word of their whispered private conversation.

"We had quite an adventure back there but – Elsa is **so** much better now. We've opened up the castle gates and even started a year-round ice-skating rink." Wiping the shared tears from her eyes with playful grin, Anna had a quaint way of equating her mystically gifted older sibling's well-being and becalmed state of mind with the open to the public all-year-round community Ice Pavilion now gracing Arendelle castle's once tightly closed doors.

"Then you've finally found out her secret. And you're both coping with it. _Prisa Herren." _Idun pauses to look upwards and thank God." My good girls. Your Papa will be so glad to hear that. He's worried himself sick over the two of you, especially considering how uncertain a state we left Elsa in, no matter how unintentional. Funny thing is, your Papa and I had already decided Elsa was of age enough to finally deal with the truth, and bring things out to the open with you when we got back from the wedding in Corona. But that wasn't to be." Idun carefully phrases her always contemplative husband's anxiety that she continually had to assure the doting father of his two intelligent and courageous daughters' ability to tackle anything – as long as they had each other to rely on.

_Just as my Agdar has always had my love to lean on for support, I've prayed that a sister's love would be sufficient to melt Elsa's frozen heart. As close as you girls were when you were little children, I knew your love and affection should be enough to see her through._

"I must tell you, in deep reflection, your Papa and I have come to regret how we'd separated you two when you needed each other the most growing up. I am so sorry." The doe-eyed woman tearfully admits to her dear child now that she has the chance she thought would never come again to apologize for what she knew inside was wrong.

"Well, we're the best of friends and the closest of sisters ever now! So you needn't worry, Mama. It all turned out for the best. Elsa means the world to me and I know I do to her, too. Olaf calls us 'BSF' – 'Best Sisters Forever'." Anna proudly relates to her concerned mother of her reclaimed bond with her big sister Elsa, and their closer than close sisterly hand in glove relationship that had only blossomed since they started being honest with one another.

"Olaf, _mitt barn_? A love interest for my Elsa, perhaps?" The Queen cocks her head at the obvious masculine name reference with a spark of hope behind her weary eyes.

Though an independent woman in mind herself, at heart Idun had come to understand that a young woman of Elsa's age and personality would still possess romantic notions, in spite of the icy girl's emotional struggles and difficulties relating to other people.

"Hee hee hee! You're still so funny, Mama! Olaf's our talking snowman." Giggling, Anna was still innocent enough to find the sunny side of life, even in utmost times of tumultuous dark clouds and strife.

"Then I take it, Elsa hasn't found anyone special to share her heart with, as you have with your Kristoff?" The concerned mother says in deep consternation with knitted disquieted eyebrows.

"Not if I can help it." With a twisted lower lip and scrunched up nose, Anna sourly makes a murmured negative face at the unwanted stray thought popping into her head of the one man in the world – _no, that one redheaded villain_ – whom she would abhor to romance her beloved big sis.

Which, not knowing any prior background story, leaves the already pensive Queen Idun utterly confused by her younger daughter's at first lighthearted smile that transformed to scornful and bitter in the blink of an eye.

"I wouldn't share a sandwich with that loser again, never mind my sweet sister's pure heart!" Anna continues to venomously mumble as she scrambles to her incensed feet to begin to pace back and forth in the cave shaft entrance like a wild woman.

Job's eyes follow her every move, though his head never moves a centimeter upwards from his work.

"What are they talking about for so long in there?!" Though the calming voice of her father's lovely baritone had quelled her worries up to this point, go-getter Anna was not the type of gal to take a back seat and wait quietly for things to happen without her input for a long stretch of time.

Her curious ears were just itching to eavesdrop, her restless feet already on the move, as, with boundless energy, Anna crisscrosses the room several times back and forth, making Idun and Job both a bit dizzy to keep up with her flighty tracks.

Although, her mother could claim that same fire in the belly that she herself once had in her own youth reflecting there in her daughter's daring bright eyes. And by the same token, she could sense that her feisty little girl was about to make the same bold and foolish moves she would have before being blessed by two children and some twenty-five years of happy marriage to the most wonderful man who ever lived …

The mature woman, who was anxious for her 'step and fetch it' little child's safety, could do nothing but shake her head warningly and marvel at the Creator's design of passing down not only physical genes, but also characteristic traits from parent to child. And no one understood that soulful fact more than this Scandinavian Queen for her children.

[_'Anna. Be careful.'_] Idun mouths silently as the girl's worry for her dear papa, who was still speaking somewhere deep within the cave walls, overrides any basic fear for self.

[' _Mr. Job would never hurt me._'] Anna's tripping feet take her straight towards where the dark man that her innocent goodness had come to somewhat trust was leaning against the shaft wall. She believed him too busy at work with his project to even notice her stealthily sneaking by…

_TIPTOE…TIPTOE…_

Anna's naïveté would be the end of her someday. That or her innate clumsiness.

_CLATTER! BANG! SKITTER!_

"Where you be going, missy?" Alerted by her accidental kicking over a pile of stones and pebbles across the floor, Job catches Anna in the act, despite her best effort to be covert.

"Uh, I was just wondering what…umm… you were carving over here, Mr. Job." Anna guiltily covers up her clandestine tracks with a brilliant bright toothy smile up at the super tall 6'7' pirate sentinel who was guarding the shaft egress, and was now glaring down at her.

As if to feign sincere interest, Anna glances around the man's wide shoulders to glimpse the wooden item he had been whittling away at for the greater part of the past half hour wordlessly.

"A Crucifix? Wow, Mr. Job. That's really nice." Anna gives the Caribbean man a more genuine smile now. The girl brought up in the Lutheran faith and childhood instantly recognizes the symbol of Jesus' sacrifice on the cross for the redemption of mankind that Job was carving.

"Back in Guadeloupe, me Muma always wanted me to carve her one. But dis dumb man never got 'round to it. And den it be too late. So I's make it for her now." Job murmurs more to himself than Anna as he holds up the roughhewn small wooden figure hanging on a tree that his big coarse hands had been meticulously carving for years, every time he felt the need to cleanse his fouled soul.

And this time, for these crimes he was but an accessory to, the soiled stain over his heart was dark and deep.

In the faint lantern light affixed to the cave wall at his side, Anna could make out how Job's dark eyes had landed with pity upon the shivering petite framed frail Queen a few feet away. There was an undeniable look of longing remorse flickering against the open flame in his eyes.

"It be cold and damp in here. You be needing a blanket, Mama." In his low bass Job states, as he locks eyes with a surprised Idun. She nods back at his kindness, aware that it was the despised pirate's quiet unspoken first mate who took fastidious care of her and her injured husband concerning their basic necessities since the beginning of their capture.

The dark man then turns from Anna to reach a big hand into one of the few rucksack bags he had managed to cart upon his back with a sparse amount of their supplies.

But that moment of inattention is all the audacious Anna needs. She's scurries like an intrepid little mouse in the shadows under his line of sight. She slips quietly into the shaft entrance while Job was bringing the retrieved blanket covering to her mother.

Idun does her best to keep the man talking and preoccupied to cover for her brave child, as Anna quickly sneaks her way through the cavern's pitch black corridor…

* * *

Moments earlier…

"'_Taper up there, which Christ holds dear; _

_By day by night, burn altar light; _

_Olaf did so, that all men know; _

_In Heaven be, from all sin free;_

_Lies at this day, where good men pray;_

_Hand, nails and hair, grow fresh and fair;_

_A heavenly Saint, to heal men's plaint—'"_

"—You must understand, Jol, this skaldic poetry is only legend. A rousing tale, perhaps spread to inspire men from century to century, passed down from generation to generation. But none could truly find any merit in the stanza verses' literal veracity beyond speculative exaggeration of some 'legendary spring's' mystical healing effects. I myself always believed the entire Saga, while at times based on true facts of battle and actual events, was merely an analogy, portrayed of our patron saint, of mortal flesh seeking the healing light of the Almighty's enlightenment." With this scoffed disclaimer, King Agdar, body weary, still retained a gallant presence in the chamber, as he pauses in his well spoken memorized recitation of chapter after chapter of his most famed royal ancestor's life story. Line by line, as told in the heroic soaring verse and rhythmic epodes, Agdar himself put this ancient poetry to memory decades ago as an only child raised in the immaculate solitude of being reared to be Norway's next ruler.

But his audience of one wild-eyed madman of a pirate whose patience was running low now would not be dissuaded. The angry redheaded pirate leaps up from his perch beside Agdar on the injured King's rock ledge cavern table that served as his immovable bed.

"CONTINUE reciting the Saga for me! Or ze Queen—" Houtebeen begins to bellow threateningly, his sunken eyes wild and hollow with feverish craze as the glowers over the prone vulnerable king like an merciless octopus about to suck the life from his prey.

"**You so much as touch one hair on that woman's head, and so help me**—" Literally bristling, Agdar's handsome blonde brow furrows as the willowy half figure of a man sits bolt upright, damning the intense pain shooting through his broken body. His icy blue eyes blaze at the pirate with such deep derisive fury that this Norske king's quiet cold commanding growl far outweighed any intimidation of the old pirate's vicious yells and red-hot screaming threats.

"Yes, yes, my dear King. Captain Cornelius Jol vill keep to his vord concerning yer beloved Queen. Has he not, all zese years, taken good care of ye and she? Houtebeen vill even promise to free ze lovely lady on ze morn if ye do exactly as he asks." The crusty pirate's snake oil promises dangle before Agdar as Norway's King tries to find his calm center again, he eyeing Houtebeen circumspectly.

"You must forgive zis old man's momentary excitement. It simply is ze stirring way you tell ze Saga of your Sainted Olaf zat has Houtebeen all enthused. Please to continue now. Ze Captain of ze Pearl Lady vill not interrupt again, he promises." The wily old man catches his ill received frenzied bad temper to diffuse the situation with a wide repugnant grin and ingratiating smile with his one good eye across the sitting up King.

"Yes, well… In the end, I don't care what happens to me anymore. But if you honestly vow to let Idun **and** my daughter go away from here in safety, I will acquiesce to your demands. Though I still fail to understand how my remaining here to continually retell of this ancient Saga to you will help you in your plight, Captain."

"Please, to humor a temperamental decrepit aged man, one experienced old sea dog to another." Captain Houtebeen plays on honorable Agdar's proud naval career and service for his country's Navy.

"Fine. If you keep your end of the deal, I will keep mine. Just let my dear ones go." Still regal and classy, despite his harsh infirmities, the King closes his eyes to take a deep bracing breath and force his weak aching body to stay focused enough to finish reciting the remaining stanzas of this strophe of ancient skaldic poetry. He would have to learn to overcome the continual gnawing pain, without his adored Idun at his side to face it any longer. As long as his Queen and his precious girls were safe, Agdar could withstand anything.

"'_When God's light glows, on waters clear flow;_

_The crowds do come, the deaf and dumb;_

_Crippled and blind, sick of all kind;_

_They're cured to be, on bended knee;_

_And off the ground, Rise whole and sound._'"

"Zere! ZERE! Zat's ze part ! Zat is it! Tell me yer leg doesn't burn at its stub end to be full again, to be able to run and climb and hop and dance! Tell me yer arm does not long to reach out and hold zat beautiful woman again, to squeeze her hand in yers once more! Tell me ye don't yearn to hear zose vords, man!" The peg like Durchman hobbles about, recklessly animated as he thrashes around the dimly lit chamber. He projects his gnarled arms straight out to almost fall backwards in his exuberance as he points his cane towards King Agdar's own missing two limbs.

Agdar only needs to pause for mere moments before distinctly speaking the verse on his heart.

"_The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.'" Job 1:23_

Unpretentious Agdar responds in the contented words of Biblical hero Job. Though every inch of his carnal human nature desired to scream out in agreement "_Yes, I do_!," every millisecond of his promised immortal godly soul cried out to suffer through and trust in the Supreme Being's greater plan for his life, whatever there was of it left here on earth.

Righteous King Agdar would deny the Devil's willful gnashing discontentment with a resounding "_No, I don't_!" instead, no matter what the cost to himself 'til his dying day.

"'_I have set the Lord always before me. Because He is at my right side, I will not be shaken.'_" _Psalm 16:8_

The good, devout man, even in his constant pain and strife, still found his core strength in the great faith that has carried him through every trial of his life, though they be many.

"Good thing ye are a praying man, O Norske King, because either way zis turns out, ye vill soon meet yer Maker. Whether zis does ye in, or Houtebeen has to do ze honors himself, once he sees if yer legends be fit enough for him to DRINK!" After pacing about deceptively like a hungry lion, the cautious self-preservationalist aged pirate once again calls upon unexpected strength to suddenly grab, in a flash of grasping arms and harsh hands, an unsuspecting King Agdar by the neck in a choke hold.

Though the shocked younger man struggles, in his weakened state from years of pain and neglect, he could do nothing but succumb to the wicked pirate's vehement attack. His widening pale blue eyes watch in astonishment as Houtebeen produces Arendelle's stolen Holy Regalia's Golden Orb in one clutching hand.

With the other grimy paw, the pirate roughly squeezes the handicapped King's jaw open and begins to pour several drops of the yet sparkling crystal clear waters he had gained from that inexplicable spring near the banks of the River Nidelva.

When in the skirmish at the Nidaros Cathedral, in this concealed golden vessel, the wily Captain managed to preserve these rescued drops of water that sprung forth when blessed by the golden rays of the Creator's life-giving—moreover, life-restoring—Sun from the Heavens above…

And as the cowardly peg-leg degenerate Captain Houtebeen forces weak and broken, yet still distinguished and idealistic, King Agdar's dry throat to swallow the moisture, the pirate anxiously awaits this test of the holy miracle foretold of centuries before he's been patiently waiting for all this time…

The world starts to swirl around the ashen haired double amputated Norwegian monarch's coolly disoriented mind on another plane that sinks into a glacial sea of palest blue, as his physical form falls to the ground, frigid and cold…

"What have you done to my poor Papa, you Monster!?" Princess Anna of Arendelle loudly shouts directly in the pirate's deafened ear, as she races into the cavern chamber after just arriving to witness the evil villain's forceful attack on her father from the dark corridor she finally found her way through.

The aggressively aggravated Princess roughly pushes the peg-leg aside as she rushes to her downed, writhing and wounded Papa's wretched side on the cold damp ground.

_"Verdoemen!"_

At Anna's ferocious fierce shove, Captain Houtebeen loses all balance. The peg-leg, along with the shining golden orb's vessel that still held the half drunk remainder of the shimmering precious healing waters of that blessed spring reserved for his cautious self still clutched in his grubby fat hand, both go teetering over…

All of the dreaming, scheming and screaming over the long fought and clawed years for the evil, aged 'Houtebeen'—'_the Peg-leg'—_pirate Captain Cornelius Jol III would be for naught…

* * *

_Liebling _– Darling in Germanic-Prussian

_min liten flicka – _my little girl in Swedish

"_Prisa Herren_" – "Praise the Lord" in Swedish

_Mitt barn_ – My child in Swedish

_Muma_– Mother in Caribbean

_Verdoemen! - _Damn! in Dutch


	37. Chapter 36 - A Ray of Hope

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act III**

**Chapter 36**

**"A Ray of Hope "**

"NEE! Dit is met recht de mijne!"_ (NOO! This is rightfully mine!) _

Captain Houtebeen's feral scream echoes through the cavern shaft like the terrible death scream of a wounded animal as he desperately balances the treasured orb that still held within it the few precious remnants of his lifelong dream with more delicate care than his own descending and flailing broken body –

**_CLASP!_**

At the last possible second before total water spillage against gravity's demands, Houtebeen forgoes his own skin in total focused determination to clasp the Norwegian golden holy relic's lid tightly shut.

**_CRASH! SPLAT!_**

Though the pirate captain suffered several cracked ribs, not to mention a bloodied nose, in the hard fall to the cave's sharp rocky surface that Anna had fiercely shoved him down against, he managed to snap the orb's open lid tightly closed.

Even amidst his excruciating pain, the single-minded pirate's angry mouth curls into a sneer when he sees he had still salvaged his dream. He shakes the orb to his ear and listens with delight to the still viable Nidaros Shrine's spring waters still held within.

"U betaalt voor die, je kleine heks!" (_You will pay for that, you little witch_!)

Even if Anna couldn't speak a word of Dutch that the vehement captain reverts to, she had a feeling that whatever the old man just venomously spat out at her wasn't of any good tidings.

Especially, though he was debilitated even more now, Houtebeen levels his trusty Francotte pinfire revolver directly at the girl's orangey head.

Princess Anna of Arendelle could do nothing but hug her dear Papa's shivering unconscious body to her cradling rocking form with wide shocked eyes to stare down the face of the gun's merciless barrel…

"Cap'n! Don't! Da King might be hit, too! And you never finds out." Just then, Job's deep bass voice breaks into the madman's rage.

Job banks on the assumption that Houtebeen's seething hysteric need for revenge would be outweighed by his burning desire to see this hands-on trial of the legend's healing worth through.

Cooling down, the redheaded old seaman indeed lowers his weapon from its sight's direct aim at blowing off Anna's pretty little head.

"Zen why is za legend not being fulfilled?! Look at him! Still only half a broken worthless man!" The pirate angrily retorts, gazing over to the fallen king's yet debilitated body on Anna's caring lap.

"You're the worthless one to hurt my Papa like this, you venomous snake!" Anna's unafraid and peppery tongue can't help but retaliate for her silent father's sake.

"Silence! Vroutejeshond!" Seeing red, the old pirate raises his revolver again at the disruptive girl, whose eyes flare up to him insolently as if to dare for him to shoot.

When Anna's ire was up, it was way up. After all, she was _'born ready' _– and also a little crazy.

"Please forgive her! She's just a child! Please, I beg you, Sir!" Her melodic voice choked up with motherly protection, Queen Idun bravely speaks up for her sharp tongued feisty daughter after sneaking in the shaft cavern behind the big dark man who was supposed be keeping tabs on her.

A bit feisty still herself, Idun fearlessly moves between the pirate and her dear ones as she kneels down to brush a tender hand to Agdar's shallowly breathing cheek. Her other palm touches Anna's tense shoulder as the Queen brings a serene calm to the confrontational scene with her sweet voice and healing presence.

"Houtebeen's always been too kind to ze ladies, it vill be ze ruin of him. Tie zem both up, Job." The pirate regains his composure after a moment of reflection on his next patient recourse. He continues to study Agdar's passed out, profoundly breathing and shaking form with quiet interest as Job silently complies to his order and gathers up the spunky girl who is unwilling to leave her injured father's side.

It didn't take much of Job's ample muscle to 'convince' her though, as his large hands grab hold of the inside of Anna's armpits to simply pick her straight up off the floor, though slowly enough for her to rest her papa's troubled pale gray-blonde head on ground gently.

"If you promise to leave her alone, I think I may know the reason as to why the legend is not yet working." Idun says after a few thoughtful moments, renewing their previous conversation as she looks the pirate directly in the eye when passing.

"Speak, woman." Houtebeen bears the pain in his lower abdomen to stand up with his crutch and invite Idun to illustrate her words with a smooth smile.

"_Good Book prevails,_  
_if nail for nails;_

_No one can tell,_  
_who tolls the Bell;_

_Forget it none,_  
_Life-giving sun…"_

"The Saga of St. Olaf states that the healing spring water needs the sunlight

for its legendary powers to be activated."

The intelligent woman concludes, recalling passages of the legend that she had learned well of the consecrated 11th century Norwegian king and his poetically transcribed legendary exploits to spread Christianity throughout Scandinavia that the current Norwegian king held as his lifelong pursuit and interest, almost to the point of obsession from an early age.

Agdar had put to memory every royal tradition and national folklore from long ago since he was a lad himself so he would be as fair a King, as gentle a ruler, as dutiful a servant, as good a man as his noble ancestors before. Just like the one told of in this ancient verse and rhyme.

And Idun had picked up from her husband portions of the stirring Skaldic poetry since the happy exciting days of their courtship.

Now, the woman, still madly in love with the beautiful dreamer, strokes her beloved mate's much creased with pain forehead with each lyrical word of the ancient Saga that she hears replay in Agdar's deep voice on her heart.

Job gently wrenches Idun away from the downed king and pulls her into Anna as he ties the two of them together, back-to-back, so neither has the use of her upper limbs.

"Ze sunlight, eh?" With his one incredulous eye contemplating the idea the Queen just flew, Houtebeen strokes his long red and white beard with mercurial consideration.

He glances around at the utter darkness perpetuating the dark cavern, save for the eerie flashing incandescence of a few firelit torches hanging around the shaft walls.

"Job!" The pirate's biting voice orders loud and sharply. "Pick up ze king! Ve are going outside to see if ze sunlight vishes to give him vone last chance before my patience runs out."

The way Captain Houtebeen said that, Anna and her mother could feel each other's dual heartbeats increase in palpitation as they are prodded by the wicked pirate's cane to walk forward.

Houtebeen sadistically smacks his walking stick at Anna's soft rear end to signal to the trudging girl to start to walk more briskly. She then skitters across the pebbly ground, pulling Idun with her because their wrists were snugly tied together.

At each other's back, mother and daughter try to learn a four-legged race's rhythm to move through the cavern shaft with the two pirates carting the weak Agdar towards the far off entrance, down the cave's maze.

Where, at the end of the tunnel, the healing light of day that the King and Queen of Arendelle had not glimpsed in over five years time, was calling…

* * *

_The light of day…_

Perhaps the sun in this Midnight Sun time of year Northern region of the country was too scared and too timid of the pirate's threats, as well. Or maybe it was just impishly mischievous, for a sudden inexplicable cloudburst breaks through the heretofore all day sun's reign in the sky.

An unpredicted rainstorm was not the norm in this climate's blustery dry and full sunny common weather patterns around here on Mosken Island.

But tonight the weather was volatile, as Kristoff and Sven were finding out firsthand. Their thundering hooves' race around the mountain is mirrored by the deafening crack of loud rumbling clouds menacingly overhead.

"Rain. Just great." With a grumbled sigh at the thick drops of moisture that begin to pelt down on his head, Kristoff pulls up the dark hood of his gray cape over his blonde mane.

The abrupt downpour forces Sven to wisely slow from his gallant gallop to a careful canter upon the path's slick muddy grasses.

This area of Mosken's mountain meadow that ran up against the upper section headwall, usually saddled the land between it and the 1300 meter tall Wilhelmstind Peak with its green and violet flowery scenery.

But all the vivid colors that this one and only section of the otherwise rocky and sandy island offered, were now dulled, drab, and made lifeless by the dreary dark stormy clouds suddenly hovering over.

Kristoff sure wasn't here for the scenic views of blue ocean and even bluer open skies, but the wet muddy trails would certainly slow him and his cloven-hoofed reindeer down when speed was of the essence.

With another grunted sigh, the burly ice harvester strains to see through the dark sheets of rain to where he was going.

After all, Scuttle had not been more helpful than giving them a general vicinity. But that shouldn't have proven too much a problem for this outdoorsman.

Kristoff and Sven had honed the art of the tracker in between their small enterprise business of ice harvesting in slow months, years ago.

Thus far, after the advised direction from the helpful seagull, Kristoff and Sven pause every now and then to investigate the location site. Kristoff had used his natural skills of a tracker to swiftly analyze what part of the island Anna and her kidnappers had traversed earlier.

Footprints, broken branches, flattened grasses, the smells of sweat and foreign agents – Kristoff and Sven had learned to track them all over the years spent out in the wilds together.

But now, the blasted rain would wash away even Anna's all too familiar particular body scent that Kristoff adored and that he had been intuitively following.

["Now what, Buddy?"] Thoroughly soaked to the bone by the fierce rain in only the first few minutes of it, Sven too felt dejected by the dark clouded sky above them that dashed all hopes of their scent tracking success to the proverbial wind.

["There must be something else that could tell us where Anna has gone!"] The wetness was beginning to seep into his drenched cape as well, and Kristoff damns the howling wind as he refuses to give up, even as all looks grim.

After his brown eyes scan the rain coated area as best they could see through the storm's blurred veil, Kristoff was just about to prompt Sven to try in the opposite direction, more towards the 1.5 km uninhabited island's Northern interior when he sees –

_A sunflower? That doesn't belong here…_

Amidst the drab, greyed-out flattened by the rain's harsh intensity landscape, a single flower that never grew in this northerly mountain meadow clime was still open wide in all her bright yellow glory, in spite of the pounding rain that frightened all other blooms away.

**["That's Anna's!"] **Like a beacon shining brightly across the field, at the sight of the sunflower comb that Elsa had crafted for her little sister's birthday a couple years ago, Kristoff's mind cries out in joy for his missing gal.

He leaps off Sven's back to trip over himself in dashing to the rock pile cairn where Anna had surreptitiously placed her favorite hair comb for him to find as a secret clue.

With a big grateful smile that could envelope the world on his handsome exuberant face, Kristoff reaches out to grab the comb and press the brightest, happiest flower God ever created, to his lips and kiss it lovingly.

For he had recognized how his clever Anna had braid twisted her comb's three blue, green, and yellow ribbons. She had plucked and arranged some of the flower petals of the comb to shape into an interesting arrowhead that pointed directly at the rock face in an upward position, signaling a necessary climb.

Without another thought, Kristoff mounts his reindeer. Their two minds linked as one, with abandon, Sven and his pungent, valiant rider rush towards the southwestern base of the Wilhelmstind mountain peak down the divergent overgrown path that the sunflower named 'Anna' indicated for her love to follow…

* * *

_Back atop the mountain…_

By the time the hobbling old pirate, the two strapped together females, and the big man carrying the moaning and groaning half a figure of the King, make their slovenly way through the maze of the talus cavern on the mountain, it was raining outside.

"Vat! Vere is ze damn sun?!" The angry, aggravated, and aggrieved peg leg swears when he is greeted at the cave entrance by a wall of pounding rain and darkened thunderclouds coating the overcast sky above, so not one single solar ray could pierce through its thick cover.

"Perhaps ze overhead daylight is enough! Take him out to the middle, and lay ze king out zere for a time, Job." The inconsiderate old man, after all, cared only for his selfish ends as he orders Job to bring wounded King Agdar's unconscious body out into the thrashing storm and leave him out there mercilessly in the pounding cold rain, to either watch him catch pneumonia –

-Or witness a miracle.

"No! Papa! Don't do it, Mister Job!" Anna puts her two 'orts' in, feeling she and the big man had enough of a rapport to have him join the side of right in mutiny against his evil Captain.

Job pauses to turn and stare at her with a troubled look in his eye, though his face doesn't move a muscle.

"JOB! Take him out there immediately!" Houtebeen re-orders, not about to give his lackey a third command. His hand was already resting on his pistol in its holster at his side.

"Dis is not da time, Missy." Is all Job quietly says under his breath to Anna's wide eyes. He does as he is instructed by his superior and walks out into the pelting rain with King Agdar's broken excuse for a body in his grasp.

Anna and her mother watch in craned neck horror at how Job, while himself getting soaked to the bone, lays the vulnerable, wounded King to the bare ground of the scree pebbled high mountain-spur ridge.

Houtebeen, too, was watching with wild intent, his single eye glued to Agdar's deducted form for any sign of instant miraculous change.

When none visibly comes in the covered daylight's pouring rain, Houtebeen begins to growl vindictively, swearing under his breath.

"Please! This is cruel! You can't leave Papa out there in this horrible rainstorm! He'll catch pneumonia in that cold downpour! This doesn't make any sense! He needs a doctor and you need a psychiatrist, you mental old man!" Bold and brash, Anna begs and demands and insults Houtebeen's sanity simultaneously. She did not understand the whole 'Fountain of Youth,' nor 'St. Olaf's Spring' foretold legend, even if it was a well-known ancient literary saga of her own ancestor and nation's past revered canonized saint.

It didn't help that Anna never did pay much attention to her studies of history in her youth. It was so much more fun to play and climb trees in the backyard than have had her nose stuck in books like Elsa always did behind that closed door!

"Houd je mond!" (_Shut your mouth!)_ Frustrated Captain Houtebeen slaps a vicious backhand across Anna's maddening mouth that wouldn't stop questioning him in this deafening summer storm.

No hands to protect herself, Anna recoils, defiantly wiping her bloody lip on her shoulder and giving the rotten old pirate a dirty look.

"Anna!" Queen Idun tries desperately to turn to see her baby girl's injury, but she could only glimpse the blood spilling from Anna's mouth from the corner of her large lustrous tear-filled eyes.

"I'm fine, Mama." Anna reassures her mother as she bravely licks her tongue to the split lip to try to halt the thick blood flow.

"Keep yer sharp tongued child silent, voman, if you vish for her to live long." Houtebeen threatens, his depraved heart not feeling one bit ashamed for his striking a girl or a child before its own mother.

"Job! Be of zome use! Take your infernal contraption to go and fetch ze rest of our supplies that ye left down at the base of ze mountain. Ve might be needing zem, if ze sun is going to play hide and seek with Houtebeen for a spell. Zis may take a vhile, and ve'll need ze food." The hungry pirate callously orders his unfortunate first mate to make the cold and wet trip down the mountainside by his pulley system for the remainder of their packs of foodstuffs and gear, even in the unrelenting pouring rain.

Using the pirates' inattention, Idun yanks at Anna by their entwined wrists to pull her away from the enraged despicable man as the mother and daughter pair skirts away to a side corner of the cavern opening.

"Mama? What—?" Tough guy Anna begins to protest, not wanting to look like a coward for backing away from any enemy, especially not if she could keep pestering to get the mean pirate to bring Papa back under cover.

The brave girl didn't care what would happen to her if she could help him.

_"Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me_." Careful not to be overheard, Idun begins to softly sing clear out of the blue as she leans her head to Anna's blood stained cheek.

"Mama? Why?" Anna always knew her sweet mama to be a devoutly Christian woman, but the blatantly open feisty girl didn't know if this was the proper time or place for her mother to be singing religious hymns, with Papa out in the mercy of the cold elements and danger all around them at the hands of this crazed wicked pirate.

"Shush, my baby. Shh…" Idun hushes her littlest girl into a stunned quiet before she continues to sing.

"—_ I once was lost, but now I'm found. T'was blind, but now I see."_

As her mother's lilting soprano echoes through her ears, reverberates in her mind, touches her heart and soul, Anna feels a strange, almost burning glow as the uncanny warmth that she suddenly remembers now in this moment, from days of childhood when Mama would sing her boo-boos away—though many they may have been for the klutzy little bare-knuckled girl— and everything would be all fixed up again when she woke up in the magic flash of her sweet Mama's wiggled nose after the little girl was lulled to sleep in a nap.

Now in the present, Anna's split and bleeding lower lip glows in that same golden aura again as the cut mystically closes up, with visions of a glimmering golden lily flower blossom vivid in the young girl's dizzy mind…that special sun-blessed _Campanula Rapunculus _of Idun's youth…

"Mama? How did you—? That's amazing!" Anna whispers in childlike wonderment of her exhausted, yet blissfully smiling mother.

"You're all right now, min lilla bebis. Mama will make it all right." Anna recalls that warm cozy feeling of falling asleep to the lilting sound of her mother's sweet voice, in the glow of her Mama's warm healing love.

Anna smiles to hear the same comforting words that only a mother could comfort her child with, ringing true in her head from all those happy days spent so close and tight knit beside her beloved parents, whom she thought to be normal and ordinary just like her.

She just never realized that they, too, may have concealed some mysterious magical ability from her, just like Elsa did for all those long lonely years.

Well, not quite like Elsa.

Or so Anna believed…

_…__T'was blind, but now I see…_

* * *

_**CRRR-RAACKK! THUNDERCRASH! **_

_**RRR-RUMMM-BBBLE….**_

The sudden violent storm's pounding veil of rain didn't bother Queen Elsa of Arendelle and her entourage of rescuers at all. After the brewing clouds trumpeted in a crashing roar at their imminent opening, Kmdr. Westergaard, reading the threatening clouds, had suggested to his Queen to form her gelid frozen powers over the soon-to-be-drenched team's heads, rather than as a slippery slick at their feet.

The mountain path was an upwards grade anyway, where an ice slicked skating rink of sorts that she had been providing below for greater speed in traversing, would prove inadequately ineffectual now.

So the team of four humans, one snowman, and one chameleon would have to make the remainder of the journey on normal unaided foot, to run and walk on their own power.

But at least they didn't have to get wet and be slowed in the urgent process of catching up to the speeding away rangifer and his determined partner, hell-bent on a mission to reclaim his bride.

"Are you doing all right, Elsa?" By now, Prince Hans had given up the pretense of his attempt to stay aloof and detached of the beautiful gracious monarch of this great land – at least for this difficult leg of their incredible journey together.

Hans recognized that Elsa needed all the help and support she could get in order to locate her kidnapped sibling. Hans Westergaard's corrupted heart owed both sisters too much to stand as any impediment – emotional or otherwise – in the Queen' s way.

So, in the past days' quiet reflection of soulful prayer in the loneliness of evening, as he stood tall and erect at the ship' s bowsprit, Kommander Hans Westergaard looked out over the silver-flaked sea on the proud Naval vessel she had magnanimously given him her trust in commanding. There he had prayed to God Above for the fortitude and strength of purpose to render aid in the best way he could to the pale icy angel of light who found a tender place in her warm – _never cold _– heart to envelop **his **cold heart in her gentle sweet glow.

And until Princess Anna was returned to the bosom of her loving family, safe and sound, reformed Prince Hans of the Southern Isles would not fail his benefactress' fragile beauty.

Even if he knew it was vanity to allow himself these brief moments to enjoy her splendid smiles along the ephemeral way.

It must be ephemeral only. He deserved nothing more than contempt from the doe-eyed lady who has given him so much. Hans vowed to himself that he would never again take advantage of her, especially in this dire situation of her confused emotions.

After the happy conclusion to this terrible trial was successfully reached, with all the assistance he could offer, Hans would walk away, with hopefully some degree of the longed for redemption the Creator demanded of his criminally tainted soul in exile.

And never again would he disrupt the peaceful lives of the Queen and Princess of Arendelle.

"Yes, Kommander. I'm fine. I can do this." Her lovely face was so tightly squinted up in determination that the red-haired man couldn't help but let his mind wander to consider her petite nose adorably cute.

Ice Queen Elsa's focused power retains a constant thin frosting of the incoming rain's moisture to keep a verglas vigil over the group' s gratefully dry heads, even amidst the pounding thunderstorm.

"We are definitely inviting this gal for our pool parties in Corona! Woo hoo! Take that, you old buzzer Storm Cloud! Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah –Oof!" Even in strung-out tense circumstances, Flynn Rider never let down a false front of his noisy bravado – or his bad luck/good luck penchant, either — as he stumbles out from under Elsa's 'frozen umbrella' he had just been busy hailing, to stumble into the rain at the rear flank of their happy squadron that he'd been taking up.

"Who left the dag-blame—what is this thing?— Muddy Buddy of a **sheep** in the road? What is this world coming to when you can't trust your fellow man to at least have the common courtesy to pick up from the road his discarded livestock litter, gathering wool at my feet? I asked you?!" As Eugene swears and complains and rants of the degradated state of the modern age – circa fast-paced 1851 – his quick hands scoop up the little roundy pile of spongy mud splattered woolen ball that had tripped him.

"Oohh! Let me see him! Oh! Poor wittle baby-waby! Mamma Rapunzel wishes she still had her magic hair to sing away that nasty scratch on your wittle tummy-wummy. Did the bad man step on you?" Brown- haired Rapunzel coos and tickles the dirt streaked gray wool little lamb that was held out in her husband's incredulous hands.

"Bad man?! How come _**I**_ didn't get that '_baby-waby'_ voice kind of attention when _**I**_ was dragged through the mud with more than a few scrapes and scratches on my little tummy-wummy?" Eugene jealously whines with a droll twisted lip and skeptical droopy eyelids at his wife's typical female-plus-fuzzy-creature-in-need banter.

"Well, you weren't as cutsy-wootsy, cuddly-wuddly as this tiny wittle baby, when we found you all dirt caked from, I don't know, grave robbing, were you?" Rapunzel's cooed baby talk transfers to a teasingly accusing smirk up at her lover in the end.

Eugene's mouth drops open down at her.

"Oh, the iniquities of not having a furry coat." The former thief gives his final rhetorical swing at this losing battle of wits with his wife on the subject of him getting proper attention.

"How did this little guy get way up here on this uninhabited island? I wonder if he's a poor unwanted orphan, too." Rapunzel pets the lamb's weakly raised forehead, planting a sweet kiss on it as she gathered the wayward quadruped ruminant animal in her welcoming arms.

This wee little lamb must've wandered away from the fold and found itself lost between the rocky cliff cracks, soon after being born. It was accidentally forgotten after some enterprising Norske farmer bravely ventured in the well-timed quiet of semi-diurnal tides of the fearsome Moskenstraumen, to bring his herd to graze on the choice–albeit treacherous-mountainside of Mosken in the short window of springtime. The sheepherder left the island again, minus one tiny lamb, and he was not about to come back for it, rather giving it up for dead.

But with no natural predator on the untouched Mosken, the little lamb miraculously survived having to fend for itself, alone for several months, grazing off the land.

"We are **not** adopting any runty lost sheep, Liebling! Come on! Who knows which poor Norwegian farmer you'd be stealing it from! It, thank God, must belong to someone! We don't even know if it's properly vaccinated! It might even have rabies for all we know. Besides, we have enough problem pets." With Maximus, the pompous horse on the forefront of his mind, Eugene also had his 'winning' way of ribbing his main rival for his bleeding heart wife's attention at every chance he could.

He and Pascal never did hit it off from the start, ever since the 'frog' stuck his tongue menacingly in the thief's ear.

_Several times! I can still feel that rough 40 grit sandpaper of the tongue you have, right now. And it still icks me out just to think about it._

Eugene and Pascal give each other the evil eye as the chameleon is perched at the man's eye level on Rapunzel's inattentive shoulder.

"Lambykins needs some love and care to get better." Rapunzel's soft maternal side was coming out again, much to Eugene's twisted lip chagrin.

"Is 'Lambykins' even a sensible, sane name? If you want my opinion, I'd prefer to call him _'lamb chop'_ once we get this little fella fattened up." Giving into the inevitable, raising his eyebrows up and down in insinuation, witty Eugene wickedly taunts the woolly creature, whose baleful little black eyes go fearful when the mercenary man pokes the lamb's side with his finger to judge the plumpness factor of the emaciated lamb's not–so-meaty ribs.

The baby sheep's wet body shivers, as, zoning out her husband, Rapunzel, towels 'Lambykins' –not to be confused with a _'lambchop_', as Eugene's savory palate preferred—off with her skirt hem.

"Eugene! He'll hear you!" Rapunzel yells at her hubby's crass unfeeling word that obviously upset the little lamb who shrinks back into the folds of her now more ample bosom.

Eugene rolls his eyes to the raging heavens as the couple plus baby sheep continues to walk forward beneath Elsa's magic ice umbrella.

"'_If a man had a hundred sheep and one has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety and nine and go into the mountains to search for the one which has gone astray? I know my sheep, and my sheep will know me.'"_ Eloquent Hans had been lightly eavesdropping on his brother and wife's argument of marital bliss as he puts together several Biblical and philosophically applied quotes containing sheep that the Good Shepherd Himself instructed us to care for.

"'_Feed my sheep'_, Storbror." Hans addresses his brother with a lofty smile over his shoulder as he offers the wisdom of the Scripture to his perplexed elder sibling, though he purposely left out some of St. John's verses retelling Jesus' parable that seemed quite apropos right about now concerning those sheep and the thieves that they didn't get along with very well.

"What?! There might be more?! I sure as hell hope there aren't no _ninety-nine_ **more** of these fuzzballs out there trying to trip me up in the road, Sideburns! My tender-hearted little lady'll end up wanting to take in every motherless stray, and we'll have to trade the castle in for a farm." Beneath his panicky breath, Eugene bewails Hans' meant to be soul reaching words, taking them more at literal face value.

Hans clears his throat with a half-suppressed snigger at the fitting analogy and his brother's humorous reaction to it, making Elsa, who knew her Bible well, too, understand his hidden mirth in the midst of their shared anxiety that went right over his more irreverent brother's head.

Elsa chuckles her lovely lilting laugh at the man's discerning charm that bolstered her even in moments of duress such as these. Hans' tenor voice calms a tensed Elsa with the best prescribed medicine of the joy in God's Word, as she gazes into his secure green eyes with grateful admiration.

This little romantic interlude causes Eugene to roll his eyes in his head again even further skyward as Olaf joins Rapunzel in the silly baby-waby talk over the woolly hitchhiker that Eugene had had the bad fortune of crashing into on the road.

Or was it? Time and tide alone could tell as the group moves towards the rain drenched Wilhelmstind mountain peak. Kommander Westergaard's keen eye was still keeping track of man and reindeer's racing path leading the way to find Anna, beneath the mystical tinkling umbrella of frosted ice that Ice Queen Elsa maintained over them…

_Glisten…glisten…tinkle…tinkle…_

* * *

_Spadbarns_ – Little one in Swedish

_Vrouwtjeshond – bitch (female dog)_ in Dutch

_Houd je mond! –_ "Shut your mouth!" in Dutch

_Min lilla bebis_ – my little baby in Swedish


	38. Chapter 37 - Climb Every Mountain

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act III**

**Chapter 37**

**"Climb Every Mountain"**

The torrential downpour was not letting up one iota. But the determined young man wasn't about to let a little rain slow him down.

It was as if the grasses, the rocks, the very wind itself, were all pointing to where Anna's sunflower marker was calling him to race towards, and he would never let her down.

The nearer he got to the Wilheimstind mountain base, Kristoff spotted an all-too-familiar – and unwelcome – figure in the rainy drear. And for once, he had the upper hand of an unbeknownst approach on his side.

The man named Job was at the ground level bottom of the mountain, apparently just finishing loading several satchels of food and tack supplies and the two casks of the captain's favorite rum onto the ingenious pulley chair winching device.

As he maneuvers behind some large mossy rocks to the pirate first mate's unseen rear, Kristoff dismounts from Sven as quietly as possible.

_["Stay back, Sven."] _Tugging his dark hooded cape around his tall muscular form in his best attempt to be stealthy in the shadows, the golden blonde boy halts his bulky four-legged partner through their silent mental bond.

Rain soaked and hunched over with each surreptitious sidestep forward into the desolate island's interior, the Wind Whisperer keeps his tracker's ears trained to nature's voice on the wind, despite the dampened conditions that were sending him all kind of confusing signals, especially from the mountain top above.

Dripping wet and patiently waiting until Job was busy hefting the loaded pulley upwards, Kristoff focuses on the target. He ignores every other extemporaneous sound and sense and sight save for his intended silent ambush.

Though he was the type of man to normally abhor any deceptive subterfuge, Kristoff was prepared to use every furtive shock tactic at his disposal, if it meant freeing Anna from the villains who took her away from him.

His fisted hands remove his golden bow and arrow from their quiver strapped to his back as he carefully moves through the shadows to pounce upon the unaware Caribbean man, and take him down.

Even though the mark was a difficult one in the pouring rain, his targeted sight had its dead on aim trained at the back of Job's ebony head. That, at this close range, the Snow Prince's sharp bone tipped arrow, placed expertly in the nock groove, certainly wouldn't have missed the kill of, as he levels the arrow in an instinctive assured position.

Kristoff draws his fully extended traditional longbow's string back with split finger aiming of his subconscious mind's proprioception …

_**PULL…**_

["I can't do this, Sven."]

Pausing just moments before loosing his arrow that this foretold archer of Saami legend had fixed his anchor point to take precise aim at Job's unprotected skull, the golden haired young man holds the trained string of his bow taut, the arrow's shaft quavering with every sensory stimuli to fly.

But Kristoff Bjorgman was just as undoubtedly too humane, too honestly good a person to simply shoot to kill an unarmed fellow man in the back. Even if this **was **the man who physically took his wife away from him, the Snow Prince was not cold-blooded enough to take that ignoble base action in an all too human lust for blood.

["Kristoff! Watch out! He has a knife!"] Sven's urgent cry zings through the blonde mountain man's brain the second before he could part his rain clouded bangs splashing into his eyes to see Job swiftly tie off his end of the pulley rope to a jutted out rock crag and spin around with a defensively raised gleaming blade in his large hand.

In his momentary indecision not too shoot, Kristoff had lost his edge on Job. But truly, inside, Kristoff was glad. He'd rather face his foe in honest hand-to-hand combat than in any underhanded concealed surprisal.

And if his enemy was sporting a sharpened knife weapon, he'd contend with that, too.

That was more Kristoff's decent style as he was taught by Old Ragi, the mountain men, his Troll family, and all the fine influences of his past, as the utterly good man lowers his Saami longbow to the ground and re-sheathes his arrow in its quiver that he firmly abandons on the ground.

"Dat be far enough, man!" Job's deep voice rumbles perfectly in rhythm with the dark threatening clouds that open up their moist bewailing in the form of thick hail overhead. Job's dark eyes only caught the movement of bow and arrow aimed right at him in this melee of torrential rain drops and hail distorting either man's clear view of the other.

Just then, the quick sailor's knot that Job had rashly tied starts to slip from its rock form protrusion due to the added weight of the hailstorm rain on the platform full of supplies some 30 feet half way up the mountain. Job's one open palm grabs hold of the cascading upwards rope that scathes his palm with severe rope burns.

Placing the knife blade between his teeth, the pirate first mate silently holds the halted freefalling pulley ramp as it hovers now only some ten feet off the ground, so it would not come plummeting down to crash with all the food and supplies. The large Guatemalan reattaches his end of the pulley ramp ropes to a more secure section of the rock face, bearing his bloody palm's pain as he does so.

Tossing off his cape and hood for Sven to reflexively catch, Kristoff utilizes his opponent' s inattention to move in and slam the dark man hard against the mountain base wall, knocking the knife away from his hand.

"Where's my wife, you pirate?!" Kristoff demands in a threateningly low tone, as he bashes Job's head back, pinning both of the Caribbean's struggling wrists to the craggly rockface.

Kristoff is shocked when a cornered, angry Job's first reaction is to knee him hard in the gut, followed by a powerhouse punch to his well endowed abs that sends the blonde flying away with some bruised ribs.

"Oof!" Rocked backwards, Kristoff tries to regain his stolen breath that the former prizefighter's expert knowledge of knockout punches to the kidney, liver, and breadbasket – illegal or not in the ring – was debilitating, to say the least, in any skirmished infighting. This strongman's face-off is made especially more apparent at how evenly alike they were for this exciting match between such granite-jawed boxers in their pro-wrestling weight class range.

_Okay, no more 'Mr. Nice Pulling Punches'…_

Licking the bloodied split lip as he absorbs the impact to his cheek's jawbone, Kristoff humors his rebounding mind as his muscles itch to bareknuckle counterpunch his fellow super tall and brawny boxing bruiser.

"What have you done with my Anna?! What do you WANT with HER?! **WHERE IS SHE**!?" With each pertinent question his anger builds, as the usually laid-back and passively non-confrontational boy begins to see red. It was more than the blood running down over his eyes from his busted brow, as the tormented worry and anxiety inside releases by way of passionate fists and charging fury.

_**P-POWW! S-SMACKK! SPLATT! CR-RUNCH!**_

All over the rain-drenched mountain base, swing after swing, Kristoff and Job exchange blows, jabs and punches, in a series of massive combination hits, until the pair were wrestling down on the muddy ground.

"We gotta stop dis now, man! Da Cap'n be planning some devilry right up dere, soon as da sun come back! Dat little gurl be in danger!" In Kristoff's holding clinch, Job finally manages to choke out in between his opponent's heated unrelenting punches. This was proving to be one of the toughest matches of Job's life, one that this well-versed professional fighter was doing all he could to stave off this amateur's tough blow after hard blow.

But the mud streaked fair-haired younger man had the advantage of a fire in his belly for his kidnapped love that a disinclined Job lacked. The young mountain man's fervor was clearly exhibited in his wild haymaker power punches upon hearing the keywords '_Anna in danger' _that makes him go even crazier.

"And whose fault is that?! **GIVE HER BACK**!" Kristoff slams Job's head mercilessly to the rocky mountain's edge repeatedly. Pound for pound, muscle for muscle, Job is pounded until Kristoff finally delivers a stiff right hook to his worthy opponent with one final unforgiving slam to the left side of Job's already bloodied and disjointed jaw in a knockout punch.

"Kristoff!" Skidding to a halt on the slippery ground under her cold gelid ice umbrella, a mentally and physically exhausted Queen Elsa couldn't believe she was witnessing her mild-mannered, docile brother-in-law so violently brutalize another human being.

However, if she had been the one to first confront her little sister's kidnapper, the unleashed Ice Queen may not have been able to hold back either…

Amidst his hot manic anger rising in the cold dark hail storm of rain pummeling down on his bare head, Kristoff's fear and anxiety for Anna had overruled his better level headed judgment. But Elsa's cooling ice, that had kept a vigilant constant shield over their heads, snaps the Ice Harvester back to his senses.

After letting out few heavy breaths, Kristoff slowly backs away from the, by now, unconscious dark islander he had been pounding upon, relentlessly pouring out his frustrations.

"I'm… I'm sorry. I shouldn't have let my anger get the better of me like that." Turning back to that reticent, shy, good boy, Kristoff still had enough of the good manners Bulda had instilled in him since early childhood to not only recognize when one was wrong, but have the humility to beg the other' s pardon for doing it.

"Whew! Why apologize? What a main event pay-per-view fight card! You really did a number on the big fella with those rippling muscle powerhouse punches of yours! Where do I sign up to be your boxing manager, my boy? Oof, sheep." Striding over all full of bluster, Flynn Rider's admiring sarcasm had a woolen sock put in it as Rapunzel shoves 'Lambykins' in her husband's over talkative astonished gut. The bighearted female goes to lend a comforting hand to the bloodied and beat up Kristoff, plus the injured pirate he was hovering as victor over.

"Are you okay?" The cocoa-brown haired young woman touches a tender motherly hand to Kristoff's bloodied brow and open bleeding knuckles that she quickly bandages up, with the roll of gauze she had obtained for these 'just in case' scenarios back in Salsbrucket.

As Rapunzel uses the kerchief around her neck to rub some of the mud out from his dripping wet golden blonde hair, Pascal mimics his girl with his own clean handkerchief, that Hans had wordlessly supplied the chameleon with.

"Yeah." Kristoff answers offhandedly as he rises to his full six foot five inch stature from the ground where he and Job had been scrapping upon.

Her first patient attended to, Rapunzel then turns to care for fixing up Job and bandaging his multiple wounds.

Pascal hops on Hans' shoulder as the redheaded gentleman nears, with a nervous Elsa right at his heels as she keeps the frigid cover over them all, to shield from the rain.

"Did Job give any indication of Princess Anna's whereabouts?" Prince Hans asks, putting the Queen' s questioning eyes to words, after assessing that Job wasn't in any condition to relay any further useful information.

"She's up there." Kristoff answers, and all seven pairs of adventurers' eyes follow his gaze up the 1260 ft tall peak.

"He said that nutty pirate's up to no good, and that Anna'll be in danger '_when the sun comes_ _back,_' whatever that means." Murmuring under his breath and looking to the slowly clearing sky's pressing new deadline, the heavy rain lets up into a light shower.

Kristoff only has to give Sven a sideways glance for the intuitive reindeer to come dashing up, after a swift detour to scoop up the discarded cape and bow and arrow quiver on his way to Kristoff's waiting side.

After gathering his bow and arrow and tugging on his cape, without missing a beat, Kristoff sends a flying grappling hook up the craggly mountain tens of meters up and pulls it secure. In one swift leap, sprung up from being balanced on Sven's elevated tall antlers, amazing daredevil Kristoff Bjorgman fearlessly jumps in a single flying bound up to his climbing rope.

Immediately, the mountaineer's strong 'rippling' muscular arms begin to hurriedly heave himself up the rope hand over hand, powerful leg muscles tight. The experienced mountain man ignores the great height's alarming exposure as his climbing boots find support footholds to help speed his ascent up the Wilheimstind mountainside without the comfort of a belay partner, nor a sure anchor up top the rocky precipice spur the rope was attached to.

Not that the independent mountain man ever relied on anyone else before anyway. Climbing a mountain was second nature to this Wind Whisperer, especially when it came to rescuing the love of his life.

Although, the current wind's soft voice, vaguely whispering off the crevasse above into the furthest reaches in the back of his mind, was giving him a cool warning with each foothold taking him upwards, as the dark clouds overhead begin to waft away…

* * *

"Wow. That Kristoff sure can climb fast. I bet I could move like that if I had long, tall muscular legs and funny square shaped feet like he does. Maybe not the square shaped feet, hee hee hee." Olaf's silly prattle and even sillier chortle had a strange way of bringing the remainder of the rescue party, staring up at heroic Kristoff's ascent up the mountain, back to urgent reality.

"Just peachy! There goes the only climbing rope with the only experienced mountain man around, too. Show off. Super tall thousand foot plus mountain scale, and here we are with no extra grappling hook. Oh, darn. Guess we'll just have to hold the fort down here and wait for –"

"I require your back to remain perfectly erect, Storbror." Looking from person-to-person around him, after his verdant green eyes analytically finished their gaze upwards, Hans' even toned voice cuts off Eugene's emotive hand motions with an authoritative air that causes the noisy thief to indeed stand up straight and take curious notice.

"Shoulders back. Hands laced and cupped firmly together. Head up… Please, Storbor."

Eugene automatically responds in physical terms to Kmdr. Westergaard's concise orders as the dark-haired thief repeats each instruction verbally.

"Shoulders back. Hands laced and cupped firmly together. Head up…Head up? Whoa-oh!" Eugene repeats quite in a daze as the older man watches in stunned curiosity as his little brother removes his tall black boots.

_And here I thought you and that slick footwear were inseparable, Sideburns!_

"I'm no stepstool, Lillebror!" His head was slightly beginning to part clouds, and Eugene Fitzherbert is shocked when a bootless Hans Westergaard makes the nimble footed long legged climb first into Eugene's cupped hands, then to balance one graceful leg of his shifted light weight primarily onto his brother' s one good shoulder. Hans then makes a final long reached grab for the pulley lassoed chair device with his sinewy arms.

Catching hold of some of the roping and adjusting it at the same time, Hans swings his agile body to gain momentum until he can accomplish an arched back flip up to land neatly on the platform.

Once there, the wiry young man gives a well slackened tug on the rope Job had affixed to a jutting rock earlier, to free it and the windlass winch device to working order again.

Watching with impressed eyes, Elsa works to maintain her verglas cover over Hans and Kristoff who was moving away higher up the peak, as well as over those below.

An experienced mountain climber Hans may not have been, but he did recognize the converted ship's windlass winch device premise right off. The naval man rapidly lowers the cleverly adapted elevating mechanism he was riding down to the ground level.

Whistling at this second young man's astounding feat replayed before their eyes, Eugene begrudgingly helps Hans' desire for alacrity in unloading the supplies and casks of rum from the lowered platform.

_Can't we just keep one? It might be a long ride! Spoil sport._

"May we offer you ladies a lift?" After he replaces on his stockinged feet the confiscated boots Olaf had somehow assembled parts of himself to stand taller upon, with a demanding _'give up the goods' _wagging finger at the mischievous snowman, Hans meets Elsa's admiring gaze. The handsome redhead gives her a charming, disarming smile that she nods to quite willingly.

Knowing she was overstressed for maintaining the ice shield over Kristoff way above them by now, in one motion, Hans easily and so gently picks up the quite introverted and quietly preoccupied Queen, to place her slender beauty on one side of the chair bench. Kneeling at her feet, Hans firmly belts Elsa's lithe form onto the chair to secure her for the, no doubt, sure to be rickety ride up the mountainside.

Certainly her vast ice powers could make it an easier ascent for them, but Hans could sense the pale woman's already overtaxed sensibilities. And if he could find another way up the mountain for her, he would.

The Danish Prince didn't have to say a word to Rapunzel though. Before the proper young man has a chance to clear it with her husband, the pregnant Prussian Princess takes the initiative by plunking her small behind beside Elsa on the tight seat. Rapunzel looks down at the pile of grayish white wool cuddled in her hands as it blinks dumbly back up at her.

As he pulls off another stack of foodstuffs from the platform at her feet, Eugene was just about to say something, when Rapunzel says it for him.

"Maybe this ride is going to be too bumpy for you, Lambykins? Maybe you should stay down here with Sven?" That protective motherly instinct was already kicking in for this expectant princess.

"A wise decision, really." Eugene's trademark smirk answers with a genuine smile behind his eyes as he gathers the little trembling lamb in his arms to place the fuzzy creature on the dolelful eyed reindeer's sturdy back.

"We're counting on you to keep the fort down here – and watch that guy – while we're off gallivanting up in the higher elevations of the unknown, where no reindeer has gone before, Sven, old pal." Eugene pats Sven on the firm shoulder and even goes as far as to tickle the woolly lamb's tummy with one hand and the Svalbard reindeer's furry neck with the other.

_Look at me going all soft. I can't believe I'm standing here, talking to a reindeer! What's next? Counting sheep?_

The supposed down-to-earth dreamer scoffs at himself, believing in more wonders between Heaven and earth than his 'sane' mind would let on, as Sven smiles up at him and grunts affirmatively.

"We'll be back for you, really soon, and with Anna, too, Lambykins! You'll like her, she's funny!" Rapunzel tries to talk her usually uncertain unconfident self into an optimistic outlook as she blows hugs and smooches and waves the little cuddly lamb farewell.

A tearful Rapunzel's half dreading, half hopeful tilted voice perplexes Hans. He himself, though far from being a male chauvinist, would certainly have preferred to leave the emotional, somewhat shaky, often bilious young mother-to-be down here on ground-level. But that decision ultimately wouldn't be his.

Hans glances over to where Eugene had just finished removing the final supply sack from the platform that Job had strapped them to.

"Listen, Blondie. If your precious little Lamby-pie is still sticking around here by the time we get back – I'll take up the honest profession of sheep shearing so the fuzzball could at least earn his keep back in Corona. Okay, Liebling?" Eugene kindly smiles down at his little wife, as his long arm stretches out to pat the bashful sheep on its black-faced head in an outward show of truce.

"Ouch, bad arm."

"Oh, Eugene! I'm not letting you out of my sight ever again! I love you too much!" A contented Rapunzel whispers gratefully, pulling him back by his shirt front into a kiss, her sick feelings passed away by her husband's considerately proffered act of kindness.

"Here. Take this, if you're coming." As the couple part the sweet kiss, Eugene's hand searches for something tucked snugly beneath his shirt.

"Put this on for me, over our baby." Eugene 'armors' Rapunzel as he expressly straps the iron skillet over her stomach and her vital heart area as he places the frying pan at the front of her waist with his removed belt.

"Now I only have to worry about keeping my pants up." The funny man had a way about him that was as aggravating as it was attractive.

He then shares a nod with Hans, who, with permission, finishes strapping Rapunzel onto the chair securely. Both slim girls just fit on the wide seat Job had crafted for the pudgy old sea captain's comfort in traversing the mountain.

"One final question for my estimations. Midshipman Olaf? What is your weight?" Hans' brilliant with mathematical figures calculating mind seemed to be weighing the total passenger to rope tensile strength percentage.

"Umm… I don't know… I never actually weighed myself on an actual scale… But I do like to eat ice cream cake, **all year around**! Oh! Oh! I know way to melt **off** the pounds! What if I do – ergh - this?!" The always pliable snowman disassembles himself on the clean boulder he had hopped upon, swiftly editing his 15 pound butt end section with a finger wagged order to 'stay put!' Olaf subsequently reattaches his wiggling feets rather disturbingly to the smaller mid torso branch arm section instead.

Elsa looks at her misshapen first creation and nervously giggles, though the bulk of her strained mind was still in explained and equally unexplained anxious trepidation.

"Tada! How's that for a slim fast weight loss program?!" Olaf's big toothy grin atop his already deducted only two main part body's twenty pound or less form was even more disturbing.

But Hans merely smiles for the both of them.

"I love it." He skeptically concludes at the weird sight in a patronizing hushed tone, quickly scooping up the weight lessened snow creature to place Olaf on Elsa's lap.

Hans sensed the Queen could use a warm hug about now, to which Olaf obliges on cue. A grateful Elsa hugs her pleasant, loving snowman back, as she steadies her nerves and secret heart tremors on his comforting cold form and closes her eyes.

"Are you ready, Storbror?" All that had happened in just a few short minutes, and with a final wary glance at the thoroughly passed out Job, Hans gives the recuperating Queen some downtime for her efforts earlier that she could begin to rest from, now that the storm was clearing up.

He was self trained to be quite at home in the leadership, decision-making role long ago.

Kommander Westergaard looks to his older sibling as he deftly alights upon the chair platform's right side near Elsa. He cut a gallant figure as he hangs upon the ropes on this side with one lean sinewy arm as he takes position.

Ready on his own side, Flynn Rider had gleaned a small amount of expertise in areas of rope and pulley gear used for climbing into – _oh, say, castles, museums,_ _**banks**_ – all those sorts of boring lockdown places containing jewels, artwork and cold cash where a thief's tools of the trade might be necessary.

With a smirk down at his lady love, whose pilfered bejeweled crown had brought them together, after he had stolen it using a rope and pulley system much like this, Eugene didn't need a second invite. The former cat burglar was well versed with the technique of self-hauling up valuable treasure for a proper heist's rewards.

And there wasn't a reward more treasured than the hopeful smile from the beautiful woman who was to be the mother of his child. Eugene gives Rapunzel a wink as he takes firm hold of the double ropes he would have to master in tandem with Hans.

_I'm keeping you close from now on too, Liebling._

"I'm ready anytime you are, my acrobatic Lillebror." Bravado his middle name, Eugene Fitzherbert answers. He prepares himself in her eyes to bear any shooting pain already starting in his throbbing flexed arm that Hans thoughtfully chose on purpose to take Eugene's weakened right handed side's majority of the work, while Eugene would cover the left.

In perfect rhythmic time with each other, the pair of brothers begin to quickly pull and hold, pull and hold, pull and hold the tensed rope system that would run smoothly if they kept a synchronized balance on either side of the bench chair device.

"How about a rousing song to get us started? I know! Heigh ho! Heigh ho! It's up the mount we go! Whew-whew-whew-whew, Whew-whew-whew-whew! Heigh ho! Heigh ho, Heigh ho, heigh—What? Why isn't everyone else singing along? The guys at the Snuggly Duckling love this number." Though a whistling Flynn Rider attested that he 'didn't sing,' he often used his voice raised in humor to bring levity to difficult uptight situations.

A happy Olaf claps at the sing-along, as Pascal on Rapunzel's appreciative shoulder buries his embarrassed red face in his chameleon green hands.

As an amused Hans hushes Eugene with an admonishing brow, the pair of brothers' combined muscle power gains the ride several feet upwards with each dually firm pull.

As they find their paired rhythm as one machine, Hans stares deeply at the pale woman at his side, who instead of relaxing her ice umbrella as the rain's moisture concedes, shivers even more. Olaf's warm hugs appeared no longer enough to penetrate the gloomy clouds that minutes ago still clung to Elsa's soul.

It was as if the Norwegian Queen was sensing something uncontrollable growing somewhere deep within her consciousness. Her entire being trembles, wildly unhinged with the cold fear of something both terrible and wondrous coming when a ray of sunshine starts to break through the parting clouds as the group rises into it…

And a pair of wise old eyes watches from the distance over the churning sea…

* * *

gurl – small girl in Caribbean

Liebling – Darling in Germanic Prussian


	39. Chapter 38 - Shipwrecked

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act III**

**Chapter 38**

**"Shipwrecked"**

**_PLINK. PLUNK. PLINK. PLUNK._**

_Enter a rain pounded dream's cold, hallucinated memory of a dying king…_

"Brrrr…"

It was a warm night for a seacraft steadily moving along the Skagerrak Strait on the open ocean between Arendelle and the intended destination of Corona to the southeast.

But not for Agdar. It was never warm enough for the King of Norway.

"Where? Where am I? Idun? Why can't I stop feeling so cold?" The normally confident man's voice was just above a whisper, as if he were that unsure child going into an uncertain adolescence all over again.

Without waiting for an answer, the shivering monarch left the bed he had been sharing with his wife in the ship's Royal cabin berth.

"Agdar, min alskare (_my lover_)? Can't sleep again? What's wrong?" Awakened from her slumber in the deep of night by her husband's quiet anxious tone, Idun was always in tune with her chosen partner in life.

The small, slender woman who was shimmering in the moonlight in a filmy nightdress had a lovely style of her own as she shook herself fully awake to cross the ship's cabin. Once she arrived beside him, Idun draped herself over her husband's tense shoulder where he was standing rigidly erect at the porthole overlooking the sea.

"Oh, my darling! You **are** shivering. Come back to bed and I'll sing you your favorite song." Idun had gently cooed in Agdar's ear in her soft healing tones as she stroked the stylish ginger sideburns he was growing in. Although, when she felt his very skin quiver through his thin silk nightshirt, even in this warmest June summer weather, Idun's heavy lidded eyes had enlarged with immediate worry.

"How can I sleep when everything is so unsettled back at home? Idun, have I waited too long to discuss it with her?" Guilt's icy cold doubt had crept frigid claws into the loving father's mind, until the overprotective years of worry had built up to the point that the King could not sleep peacefully anymore.

"This has been heavy on my heart for a long time now. And this journey so far from them especially." King Agdar had placed a hand over his heart as he closed his eyes and bowed his head as if in a silent prayer.

"Come, Admiral. Put your trousers on. We're going up to the deck to get you some fresh sea air. No lip, Sailor." With a slap of her naughty hand to his tight rump, the feisty little woman knew her naval man well enough by now to see that he needed the ocean. It always had a calming effect on his troubled soul.

"Besides, you haven't yet given me the guided tour of your favorite pet project's fancy new decor. I've heard the rumor that there's something special made just for me." With greedy approving eyes, the woman watched as her handsome King had pulled his well formed sinewy arms into his uniform tunic jacket and had buttoned up its burgundy trim with dexterous fingers to complete a thoroughly dashing look.

"Yes, ma'am." With a mocking salute, this Admiral of his own Sjoforsvaret - Norwegian Navy -was well aware that he still took orders from a higher authority, besides that of the God of all above.

"Shall we, my Queen?" Agdar gentlemanly had offered his lady one of those strong arms she always felt completely safe within, though, tonight, Idun still sensed her husband's inner worries.

"To the ends of the world I would follow you, my King." On tiptoe, Idun had planted a kiss on her husband's cheek, which caused the dapper mustache above his lip to curl into a soft smile, and he cutely ran a hand through his coiffed ginger hair.

With another kiss under her handsome man's cool lips, Idun used the next several minutes to both warm him up and unwind his entire tense outlook. Her passion always did bring Agdar out of that detached cold world he would often sink into when he thought too much, and back into her light.

Once the royal pair had dressed into their more befitting sophisticated garb, (though it was a late night hour, should Norway's trendy rulers be seen on deck by the few deckhands on board, they must be proper) the King and Queen had silently snuck out of their cabin below deck in their forecastle quarters to take a stroll the main deck.

"Ahh. So this is the 'gallant top forecastle' you've been swooning over for months." Idun still had that twinkle in her eye as she teased her emotionally uptight husband back to a more calm state with her jovial levity.

"This is the Sjoforsvaret 's most modern, and may I say, most elegant, '_topgallant f'cs'le'_, Madame." Agdar finally came out of his disturbed doldrums to correct his mocking wife as she predicted he would.

There was tenderly shared laughter under the fleeting brilliant moonlight in this area of the world where the aurora borealis still shone its summer face for a few hours short of full Midnight Sun. Idun had squeezed Agdar's firm arm in an attempt to ease his tormenting himself over past decisions. She knew his soul so very well, by all they had been through together, and recognized how troubled he was, particularly tonight.

So after the ship deck's tour began, Idun made a few tries at pleasant banter as to the ornate Norwegian kingdom's Arendelle purple and teal crocus flower design. A stickler for detail, Agdar had personally requested the kingdom symbol be painted upon the rear hull of the elegant three masted royal vessel that he doted over and loved, and so named it the '_Idun'_in his adored Queen's honor.

Right down to the large yet delicate, strong yet intricate, cut out crocus leaf railing around the raised place platform topgallant forecastle that she extolled, she knew he had only turned to and absorbed himself in perfecting its architecture so much when he was adrift in a state of distressed concern and remorseful worry, after a hard day of training Elsa back home.

"Agdar. Everything you've done – everything **we've** done – has only been for the good of our two girls." Idun had looked up to her tall husband with quiet sincerity, but his gaze had traveled beyond the still horizon of the calm Kattegat Bay ahead that the Snow rigged vessel was traversing towards a Royal niece's wedding in Corona.

"But it **is** my fault that one of those two truly wonderful children you gave me, my precious Idun, is in such a state of upheaval that she didn't deserve to have been burdened with. Elsa is learning to control it, but it's harder for her, especially since it started at such an early age. And the ill-timed stigma of having harmed Anna always on her conscience is holding her back. That, and knowing she is destined to live out her life in virtual solitude, my poor dear girl." The King speaks with the deep regret in his paternal baritone.

"Agdar, mustn't blame yourself. I'm a firm believer that 'the Lord gives us only what we can bear.' Once you have taught her a little more control of her abilities, Elsa will be fine to live a normal life." With blessed reassurance, devout Idun soon brought God into the conversation, as she too well knew He was always present there already.

"And you're being too dramatic. When she has just a little more control, Elsa won't be '_destined to live alone'_. She'll always have Anna. They'll be all right, mina sma flickor (_my little girls),_once they're together again. You'll see." Idun recalls her own extremely close relationship with her big sister growing up, and embraced the fact that 'a sister's love warms the heart' in so many significant ways that mere words could never express.

"Yes. Anna would be a sweet little friend. But I'm afraid I've made the mistake of letting my fear for Anna's safety and Elsa's sanity keep them apart. So maybe they have forgotten what it's like to be sisters properly. Maybe it's too late at this stage of their lives now to start again. Separating them is one of my greatest regrets. I realize that now." Anxious, sleepless Agdar now delved into another realm of his remorse as his pale blue eyes were trained on the strangely unsettled sea.

Idun looked on him with worry in her eyes as they both gazed across the vast ocean running alongside the Southern Isles, as they stood high upon the crocus shaped topgallant platform.

"No. Sisters never forget to hold one another dear. When it comes down to it, Anna will be there for Elsa in her time of need. If the Lord counts each and every sparrow that falls to the ground, He'd never let those sweet girls forget their sweet sisterly affection for one another, once they're together again." Idun concluded with pride in the knowledge that little Anna had grown up to be just like her mother, outward teasing personality and boundless spirit-wise. And Elsa was just like her elder sister, more sedate and reserved, thoughtful, and intelligently deep. So of course they would love each other, to rely on one another, fill in what the other lacked, as Idun and Arianna were still the closest of forever friends. As she had seen the treasured bond of with her own beloved sister, her 'Primmy', the mother of the bride they would soon be seeing, that they two, though both grown-up old mamas now, would yet be childhood playmates again.

"How do you always know what to say to still my disquiet, my pet?" Agdar had slightly twisted his head to smile with a grateful squeeze of his palm to hers behind him.

"I think I should know my boy well enough by now. So, your Majesty? Where are those summery Northern Lights your country is so famed for?" The Queen again teased her way into his heart, warming him as Agdar let the brisk night's sea breeze wash over his soul with Idun's nimble little hands massaging his back and her sweet nose rubbing into the nape of his cool neck. His handsome face is too soon rewarded with endless butterfly kisses that expressed her great love for the sovereign of her heart under the misty moonlight.

"May I remind you, with a bit of factual logistics here, my quizzically amorous Swedish Princess, that we are moving _away_ from my Norway's natural splendor as we approach the continent?" Agdar turned to now fully embrace his small framed beauty standing high upon the raised platform of the ship he had specially commissioned in her name.

"When we return home to Arendelle in two weeks, I promise you will again see the Aurora Borealis in all her glory from God's most stunning mountain peak in the far North. Remember that snowed in, little log cabin I took you to on our honeymoon? I will never forget it." The sentimental man tenderly stroked his smiling fondly Queen's cheek as she pressed it to his cool hand.

"And this time, we will take the whole family with us. Elsa and Anna will be true sisters again, from now on. No more locked doors, no more secrets. I bow to your heartfelt sagacity, my Queen. When we get back from the ship, we will tell the girls. Everything will be out in the open, as you desire." With the vast sea as liberating backdrop, King Agdar genuinely smiled to feel such a freedom more than just saying the words aloud.

This was one decision he'd been slowly coming to in the past few months of his immense worry over the gifted/cursed eldest daughter he may have sheltered for her own sake for far too long.

"Oh, my darling, darling, min alskale! How many years have I longed to hear you say that?! I have so wanted my girls to live their lives to be happy and productive like every modern young woman should be! They are at that certain age now, when they both will need some outside… friends. They may even each meet a handsome young man of their own striding his noble steed to the rescue and sweep them off their feet, as I was by mine!… _Hee hee hee_… Elsa may be a bit shy at first, but Anna will be so pleased that we are opening the gates, at last!" Clapping her hands together, Idun had bubbled over to hug Agdar's strong chest all the tighter as she spoke in quick excited sentences into it.

"W–What? Wait – young men? Idun, I did not say… exactly… that we would be opening the gates…" Starting to backtrack at the unpalatable shocking new thoughts, the normal stuffy protective father in Agdar, as many fathers in such situations shared the sentiment thereof, did not relish the idea of sharing either of his precious gems of little girls— to whom he had played the multiple roles of teacher, doctor, toy tinker, playmate, preacher, basically the only man in all their lives – minus faithful Kai as quiet Butler/manservant— with any undeserving young wild rascal of a boy who would turn their heads with whispered sweet nothings and asinine newfangled nonsense.

"At least, no _young men_ are to be permitted to pass through those gates…" Befuddled Agdar runs his perplexed fingers through this ginger hair at the startling new unexpected trouble that Idun was laying before him.

Idun's soft pleasant giggle at her serious, straight-backed, noble-minded, yet so silly at times love's sudden turnaround into a strutting paternal mature old man is cut off by a sudden quick flash of lightning directly followed by a crack of mighty thunder overhead.

**_ZZ-ZTT! CRR-AACKK!_**

"Lightning? Thunder? There was no recording of that sort of foul weather in the maritime report I checked before we left Arendelle." Norway's King was also Admiral of their fleet as well. Agdar had been in the Navy far too long not to rely on the all-important consistency of the nautical weather forecast as the ship moves into the seas adjacent to the Jutland Peninsula of Denmark.

**_ZZ-ZAPP! CRR-AASSH!_**

The smoky blue night was lit by a second blinding unnatural flash of lightning emanated not from the cloudscape above, but more unbelievably from the sea below…

"Agdar? What's going on?" Clinging to her husband, Idun was struck with fear. For she too was a first-hand witness to the inexplicable electrostatic discharge, not from the usual, already frightening source of storm clouds overhead, but emerged from the phenomenal venue of the ocean waves below.

With that, the waves just as suddenly and irrationally picked up speed and velocity when the current began to flux and flow in an irregular pattern, until the ship was violently rocked back and forth, to and fro, to look like a toy sailboat in the bathtub.

Violently storm-tossed, the Snow classed vessel named '_Idun'_was thrashed about on the rapidly moving ridges of the convulsing wave swells.

"All my years on the sea, and I've never seen such abrupt storm action such as this. It doesn't make any sense!" Agdar needed to shout to be heard above the din of the crashing waves and pounding water that, for lack of better term, seemed to be vindictively _angry_…

"Idun! Go below to the hold nearest to the stern where the ship is strongest and secure yourself close to the bulkhead. Beware not to be crushed by any crates or loose barrels set to roll when the ship is hit by those breakers." Trained to be calm and cool in a crisis all his life, King Agdar told his Queen, as hastily sixteen crewmen with busy hands quickly scramble from their sleeping quarters below to every corner of the top deck. The Captain of the royal transport ship too, quickly arrived to bark out indecipherable orders that were carried away by the deafening sound of the hammering waves beating against the quavering hull.

"But Agdar –!" Spirited Idun had a terrible gut feeling that she should **not** leave her love's side in this dangerous scenario and she began to protest his choice not to, at least, be coming with her down below.

"Idun! You know I can do this! Go below deck! **NOW!**" Actually yelling at his wife in a way the gentle man had never done before, Agdar, was already in mid-motion to aid the few hands on deck that this compact ship required, to swiftly draw in the canvas sails before—

**_Z-ZAPP!_**

The next puzzling lightning strike that came _up_ from the sea ricocheted off the storm charged clouds above and bounced off its electric charge to make a direct hit to the 'Idun's' square rigged sail frame. The ship's uppermost boom sail exploded in instant fire, ablaze before the sailors had the chance to retract it. Splintered wood of the yardarm and singed pieces of the burning canvas peel off to plummet to the deck upon the heads of several screaming crew members instantly killed or trapped beneath the fiery debris conflagration.

"Idun!" Upon seeing his wife still standing there in the midst of the falling charred pieces of sails all about her, Agdar's baritone bellowed as he physically raced back to his dazed wife. In one motion, the King scooped up her trembling slender body to carry his Queen to the relative safety of the companionway steps' opening that led down to the stern he ordered her to go down to before.

"_The Lord is my stronghold in times of trouble." (_Psalms 9:9) Idun whispered tearfully in Agdar's neck as the King moved in all haste straight through the flames carrying his ladylove in strong arms to safety.

Her words of Scripture caused Agdar's deeply furrowed brow to relieve for a momentary smile at her the second before he turned to leave again.

Blinking back tears of both fear and smoke inhalation, Idun paused in wide-eyed awe to watch her heroic husband, King or no King, rush headlong back into the dangerous burning deck to help the other men fearlessly heave the fire enflamed chunk of thick wooden topsail yard from their pinned down shipmates, screeching in the pain of being burned alive.

Unable to move for not only the gripping fear but also the wonder of what she anticipated was about to see happen before her wild eyes, Idun waited before rushing down the steps. She watched her beloved husband act as he promised himself he would never attempt to dabble in again –

Stopped short after hearing his men scream in terror while he ran through the fire at his feet, King Agdar of Arendelle closed his eyes for one moment of inner focus as he had restrained himself for years of well-maintained and groomed self-control.

And even from where she stood in the sheltered companionway steps leading downwards, Queen Idun had glimpsed her love's pale grey-green eyes snap open with that certain silvery blue-white glow from deep within –

**_ZZSTTT!_**

With much grace and style, King Agdar extended his open hand over the lightning struck inflamed fallen mast that had crushed three of the sailors—two alive and writhing engulfed in the flames, one already instantly dead on the deck beneath it.

And under the King's pointed gesture, a slew of frozen shard ice crystals form from his blue tinged fingertips onto the fire, immediately dousing the flames.

All the wide-eyed sailorswho had gathered around to help their injured, trapped brethren now stood back in silent shock and awe of their revered leader, the ruler, their King, who was literally beginning to huff frosted vapors from his hard breathing mouth. Before their fearful eyes, the localized hailstorm he created put out the flames of the wooden yardarm's fallen boom until there was merely steam rising from the charred deck.

"Don't just stand there gaping, Seaman! Help your brothers!" As the stout older Captain of the vessel barked his orders, the frightened crew looked up to see Kommander Bronnoy rush from the bridge out to the deck where the flaming mast had fallen.

"Admiral! Please, sire, go below with your Queen! It's not safe up here on deck for you, your Majesty." The respectful, experienced elder Captain of this royal craft may have been as surprised as his crew that his King held secret powers, but the professional mature man didn't let it show.

Agdar's frosted over eyes deglaze long enough for him to glance over to the companionway stairwell to give his Idun that lordly glare that meant _'I mean it.'_And the small purple and indigo clothed woman instantly skedaddled away, though there was a proud smile for her gallant chap on her face as she went.

"I, too, am a lifelong Navy man. Please allow me to help my crew to the best of my ability. In other words, Kommander, you need me." Composed Agdar spoke in stable, self-possessed, commanding tones. His unruffled, normalized eyes told the aged Captain that his sovereign was as principled as he was brave–and even more amazing than anyone ever knew in the past twenty years of his fair rule over Norway.

"We may have to broach a sudden-death role course change to deal with these rough waves." Cool as a cucumber, Agdar shows off his naval know-how of hands-on drastic procedure, to the Captain's trusting nod. Agdar then again focused the ice energies he had secretly honed since his lonely childhood to frost over the still burning remnants of the sails and inflamed clewlines, bunts, and rigging that the fire embers had jumped to as if alive above their heads.

Charred shreds of canvas rained down into the splashing waves that were still thrashing against the hull of Agdar's beloved HnoMS Idun. The tremendous waves were relentless as the remaining sailors sloshed and slid while they rushed around the soaking deck in valiant attempts to get the chaotic ship to stabilize.

The tornado gale force wind whipped around the tumultuous seas that the rising tide brought in from every direction. Each swell left their mark of the gray white foam churned in each crested wave's smashing wake.

In full control, Agdar's well hidden ice now was unleashed as he utilized his supercooled prowess to keep his lean body grounded to not be washed over the main deck. Once the wave's deluge had passed, without an added thought, the soaked to the bone king glided over to the unstable sickeningly toppling back and forth ship's railing at the forward stem.

Through frost coated pale blue eyes, calm Agdar gazed over the edge of the dark sea's violent turbulence.

"There is a decisive battle occurring down there, to be sure." The Norwegian King had surmised to himself in a murmur as he peered down through the shadows that the mystic lights wavering beneath storm-tossed sea cast.

Long ago, the young crown Prince of Arendelle learned of, though he could never have fully known the extent of how true some myths were, to believe in more wondrous things he did not understand – such as the fabled Scandinavian kingdom of merfolk that lived beneath this particular stretch of Danish Jutland's surrounding seas.

For this was the day, this very hour, that Triton, King of the sea, was challenged by his own sister, the evil sea witch by the name of Ursula, for the rule of the deep. The disowned mer-witch had stolen the mer-king's powerful trident in a legendary fierce battle for control of the seas.

And somehow, by fate or destiny, the Norwegian King, who was no stranger to legend and lore himself, had been caught up in the crossfire of the underwater conflict.

Compared to the fairytale notion of mermaids and sea monsters beneath the depths of the ocean, his control of some mundane frozen ice powers that he had shown signs of since his birth, but only came to full maturity in Agdar's early teenaged years after puberty, seemed rather tame.

But the young prince's proper, staid, old-fashioned parents did not share his curiosity to discover more about this mysterious ability. Neither of his royal parents, nor their ancestors before them, had ever claimed to own such gifts, and wanted nothing to do with them.

And so Agdar's noble yet strict father, the King, and his timid little mother, who had practically no say in his upbringing, had expressly instructed the young boy to hide his growing, incomprehensible mystic powers. Separated from other children his age, Agdar was told all through his childhood to conceal any ice magic behind a pair of thick white gloves. It was pounded into his brain since he was a boy to '_restrain'_ himself and '_never feel'_ the '_wicked urge'_ to indulge or flaunt the curse that caused his hereditary hazel eyes to glow an unearthly shade of pale blue each time his withheld energies had surged anew.

So, all the way until he was a young adult, Agdar struggled alone to deal with the unwelcome frozen energies, keeping himself to himself as much as he could manage, with only his true friend in Jesus Christ to keep him company in the well dog-eared pages of his tattered re-read through over and over Bible.

Besides his segregated church attendance, where he also found solace from his cares in the music especially, the contemplative lonely lad spent much of his youth in study of his country's history. And through it, the young man forged a great love for his country and his people and his duty to both. Agdar had immense pride in his nation's accomplishments and the history that made Norway as beautiful as the Lord intended it to be.

His growing powers, stabilized by his conviction for service and deep soulful belief, Agdar had then decided he was ready to channel his genius into serving in the Navy. That would at least make his father proud of something he did.

But he came to love the naval life out on the liberating ocean for himself, and believed he would live out his unfettered days serving his country in the militaristic solitude of a crowd of sailors.

That is, until he met his true love in Princess Idun of Sweden, who understood him and accepted him for all he was. Glad to have his new caring bride at his side, he married Idun the same year his unfortunate parents passed away from the cholera epidemic that swept over Europe into Scandinavia. Agdar would humbly wear his kingdom's heavy crown as he was trained to rule his entire life, though he always held his cold, cold secret from everyone else in the kingdom.

Everyone, save for Idun, who knew him better than he knew himself, and also the brilliant young scholar named Kai who had come to tutor the lonely boy in his youth on a recommendation letter from some powerful Queen in the far, far North that his parents wordlessly accepted.

With faithful teacher and friend Kai came his young wife, Gerda, who did everything, from cleaning to cooking to singing hymns and adding laughter to the solitary world of the young man who would someday be their King. Somehow, some way both Kai and Gerda understood his hidden talents and helped to nurture his journey, little by little.

Despite his growing control, Agdar swore to his parents on their deathbed that he would not besmirch the Royal House of Norway's honorable name with any strangely eccentric mystical abnormalities.

He would seriously live his life as they did, as did their ancestors centuries before, serving God and country without letting a single subject of his Kingdom know of his inexplicably bizarre peculiarity concerning all things frozen.

It was a vow that upright, dutiful and conscientious King Agdar had kept all these years, even teaching his first child, his beautiful daughter named Elsa, who would someday rule the country, to keep their family secret of the mysteriously inherited power she too was born with.

However, King Agdar never had the courage tell her that he shared the gift – the curse – as well. Waiting for when she was older, more versed in her powers, the time was never right for her father to explain to Elsa what he didn't yet comprehend completely himself.

Though right now, in this moment of dire straits under pressure, he understood that his hidden magic abilities could save the lives of his people. Or at least he would die a noble death in the knowledge that he was finally able to make a difference and use his God-given gifts to the utmost of his heart, in the spirit of goodness and selfless generosity like that of our Lord above.

And all at once, Agdar was certain that he could continue his entire forty-two years of façade no longer.

_Oh Elsa, your Papa has been such a fool, trying to train you as I learned from my parents, in secret denial, and never realizing that you are far more delicate than I to take it on by yourself. Perhaps it is because I have always had your mother to hold me tight, that I had forgotten how hard and lonely it was to grow up out in the cold._

_When next we meet –_**_if_******_we meet again – I shall tell you to let go of all that bottled up torment and every feeling you have been holding back. None of us were ever meant to be alone. I was wrong. I am so sorry you've suffered for my error in judgment. There is no excuse for it. You must embrace not just the cold in all its mysterious majesty, but the warmth of love in your heart that keeps it pure and gives it a home. Just as your wonderful Mama has recently reminded me, we must both learn that it is_**_His_******_strength of love that is our stronghold, our refuge. The Lord God Who is Creator of all the heavens and the earth, made you and I too, my little snow angel._

Through sad yet clear eyes, and the sight beyond sight, the Ice King came out of his reverie just in time to catch a glimpse of the newly forming black and lilac tentacles that grasped hold of the shimmering golden trident that had just transformed the ample violet mermaid witch into a bizarre obese half octopus as punishment, far beneath the churning tides. Agdar watched in absolute horror as that livid with angry indignation evil creature under the sea sent a resulting wall of a waterspout to rise straight up like an upside down funnel stemming from the ocean.

The already tempestuous crashing waves grew even fiercer as they had surged over the Idun's already severely damaged deck.

In a ferocious vortex the howling wind whipped the sailing ship about mercilessly, Agdar just managed in time to brace himself. He held onto the ship's railing as he prepared for the incoming wave. The cryogenic powers of his hand iced to the railing automatically as he prays fervently that his Queen had listened to him and retreated down the stairs to the level below.

A few thoroughly soaked to the skin and shivering moments later, when his eyes readjusted to the thick veil of water, Agdar instinctively turned to see to the safety of his crew. But he is appalled find that not a single man was left standing on the deck, they must have all been swept overboard in that last torrential wave that had wiped it completely bare of survivors.

Save for the aghast King, and his dear wife somewhere below, the entire crew of the Idun was all lost.

"NO! My men! Commander Bronnoy!" Brushing the spew of foamed water from his eyes, Agdar had rushed over to the opposite side of the vessel. But no signs of life, not a single sailor, wounded, dead or alive, nothing greeted his eyes, save for the Captain of the ship's naval cap floating in the darkly ominous chaotic jumble of choppy ocean waves.

As he leaned over the rail, defying the rocking ship's danger, the experienced seaman in Agdar saw that any rescue attempt would be futile as he cries out his grief to the undulating waves amplitude. Helpless in the midst of the storm center's violent cataract, the now virtually unmanned ship was hurtling across the growing even rougher, turbulent sea.

_Alone, but not alone. Needing help, but not helpless._

The roiling seas suddenly part in an inverted funnel, with the ship just riding the edge of the crests. The subsequent whirlpool gave Agdar a clear view of the war raging in the exposed fathoms below.

In enraged agony for the lives of his crew lost, the brave Norwegian ruler propelled himself to the stem of the vessel and grabbed onto the fractured bowsprit for support. With one arm clinging to the bowsprit, he fearlessly hung over the uncontrolled surface of the dark waters to get a better view of the furious mêlée below.

Agdar's pale eyes widened to see the octopus-like creature grow to a monstrous being with each and every swing of her electrically charged, purloined trident. It was a fearsome sight indeed, for King Agdar had inadvertently witnessed the sea's greatest rivals vying in an ultimate power grab.

The cackling loathsome sea witch Ursula then used the trident's glowing power as she vengefully zapped the true ruler of all the sea, the merman named King Triton, along with his redheaded beautiful mermaid wife called Athena, into a pair of vulnerable wriggling sea kelp in retaliation for transforming her violet scaled mermaid tail into black inky tentacles.

It was obvious the righteous sea King and his Queen were on the losing side of this fight now, with his confused six young mermaid daughter princesses crying out to their energy sapped parents for protection. The good father, the godly man, the noble King, in Agdar of Arendelle picked up Triton's banner to lend his own magically endowed hand, and perhaps turn the tide of this epic underwater clash of the titans…

**_ZZZSSZTTT!_**

His eyes closed in a prayer on his ice cold blue lips to the Lord above for every ounce of precision aim and focus he could muster within him, and Ice King Agdar's singular most powerful ice blast to date was sent flying down towards the unsuspecting evil giant Octopus female.

But the pinpointed ice discharge was not meant to freeze her solid.

No, the brilliant strategist in the Admiral of the Sjoforsvaret had a more specific target in mind.

**_Zzssztt!_**

It was so succinctly concise that the streaming ice shot knocked the all powerful trident Ursula was wielding right from her clawing hands. Fired off with such cleverness of trajectory, Agdar's ice blast was also able to direct the Golden trident to clatter across the rocky seabed and land at the reduced to kelp version of King Triton's wobbling seaweed form.

However, the merman monarch was just a few centimeters short of being able to touch his magic weapon, and Ursula's younger cecaelia-like sibling named Morgana was just waiting in the wings to take over where her more sinister sister left off.

In the flash of a sucker punch, the sea witch's less curvy, but just as ugly, body and soul, sister who had been similarly chastised by Triton into an eight tentacled monster, attacks. The avaricious transformed mermaid turned cecaelia named Morgana, used her new sticky tentacles to reach past her frostbitten octo-sister in a power grab for her elder brother's crown…

That was when the kelp version of once gorgeous Queen Athena, though full with her youngest child, was able to move her seaweed like form fast enough to intercept Morgana and nudge the trident's golden handle the rest of the way for Triton's beleaguered kelp being to touch it and –

**_K-CChING!_**

The weak and wasted form of the insignificant miniscule kelp creature instantly transformed back into the large muscled half man/half fish mer-king named Triton.

The King of the Sea zaps the pair of Octopoda banshees, Ursula and Morgana, and finally banishes the now turned to half human/half cephalopod wicked sisters who had both always been thorns in his side, from Atlantica for good. He then immediately reverses all of the evil the wicked pair had accomplished from his kingdom, and establishes Atlantica as a happy peaceful world under the sea again.

Mermaids and mermen and fishes of all sorts are released from the kelpish bonds that sorceress mermaid princess Ursula—now Sea Witch Cecaelia Ursula— had zapped them into.

After a wary glance and curt nod of recognition up to meet the pale blue eyes of another King, Triton then closes the ocean back up again, sealing the divide of surface and sea back to normality. The massive waterspout that had extended far up into the skies then dissipated into thin wet mists of simple rain now.

All the while, Agdar had somehow held onto the ship' s forward bowsprit for dear life as the whirlpool waves closed around the side of the ship in a final tidal wavelike violent convulsion.

_Idun!_

The moment the vacuum of ocean water sealed shut, Agdar's one train of thought was still for the safety of his beloved. The fit, well in-shape forty-two-year-old man agilely swings his legs around the bowsprit to leap back onto the soggy deck like a cat.

He realized after several terrible moments of winding down into the secondary deck of the ship below, that the water which had sloshed down into the ship's waist, forecastle, and lower cabin berth had grown steeper with each plodded step he took.

Was his decision to send his delicate adored Queen down below for her own safety the correct one? Did he only drive her down to a dreadful fate of confined drowning rather than brave the odds of being swept overboard on deck as had so many of the other poor sailors he commanded?

An emotionally distraught Agdar was doing all he could not to freeze the chest high waters he was quickly pressing forward into as eyes wildly scanned each area below deck for his missing wife.

"Idun?! Idun!? Where are you?! Please answer me, my love!" The frantic King was beside himself as he used his cryokinetic energies to coax the pinned shut doors to the Royal cabin open.

"Open! Damn it!" The normally classy man swore as he forced his singed arm into the ice crackled apart door in order to enter their cabin stateroom.

There was only small vacuum of air near the surface where the accomplished swimmer of his youth grabbed a breath before he dived underwater to guardedly look around beneath the mess of the royal couple's suitcases, clothing, and toiletries floating up at the over four foot high water line.

Huffing wildly at the small window of trapped oxygen as he rises to the surface again, Agdar couldn't pass the drenched daguerreotype photo of the two little girls building a snowman together, taken when big sister Elsa was smiling coyly from her coquettish 'best side' and little sister Anna, grumpy to sit still when there was fun to be had, were very young yet. It was the poirtrait Idun loved best and had framed at her bedside wherever she went.

With tears in his eyes the King grasped the photograph and shoved it into his tunic's chest pocket.

Grateful that Idun was not to be found in this waterlogged cabin, Agdar swam back out into the passageway and into the hold where he instructed the woman he swore to love and cherish and protect for all her days, to retreat to.

And there she was. The love of his life. The mother of his children. The woman who kept his sanity together all of those ice storm filled years, was in the midst of the askew hold area, herself afloat upon a crate.

The smart cookie of the Queen must've found a way to dissemble the wooden box in order to use it as a makeshift boat device when she saw the ocean water quickly making its way into the hold.

Problem was, she wasn't moving on it.

"**_IDUN!"_** Agdar's soul cried out as he swiftly scissor-kicked across the dark waters in the unlit hold where his love was lying prone on a bobbing up and down slab of crate wood.

"My love!" The Arendelle king lifted Idun's slim body up to cradle her unresponsive head in one cool hand.

"Idun! Wake up! Please… Please… wake up… I can't— I won't! I refuse to live without you…" The despondent man struggled for words amidst his fierce tears as he hugs his petite wife's unmoving body to his pounding chest. His bluish lips showered her pained-looking face with kisses, as if he hoped for some fairytale miracle to waken the sleeping beauty.

But she still does not move.

"**YOU CAN'T LEAVE ME!"** Agdar's baritone voice cries out in agony when Idun's still form didn't show signs of even a single breath as he capably carried her through the rising water out to the upper deck.

Under the moonlight's mask, Agdar gazes over his limp wife's frail lifeless form, a wild cold despair already beginning to set into his overcome mind. That vast control he had painstakingly honed and trained himself so long and so hard and so stringently to maintain began to break down. The ice now coating his distraught heart then started to cross over every square inch of the beloved ship he had fawned over and designed and decorated himself for years in creating in his love's honor.

The HnoMS Idun...

But what good was the empty vessel anymore without his muse who inspired his solitary soul to even consider love as more than a fabled legend? For the greatness of Agdar and Idun's true abiding love for one another was more than legendary.

It was eternal.

"Oh, God. With all this magic in me, why couldn't I save her?" Agdar wept bitterly over Idun's cooling body still clutched in his arms.

And without her warmth, her wisdom, her touch that calmed the ice verglas that encased his beset tormented soul, Agdar then lost all control.

The King fell to his knees on the forecastle platform that his loving wife, so full of life and vigor had just recently teased him upon. The regretful Norwegian sovereign allowed his immense ice powers to overcoat the entire sail-less and marooned vessel in a thick frost.

From damaged stem to stern, keel to bulkhead, top deck to bulwark – all froze over in an eerie icy blue white shimmering haze through the dark night.

Down all the fancy railings and polished floor planks, up each mast, across every clewline and rope, along the remainder of the tattered sails, each new icicle gave a final tinkling of silver bells ringing in his ears as the Ice King's fully unleashed ice powers afforded the entire Snow class vessel a fitting title, now in its last hurrah, as a truly super-cooled solid wonder.

The ice also gave the entire ship the glistening aura of a glow much opposed to the cloud covered moonlight, where Agdar could not see a single star shining.

As the ship begins to slowly sink beneath the now still waves under its own tripled with rimed ice coated weight, with tears running down his face as he holds his Queen close, King Agdar looked up to the sky one more time.

There, in the far corner to the North over where Arendelle lay, two tiny stars linked together through the dark night cloud cover blinked at him.

"Elsa? Anna? I suppose we won't be going on that trip to the mountains to see the aurora borealis, after all. Forgive your foolish Papa for failing you again, my girls." He whispered through frozen cold lips as the ice made rigid slivers of the shattered sails and the wooden cross bars overhead that started to rain down to pelt his openly weeping ice cold body.

Agdar automatically shielded Idun motionless form with his own body as many of the wood and metal booms holding up the frigid canvas creaked before they cracked into pieces to hail down harsh splinters that pierced his bent over defending back.

But Agdar did not mind bearing the pain. For as long as he could protect his lost mate's pure beauty, he would endure.

"Look, girls. Isn't your Mama still the most beautiful woman you have ever seen? I wish that you both grow up to be just like her. And nothing like me." The regretful man full of self-loathing said with an amused smile to the pair of wide eyed babes in the cherished crumpled up photograph that he carefully removed from his jacket to place tenderly atop Idun's violet shirt chest, over her heart, so he can look upon all three of his lovely ladies one more time.

As his proud eyes full of tears smiled down upon them, Agdar continued to hover over his wife's prone form, to block any falling debris from the broken rigging above that were constantly wounding his unwavering back.

**_CR-REEAAKK!_**

"Please Lord. Give Elsa wisdom more than I had and grant Anna the strength to help her sister along the way as my Idun has for me. Please take care of my children, in my place. And somehow, tell them that their Papa will always be proud of them, whatever they do, because he loves them so." Agdar whispered his heart wrenched plea to the only One, though unseen, who yet could hear, no matter where or when or how, in our most dire of darkest moments…

**_CRAA-CCKK!_**

The large forward topgallant mast's boom spar that had held up the tattered ruins of the charred foresail once so proudly over the Royal flagship began to crack under the massive weight of the ice to come toppling over and break into millions of sharp flinders.

And from that tallest part of the ship's height, gravity's pull only increased the shearing velocity thereof –

**_GRRNN-SSCCHKK!_**

King Agdar, superhumanly protective to the end, managed to selflessly push Idun's insensate frame as far to the end of the platform to safety while still shielding her with the left side of his body, although his right arm and majority of his right leg below his tight thigh are sheared cleanly off by the sharply frozen broken off crossbeam spar's force of impact.

"**ARRGGHHH! IDUNNN!"** Agdar's basic primal scream rings throughout the entire Kattegat Strait and into seas well beyond.

"Agdar?" It was then that the tiniest little regenerative bit of that special sun blessed flower petal she had come in contact with in Corona all those years ago, finally took effect upon Idun. Somehow she had sensed through her comatose state her love's most wretched bellow of ultimate pain, and forced herself to come back through the fog to him.

But her eyes are greeted by the most distressing, lamentable sight her petrified gaze had ever – or would ever – see.

Lying on her chest was her devoted husband's head, breathing raggedly beneath a pile frozen metal and wood debris which had splintered from the sails above to gruesomely fall and shave off her tall and strong man's left leg from his mid-thigh down and his left arm entirely.

"**AGDAR! "**It was Idun's turn to screech her love's name in utter fear at the macabre sight of her royal husband's blueblood – yes, the Ice King's activated blood was actually a ghostly shade of indigo blue – as it freely ran all over the crocus decorated platform, with Idun lying in the unspeakably cold dense puddle of it.

"You're alive…My Idun…(_ugh_) ...My love. You're alive. Dear God…thank you for answering (_huff-huff_) the prayer of your (_ungh_) humble servant. (_er-errrghh_)"' Agdar's waning breaths were used to offer gratitude for the Lord above for the return of his believed dead wife. The King's ice endowed system was working overtime keep him alive, as he was about to go into shock for the huge amount of blood loss in this serious double limb amputation.

"Agdar! Agdar! Please hold on, min alskade! Hold onto me! Listen to my voice, my darling!" Queen Idun may have been a small little lady but she was tougher than she looked. Though tearful, the delicate petite woman was able to place both of her two hands to apply direct pressure on each of the rapidly flowing chilled blood amputated stubs of the sheared off limbs to not only attempt to stop the blood flow but ease his pain in that special healing way she discovered her song was able to one day.

(…_huff-huff…aarrgh..)_The heavily breathing, injured king could only grunt as response in his intense pain.

"_Rock of Ages, cleft for me. Let me hide myself in Thee. Let the water and the blood, from Thy wounded side which flowed…"_ Idun chokes out to fearful tears her favorite hymn. Although singing of blood that she and Agdar were both ensconced in his thickly flowing life's fluids upon the wobbling platform, and the intense waves of waters of the rising ocean that they were both soon to be drowned within, hit rather too close to home.

Nonetheless, the faithful woman continued her prayerful song over her husband. Her healing touch intermingled with Agdar's innate ice had already started to seal up his, what would be fatal to anyone else, wounds.

Idun had never attempted her healing abilities on this scale, on such dreadful wounds before. A scrape, a bruise, even a twisted ankle, perhaps—little klutzy Anna had seen it all growing up—but she feared it would not be enough to keep her King alive in time for rescue and serious medical assistance.

Just then as if in answer to her doubts, the vacuum of the deep swallowed the HnoMS Idun up in a gurgling, regurgitated water roar all about them. Until all that was left floating on the waters of this isolated section of Kattegat Bay, was that of Arendelle's symbolized crocus flower topgallant adornment its King Agdar had proudly created, with he and his Queen upon it.

The ornate platform had been separated from the forecastle deck by some Force perhaps greater than the plummeting icy mast's spar, from Above…

"_Be of sin the double cure. Save from sin and make me pure…"_ Undaunted by the sunk ship, Idun's healing song wafted over the endless sea of waves to ride on her deepest faith and hope alone that her severely injured love would survive this misery. Though disheartened to watch the remainders of her Agdar's disattached, amputated leg and arm bobbing momentarily on the waves nearby, then sink beneath the ocean crests, lost forever, Idun kept up the intensity of her prayerful song on their miraculous 'Arendelle lifeboat'.

As Idun continued her curative song until her throat was dry, her golden aura of that special flower of healing that flowed all about semi-conscious moaning Agdar was knitting him up. His involuntary ice energy worked their pain reducing compress on his terrible wounds and reduced the heat of his blood flow level enough to let the poor man drift into a disquieted unconsciousness on her lap.

The brave Queen still sung softly as she tenderly stroked her King's aggrieved face without ceasing all through the night, his recurrent aching moans tearing at her heart for the excruciating pain Idun knew her love must be suffering.

And some time thereafter in that murky dark night, a decrepit old ship in the far distance, depicted by the figurehead of a shamelessly naked woman draped in pearl necklaces and stolen jewels befitting old pirate lore, had spotted the adrift and vulnerable only survivors of the shipwreck.

It was coming closer, much to unknowing Idun's silent, relieved joy.

A _rescue_ vessel that went by the name of the 'Pearl lady'…

* * *

Min alskare – My lover in Swedish

mina sma flickor – my little girls in Swedish

Min alskade– My darling in Swedish

Cecaelia - an octopus person, composite mythical being

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*** A little extra special thank you to the Guest reviewer of Frozen: Again's last chapter 37: "Climb Every Mountain" (Since I don't know another way to contact you in gratitude for that glowing review of my 'beautifully complex' work (blush) ^_^ THANK YOU for your support and spectacular comment!)

Well, here it is! *o^ Our heroic King Agdar pretty much was the star of this past flashback chapter, that explained much of his past reasoning for decisions concerning his precious 'snow angel', Elsa! I hope you enjoyed it, Frozen friend! I look forward to your next review! And there's more to come to see what's happening next to our revered King and his beloved Queen!

HarukaKou

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And that goes for all the rest of my Frozen readers, too! I hope you were glued to your seats reading it! _

Please drop me a review line on what you think of this exciting past revelation of the inherited ('_born with it_') origin of Elsa's powers, that certainly will have an effect on the story's future... ^_^

_Rock of Ages, cleft for me. Let me hide myself in Thee..._

May the Lord bless you all! My birthday countdown begins!


	40. Chapter 39 - Amazing Grace

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act III**

**Chapter 39**

**"Amazing Grace"**

Up Wilhelmstind Peak the man-powered pulley and rope system that Hans had swiftly envisioned had been working well. Albeit, a bit rocky at times when Eugene's poor bullet-ridden arm was tested and his little brother had to compensate with some extra muscle that his slight thin frame belied.

_**HEAVE. HO. HEAVE. HO.**_

Thirty feet.

Forty feet.

Upwards the ingenious converted ship's windlass chairlift pulley that Job had devised and fashioned to transport his immobile leader up the steep mountainside carries the intrepid six adventurers.

Fearful of any great height that Flynn was overseeing, Pascal had covered his bugged out eyes, but daredevil Olaf, just like Anna, was having the time of his life.

"Wow! Look how high up we are, guys! I bet people would pay you guys a lot of orts to let them come on this ride, too! Just don't look down." After the dizzy vertigo warning that he doesn't take his own advice to avoid, the childlike wonder of the snowman was evident as Olaf extends his arms out wide while the platform slowly climbs. Elsa tries to rein in the snowfriend on her lap, urging Olaf to keep his branches in from being snagged on the craggly rockface as the platform rises alongside it under the 'horsepower' of Hans and Eugene either side.

"There are rewards –_ugh_! – much greater than that of –_egh_! – the monetary variety, midshipman." His arm tendons stressed as he speaks, Hans responds with a helpful winning smile down, not at Olaf so much as at the pale woman whose lap the snowman was perched precariously upon.

But in her state of building anxiety and deep focus on keeping the ice umbrella shield in constant motion above their heads as they ascend through the lessening rain, Elsa could only manage to afford Hans a tentative smile. Despite the toll of his own physical labors, Hans' viridescent green eyes peer with concern at his Queen's lip bitten nervous gaze upward.

"Yeah –_ergh!— _I could think of a few myself –_ugh_! – But the monetary variety sounds pretty damn –_ugh_! – rewarding to me!" Flynn Rider's obsession with all things gold and shiny was amusing in the comical way he put it, if only to gain his scared wife's smile.

Reaching a grateful hand up to pet his stubbly cheek, Rapunzel sucks back her own sickly bilious/ motion airsickness to share her husband's well-borne aches.

"Is this thing getting heavier? Or is it –_ugh_! – just me –_argh_! –?" Eugene had been prattling incessantly, though his face was all contorted with intense pain with each gained upward pull as the trip wore on.

"Wait a second, Hans! I don't know how much longer he can keep this up! My poor Eugene!" The brown haired girl offers some solace for her heroic aching love as she senses that his impressive upper arm's stubborn resolve was about to falter. She caresses and rubs his strained injured upper muscles as they contract and expand, violently pumping.

"By my calculations we have ascended fifty feet of this mountain already. There is only approximately twenty feet or so left to go. Are you able to continue, Storbror?" At Rapunzel's command, Hans gives his pulley partner a breather in their two man rope system. Though he had been taking the majority of the pull, Hans realized that Eugene's injured right arm's tricep, with the bullet yet lodged in it, was becoming too stressed, beyond fatigue and overexertion. Though the wounded man was trying his darndest to persevere, the physical strain was just too much for anyone.

"Sure! Just because this body isn't in top peak physical condition – as it normally is, _mind you_ _me_– is no reason I can't still be a manly superhero! Come on, lillebror! Or are you afraid you can't keep up with me, Good-Lookin'?!" Full of bluster, Flynn disregards the stabbing pain in his arm to give another mighty pull at his end of the pulley.

"Eugene! Be careful! Your arm!" Rapunzel calls out as that sudden yank was somewhat of a final snapping point.

"Ar—ARRGGHH!" Her usually boisterous husband is reduced to panting at the agony that his reckless action resulted in.

"I'm sorry, Liebling._(huff_) I'm sorry for being such a loser." It was all Eugene could do to use his whole body weight to lean on the ropes tight enough not to let them slip any further.

Moving astoundingly quick, Hans struggles to keep the pulley balanced, as he reaches a fully stretched flexed muscle long arm across to his older brother's side too, as well as maintaining his own ropes.

"Oh! Oh! I've been pumping up my branches with forty push-ups every morning with Kristoff! I bet I can take over for Flynn-er-Eugene on this side!" Olaf's deducted body excitedly offers his 'benchpressed' arm branches' services in exchange for Flynn's ample, yet injured, muscles well past their break limit.

"Thank you for your–_ugh_! – helpful offer, Olaf. –_Ugh_! – But I'm afraid your, no doubt, well exercised musculature is not, I am loathe to say, going to suffice here." Attempting to stay calm in this tense situation with droll humor, Hans was breathing hard himself as his own overextended sinewy fibrous organs were grappling the ropes on either side to keep the platform from plummeting back down the fifty feet they had already traveled to their deaths.

Hans ignores the throbbing ache at hefting the party's combined weight of almost 500 pounds to hold the platform lift as firmly still as possible, even as Eugene's grip was failing.

"Whoa-oh!" Swaying back and forth in the tottering lift, the entire group lets out a collective yelp when the platform they were riding teeters and tilts down crookedly as, just short of being rendered unconscious, Eugene's collapsing bicep couldn't hold out much longer…

Wanting to avoid this option, but strategically seeing no other way, Hans looks with wild eyes to Elsa for aid, even as Olaf's rounded body tumbles from her lap and becomes airborne.

"Oh boy! Going down!" Olaf had not been belted into the ingenious device in any way as the two women were, and the wiggling snowman descends through the open sky, falling helplessly.

"Olaf!" Elsa awakens from her induced cold reverie to send an icy wave of supercooled gases that envelope giant cold fingers around her freefalling frozen friend to pull him back up to their winched windlass platform.

And she doesn't stop there. After meeting Hans' grateful, encouraging eyes with her fearful uncertain ones of the pressing unknown, the Ice Queen then summons more of her verglas formed energies. She uses that boosted layer of mid-air ice that had saved Olaf, in order to right the dilapidated lift and mentally push the entire platform upward at an accelerated rate now. In so doing, Elsa gives both Hans and Eugene's overworked arms the rest thy much needed as the two men instinctively let go of the frozen swiftly moving double ropes.

"Just keep your center of inner calm, with focus on your target destination, and you'll be fine, Elsa. I believe in you." With encouraging words of quiet instruction, Hans places a warm hand on her stiff and cold shoulder as Elsa's cooling body starts to freeze up through subzero constant exertion of the whole weighty platform's fate riding on her controlled powers of ice alone.

"Thank you, Kommander." Elsa answers rather glad that his steady hand remained on her shoulder while she attempts this midair feat, even as her breath turned to chilled ice puffs up at him.

Even though Hans Westergaard understood how difficult the task he had tried to spare this young woman from was, he also believed in her capability to accomplish it.

The redheaded young man smiles to Rapunzel who had a firm stranglehold around Olaf and Eugene's necks both as she follows Hans' gaze upwards.

Elsa's eyes too transcend the mountain as she brings her ice lift higher to near Kristoff's tracks, where the mountain man had already industriously climbed some seventy feet up the Wilhelmstind mountain, by hand.

The lifelong ice harvester was almost ready to climb up over the crevasse surface above, by his own vigorous strength and intense drive power to get back his kidnapped wife...

* * *

_High atop the mountain's hidden crevasse crest…_

"Vat is taking zat lazy Job so long?" Frustrated Captain Houtebeen was growing more tired and impatient and grumpy with every passing minute of inaction. He had been sitting perched on a rock at the cave entrance, looking like a dark spider anxiously waiting in the shadows for some poor unsuspecting victim to fall into his web.

And what a web to be woven.

Arendelle's holy relic orb clutched in one hand, his one squinty eye trained on King Agdar's writhing, yet unchanged body lying in the rocky dirt under the pouring rain—the old pirate repeatedly knocks his walking stick against his wooden peg leg in a maddening rhythmic three-quarter time repetition that was driving Anna absolutely insane.

"Quit it! You despicable old tyrant!" The musically high strung girl explodes at the irritating old man from where she was yet tied back to back with her mother in the cavern a few feet away.

"Don't talk to me like zat, ye annoying creature! I should've done off wis ye, long ago! " Bad tempered Houtebeen had had just about enough of the carrot-haired girl's feisty backtalk.

"Well, if I knew you were going to be so cruel to my poor Papa, putting him out the cold rain for who knows why, just to watch him shake and shiver, I should've pushed you off that cliff before, you ugly man!" Undiplomatic Anna was a little firebrand when she was riled. And when someone harmed any of her loved ones, 'riled' wasn't a strong enough term to express her angered outrage, as Anna boldly gives old Houtebeen a piece of her mind.

"Ye leetle wench! Didn't ye teach yer daughter anything about respecting a gentleman, woman?" The pirate Captain then addresses Queen Idun behind Anna. The older woman was trying to quietly project her song in order to, perhaps, give her weakened husband who had been left out in the rain some small degree of healing strength, if only he could hear her voice through the power of their great love.

"Cease zat annoying singing and pay attention to Houtebeen!" The sour pirate's foul breath angrily spits out at the inattentive Queen as he shakes her frail shoulders, but Idun would not stop singing her sweet song.

"I asked ye, if ye told yer little girl how to treat a respectable gentlemen?" Houtebeen repeats right in Idun's frightened face as he shakes her violently.

"Yes, she did!" Anna warbles out, her own voice quavering along with her likewise rattled frame where she and Idun were back to back tied together with the old curmudgeon shaking them both ferociously. Then, offensively as much as self-defensively, the bad mouthing girl takes punitive action for the evil pirate's attack on her mother as Anna purposely knees the pirate in his privates.

Houtebeen screams and growls as he doubles over in pain, shouting obscenities that even Anna never heard before.

When the wild eyed pirate comes back up for air, he viciously raises his hand back to vent his fuming frustration on the noisy rebellious chatterbox, with a sneering look on his mottled old face full of malicious spite –

_**T'CHI! **_

Just then, a sharpened stone pointed arrowhead comes whizzing in between the attacking seaman and the pair of strapped together women.

The precise projectile causes the rotten old man to fall backwards in a frantic dodge, just narrowly being missed.

"Who dares?!" Houtebeen screams, turning from his infuriated intent on Anna to squint through the passing dark raincloud shadow at the edge of the cliff where a mysterious charcoal ebony caped figure enters the scene.

Like a dark knight as he tosses back his charcoal grey hood of the gold circlet decorated cape Ragi had given him, the young man who appears over the mountainside, literally takes Anna's breath away as the first few rays of penetrating sunlight gleams flecks of gold across his shaggy natural blonde mane of hair as he shakes the raindrops away.

As Kristoff's broad shouldered manly form rises up to the mountainside crevasse like a handsome shining hero of light and truth and goodness from a fairytale of long ago and far away, the starry eyed girl had never seen a sight more beautiful than her golden hunky guy come to her rescue.

Just as the Arendelle Princess never doubted for a moment he would.

"That's my Kristoff." Lovestruck Anna proudly announces to an equally awed mother as both females' turned heads watch the tall blonde mountain man leap onto the precipice with his large Saami longbow. With an arrow quickly pulled from the quiver strapped to his back, Kristoff's weapon is drawn and aimed directly at their captor.

"He _**is **_very tall." Despite the dire circumstances, Idun appreciatively murmurs to her daughter's 6'5" tall and muscular, well-built, attractive choice of a good-looking new son-in-law.

"Anna! I'm coming! Get away from her, pirate! " Kristoff calls across the cliff side with his deep throated authority.

"Nice voice, too." The Queen mother comments, and Anna bristles with pride at her back.

"You should hear him sing for me." Anna answers with a gleeful smile that her true love had manfully come to rescue her.

"SILENCE!" The addlepated pirate was beyond frazzled at how Anna and Idun seemed to be languidly holding a mother-daughter conversation as if the dastardly villain was not present right beside them. So Houtebeen decides to step up his danger level to at least strike fear into these foolish females.

_**CLICK!**_

"Ye take another shot with zat bow and arrow at me, boy, and your girl over here gets to be a piece of Swiss cheese." Houtebeen levels his quickly produced Francotte pinfire revolver at Anna's pretty head.

Kristoff freezes in place, not wanting to risk Anna's life with this crazed madman.

"I've always preferred Brunost myself. How about you, Mama?" Though the sweet-toothed Princess appeared a ditz, Anna may have had more credit coming to her by way of brains – or at least guts – than anyone would have previously awarded her.

Somehow, amidst her confrontational taunting and physical contact earlier, this young woman had retrieved the small whittling knife that Job had secretly placed in the pirate's left side coat pocket earlier, understanding what her Caribbean new friend's dark eyes had inferred to, when he had left them.

So the resourcefully intrepid girl, all while her naughty mouth was jeering and verbally sparring with Houtebeen, her hands had been carefully sawing at the ropes that bound herself and her mother's hands together.

"I adore Norwegian Nokkelost, min alskale." While keeping up her vivacious child's inane cheesy bantering meant to confuse the old pirate who was still at a standoff with her daughter's young man, the Queen had tears in her eyes as Anna finishes cutting the rope and gives her mother's back a nudge to escape from the cave entrance where they had been held captive.

Idun then has the tough choice to leave her little child at the mercy of this madman and run to her abandoned in the rain dying husband, or stay with her baby in danger here.

"**PAPA!? You're alive!? MAMA! Papa's hurt!"**

But as the platform at the cliff's edge rises, Elsa's piercing scream for her mother as if she were a child again to make everything better called Idun's attention to the forefront, tipping the weighty scale of which of her dearly beloved required her motherly care at this moment most of all.

"My Elsa needs me." Idun whispers with tears overflowing freely as she shakes off the ropes from her wrists that Anna had freed her from. She dashes across the rocky plateau towards the ledge where her elder daughter was shivering, perplexed and overcome to see her believed deceased parents alive again.

Elsa's inner senses told her that her ominous premonitions ever since they landed on Mosken Island were right, and her tearful pale blue eyes scan to where Kristoff was facing off with that wicked pirate to save Anna.

Who was that behind her sister? Elsa's mind did not have the chance to ponder that as her gaze widened to plainly see her once strong and vigorous Papa now reduced to a handicapped amputee, lying on the muddy ground writhing in the midst of the precipice cliff.

Her fragile mind did not understand any of it, as Elsa stumbles forward blindly from the ice coated platform in his direction, her luminous enlarged eyes tearing up in disbelief to see her mother –Y_es, it is Mama!_ –running just as swiftly towards her.

Her great love for her lost parents causes the weeping young Queen to forget everything else. In a trance, her overloaded heart so burns with utter joy intermingled with the fear that this was just another cruel dream, that her parents weren't really alive after these four past painful years spent without their support, their strength, their love.

Yet she had to believe her eyes, as warm with intense love for her missing family, and Elsa thaws. The symbiotic ice ramp she had strived to constantly keep up beneath their rising platform dissolves simultaneously as she involuntarily moves forward in a frenzied fear for her disabled beloved parent.

Just then, King Agdar begins to loudly moan and twist on the filthy stony ground where a certain white gold aura begins to encapsulate him…

* * *

"How did zese people get vay up here?! Job! Vere are ye?!" At seeing the crowd gathering at the hillside, Houtebeen lets off a few wild shots at them before he raises his revolver to take point-blank aim at Kristoff who was starting to charge the inattentive peg-leg pirate.

The totally in sync, one-with-nature tall blonde mountain man fearlessly deflects the bullets with the leather bracer on his wrist as he lobs arrows across the open mountain crevasse at the evil pirate, who was surprisingly deft at the art of the dodge, despite his peg-legged infirmity.

Rather than run as Kristoff was motioning her to do to stay out of his arrow's fire range, plucky Anna bravely takes on the pirate, trying to stop him herself. She struggles with Houtebeen as he reloads his revolver, but the old sea dog soon gets the upper hand. He straps the cut ropes at her wrists around Anna's constricted neck to hold his opponent at bay, as the wily old man once again uses Anna as hostage, befuddling Kristoff's attacks.

With his gun hand, the pirate starts another volley of freshly loaded bullets and sends the spray towards the young blonde woman who was moving towards the king whose condition he was still monitoring.

"Snowflake!" His adrenaline up, Hans tosses Olaf's two parts forward scattershot into a pair of incoming bullets as cover for Elsa before he himself makes an acrobatic lunge from the melting platform to grab Elsa's dreamlike entranced form. Hans rolls with her stunned body under the line of the pirate's fire as he gets her closer to her prone father in safety.

Meanwhile, Eugene manfully ignores his arm's pain to powerfully rip the jammed up safety strap holding Rapunzel in her seat. He just manages grab his wife up and shoves her over to the cliff ledge's safety as the unmanned windlass device, now quickly devoid of its ice lift elevation, starts to plummet down the mountainside.

In a horrifying crash, the wooden chair and metal parts and chain and rope attached to the platform shreds apart as it dashes against the sharp rocks on its way down to a final smashed up heap.

And it took unlucky Eugene with it, as Rapunzel squeals in terror as she crawls over to the side of the cliff to see.

"**EUGENE!"**

She scurries over to the edge, fully prepared to see her husband's dead body laid out amid the broken smashed to smithereens rubble at the base of the Wilhelmstind mountain.

There was Sven, who had pulled Job and Lamby out of the way of the crash, just in the nick of time, to gaze back up at her with forlorn doleful eyes and a mournful 'HOMMNN!'

But Rapunzel frantically couldn't make out any sign of her love's downed form through unwilling-to-lose-him strained eyes.

"Hey! Don't write my obituary yet, Blondie! I've got some major diaper duty to do first!" Flynn Rider, the cool cat on number three or four of his seven lives, jokes up at her as he clings to one of the frayed ropes that were still dangling from the precipice ledge, some thirty feet down.

Catching her breath, Rapunzel sighs with a smile and rolls her eyes, as she and Pascal flop down on the ledge in utter relief, hugging one another.

"You just keep that frying pan over anything vital, darlin'! I'll be right back up there in a few minutes… Just experiencing –_argh_\- a few technical difficulties—_oomph! That hurts!— _down here_!—and that—_Mountains do not like me_!_" Eugene shouts up the hill at her. "Ouchy! Ouchy! Ouchy! Rope burns! Damn! Damn! _Scheiss_!" She could still hear him swearing about the rope burns that were newly formed on his raw red hands that were just added to the lucky/unlucky man's injury collection as he stumbles about the rocky crags.

* * *

"Ye come any closer with zat bow and arrow and I shoot ze girl." Houtebeen threatens Anna, and in so doing threatens Kristoff, who immediately places his Saami longbow behind his back in a show of capitulation. The young mountain man was too struck with protective fear for his new wife to react as aggressively as he felt.

Satisfied, the pirate then forcefully presses a rope-leashed and strangled Anna to his body as he moves toward the cave entrance so close that she could smell his foul breath.

"Eww! Go ahead! Shoot me!" Anna dares boldly, causing Kristoff, just a few meters away, to shake his head at her.

_Anna?! What are you doing?! The guy is nuts! Do __**not **__push him!_

Kristoff's mind was warning through the soulful link he was sure was open.

But Anna never did listen, did she?

"If you shoot me, then you'll shoot yourself! I know how much force that particular revolver's 11 mm cartridge holds in its five shot barrel. My papa taught me how to shoot a gun and I know how not to, too. The bullet will go straight through me and into you! So we'll both go down! I'm ready to go to Heaven. Where are you heading, ugly?!" Daring, plucky, and absolutely insane Anna was indeed extra feisty as she was either trying to buy time, or she had gone just plum stir crazy.

Kristoff wasn't sure which, as he watches in stunned awe at how his little lady laughed in the face of danger, it seemed. He was only sure that he loved her much too much to lose her. Whatever it took this time, Kristoff would not let anyone hurt his Anna ever again.

Zoning the rest of the world out, the boy with the golden hair quietly lifts his bow and preloaded arrow in one big strong hand surreptitiously behind his back, with a confidence and skill as if he'd been an experienced archer all his life.

"If ye have no fear of yer own death, meisje, zen I will take somezing precious from ye, vone by vone until ye do fear Captain Houtebeen!" The cruel villain then turns from the pair of them to take dead aim at where vulnerable Queen Idun was moving towards where Elsa was just kneeling at King Agdar's side, to cradle her broken bodied father's head on her lap.

"**NO!" **_(NO!)_ A pinned to the wall Anna's single vehement word is echoed and epitomized in her Kristoff's swift and sure action, as the Wind Whisperer calls upon his newfound abilities to mentally direct the wind under his command to deftly release the already loaded arrow in his bowstring's ready draw length at its precise nock point. And as confident as he could ever be Kristoff lets the projectile fly straight through its riser behind his back—

_**T-chai! T-cchi! Tcchau! T-tcchi! T-chaii!**_

The mastered set of radials required for a precision strike such as this required years of training. But nonetheless, Kristoff's loosed arrow flies to zing and bounce off the walls inside the cavern behind the pirate and Anna, up to the stalactite ceiling and back along the cave's walls in an uncanny volley of skilled guided trajectory in its path of rebounded kinetic energy as the arrow is redirected five times to ricochet along the cavern mouth's opening before it hits its intended target –

_**SSP-LURTT!**_

The Saami longbow's ricocheted arrow pierces a screeching obscenities Houtebeen's right palm straight through, causing the wicked pirate's trusty revolver to clatter across the ground. The pain ridden ship's captain soon follows, as Kristoff storms up to slug the traumatized pirate's lights out and reclaim his stolen bride once and for all.

But his heroics were not in time to stop the vindictive pirate's final trigger-happy bullet's mark –

Fortunately for Queen Idun, Hans had Kristoff's back here. The experienced archer since his youth in Kmdr. Westergaard had seen Kristoff's adroit skillful execution of that laudably wild yet controlled arrow shoot. But Hans had also noted how the pirate fired his Francotte pinfire just one half a second before that, no less than amazing, arrow skewered his knobbly old hand.

And Hans Westergaard, too, was a man of able-bodied immediate responsive action. The thin and agile young naval officer takes a running sprint towards the marked Queen. Not a moment too soon, Hans gracefully and gently tugs towards him the petite framed woman, scooping her up as he spins both of them in a waltzing dance, just mere centimeters out of the way of the bullet.

It whizzes by Eugene's luckily ducked head to shoot harmlessly over the mountainside in the open air just as Rapunzel was helping her husband climb onto the crevasse crest. Both nearly faint from yet another lucky/unlucky close call.

"Are you unharmed, your Majesty?" Hans says breathily in Queen Idun's dark brown hair with concern for the frail little woman wrapped close in his arms. He had instantly recognized her from the naval newsprint photographs that he had saved and treasured of the perfect Norwegian royal family that the lonely boy, even from way back then, had longed to be a part of as a child.

"I am. Thanks to you, kind sir." Idun catches her breath to bestow a smile upon a gratified to-make-a-good-first-impression Hans, who was anxious to be a suitable...

_Forget about that dream, Westergaard! _

Hans chastises himself from unattainable dreams back to reality.

Though the petite older woman was somewhat disheveled in attire and worn in delicate appearance, Queen Idun was still every bit as regal and elegant as he always imagined she would be. She was every bit as beautiful and lovely in person as Elsa's mother should be.

"Please take me to my King." Idun orders with fearful apprehensive tears. Her every inner sense of womanly intuition told her that this day would be her adored Agdar's final song.

* * *

"Papa! Please wake up! Papa! What have they done to you?! It's me, Elsa." The emotionally drained and overwhelmed young ruler of this land was far too overwrought to put up a fight, so she was glad to leave that to her capable brother-in-law and the others whom she has come to trust. Elsa now looks up with bittersweet joy to see Anna wrapped safely in Kristoff's arms and Hans coming towards her with her beloved Mama in his.

Although pleased her little sister was safe and her dear Mama was found, all Elsa could feel was an utter cold dread, even as the emerging glistening sunlight plays tricks on her poor Papa's yet handsome brow, knit in some invisible pain.

Just as her mama approaches with an outstretched hand to touch her papa's cool cheek, Elsa and Anna's cherished father, cradled on his oldest daughter's lap, suddenly seizes up to then cease his frigid shiverings, violent quakings, groaned moanings— and hard-fought wheezed breathing, too…

"**PAPA!"**

Elsa cries out for her patient protector, her wise teacher, her cherished mentor, her dear Papa, as King Agdar's head falls limply to her lap. The platinum blonde young woman's cool tears burn hot with love and grief in her as the moisture cascades from her frosted cheeks to melt lines down her sweet chin to land on her papa's unmoving lips.

In the silence, Elsa's left hand caresses his no longer creased with pain forehead as her right hand squeezes the frozen cold and clammy only hand he had left, until it too flops down to the scree-pebbled ground lifelessly…

_How could this be? Why would the Lord wish for me to see my dear Papa again, only to watch him die before my helpless eyes and replay the nightmare of losing him all over again?_

_Dear Lord, please don't let it end this way. This good man loved his people as he loved his family, and served his country nobly. And most important of all, he taught me to walk in Your ways. He may not always have done things correctly, but none of us do, save You, Lord Jesus. Please let me see his eyes smile on me, if just one more time, let me have the chance to show him how I learned to control my fears as he tried for so many long years to teach me. Just let me tell him how I'll always love him for it… _

With pools of tears in her big blue eyes, Elsa looks up to glimpse her mother pet her wet bangs back and squeeze Elsa's cold hands around Papa's with her warm ones.

In her sweet soprano voice, through her own tears, Idun begins to beautifully sing her soft song to her dying life's partner a fitting verse from his favorite hymn…

"_When we've been there 10,000 years, bright shining as the sun…"_

With not a shred of bitterness for the past's mistakes, as other sheltered children might have been, whether her parents' choices be right or wrong, Elsa realized that whatever they did, they did because they cared for Anna and herself deeply.

Her prayerful lips trembling with love's warmth, Elsa places a kiss her papa's cool cheek as the fresh morning sunlight gleams through her sparkling icy cold tears that refract the sunlight in prismatic rainbows over her Papa's unconscious yet handsome face. His hair was somehow still dashingly coifed, though now ashen gray in place of the ginger locks. And of course, his mustache was every bit as debonair as she remembered. Elsa smiles up to her mama who was still humming the hope of his special song rather than weep bitter tears of loss.

As Anna and her hot tears come racing up to the scene with Kristoff close at her heels, Idun grasps the youngest child's extended hand in her other one as loving tears stream down all three female faces for their beloved patriarch, as Hans, Kristoff, Eugene, and Rapunzel look on the scene sadly.

Proudly, Idun leads her two children to raise their sweet voices in song to the beloved Father Above for giving them a Papa whom they loved here on earth.

"_We've no less days to sing God's praise, than when we'd first begun…" _

Three angels' beautiful voices harmonize together over their Papa as his beloved 'Amazing Grace' reverberates through each of the Lord's instruments of their human voices. Idun's accomplished soprano leads Anna's heart's melody to combine gloriously with Elsa's soul's harmony lifted in praise to God in the wonder of the true music He loves as His brilliant sunlight fully shines upon them all at last.

And that's precisely when something miraculously magical begins to occur.

Around King Agdar's blue tinged prone body a blinding white light suddenly begins to glow hotly.

Elsa herself was still so close kneeling down to him that she was enveloped in the luminance. It was so intense a glimmer that she had to steady her calm reserve with every bit of her collected control, closing her eyes tightly.

Everyone else as well had to close their eyes, as the uniquely inexplicable humming high pitched sound that accompanied the coruscating vibrant brilliance was almost as fearfully deafening as it was dazzlingly bright…

There was only one person who was uncaring of this heart-wrenched tragedy, detached far away enough to fully glimpse what physically was happening, as the sunlight from the Heavens pours its healing warmth down upon the mountaintop.

There was only one witness still impiously irreverent enough to take in the beautifully heartfelt miraculous scene with a sentiment other than wonder and unimaginable awe of the Creator's utter goodness and unending mercy…

While every other eye was transfixed and blinded at the wondrous sight, this one-eye greedily drinks up every last drop from that Nidaros Spring's legendary holy water that he had kept guardedly preserved within this godly kingdom's stolen orb—the orb that was held in his one clutching gnarled hand that did not have the Christ-bearer's legendary golden arrow shaft still pierced clean through it…

* * *

_meisje_ – little girl in Dutch

_Scheiss! – _a very foul German-Prussian curse word

_min alskale_ \- my darling in Swedish


	41. Chapter 40 - Erupt a Terrible Scream

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act III**

**Chapter 40**

**"Erupt a Terrible Scream"**

_'But for you who fear My Name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings…' _Malachi 4:2

_**F-FLAS-SH!**_

Warmed by the activating sun in the heavens, the blinding glow of intense light swirls around the ruler of this great nation's still, unconscious form until it begins to lift and levitate Agdar's body on the revolving winds.

God's healing sunlight streams in from Above, heralded by the intercession of Norway's great ancestor, St. Olaf the Holy's blessed spring waters as both work their mysterious wonders on the noble and good King's disabled form. His own gifted innate ice powers add their bluish tinted frosted gleam to the iridescent lightshow to those few privileged to see.

"Min alskale…My darling, He restored you. God be praised for the awesome power of His glory." Giving credit where credit was always due, a reverent Queen Idun, with head bowed in deference, is first to sense the great change in her love.

"Papa!" Their heads had been leaning to one another for support in their weeping, for the girls believed their Papa was truly lost to them again. But Elsa and Anna now simultaneously look up to cry out in joy after following their mother's serenely gratified face to fully glimpse their handicapped father be carried by an invisible Hand on the very winds it seemed. And as that healing wave's golden glow rises from around him, Agdar is placed back down on the Wilhelmstind cliff's pebbly soil.

Whole again, as they remembered their handsome and strong patriarch to watch him stand proud on his two long agile legs again, though the full healing effects were yet washing over his consciousness.

His eyes were still unopened as he was yet aglow with the remnants of that the holy radiance, that by the omnipotent might and goodness of God, Healer of all, the King of Norway was whole again.

But maybe not for long.

**_BANG!_**

"So, ye and me are our own men again, Agdar. Zat Saga of yours wasn't just another tall fish tale like de Leon's Fountain of Youth that I've been chasing all zese years." Cornelius Jol III zanks ye kindly for showing him ze way back to being whole, o noble King."

Everyone is shocked to turn around and see decrepit old peg leg Captain Houtebeen also standing on a brand-new leg and appearing to be every bit as ruddy-cheeked and healthy a vigorous man in his prime, complete with a pair of darting back and forth beady black-grey eyes. Although he yet had that golden arrow shaft that Kristoff the Archer had pierced his right hand clear through with earlier, still disturbingly lodged in it, the energetic pirate Captain, now that his long fought for dream had come to fruition, could bear a little manly pain.

Before their staggered eyes, Houtebeen yanks the arrow out with a vicious cackle at the splattered blood-letting through gritted teeth right at Kristoff, who grunts right back along with a fiercely protective growl at the unspoken challenge.

"And he also zanks ye kindly for handing him the keys to yer kingdom—that my former cabin boy over there fancies for himself and that pretty leettle young Queen. Now she can appreciate an able, well bodied sea Captain—nee_, Admiral_—more than that worthless scrawny cabin boy of mine she once preferred, to console her as her new Lord and husband to rule over zis magical land of yers King Agdar, once ye're dead and buried, at long last!" After his long-winded cloying ambition speech, with a pair of fully working double leg appendages, Captain Houtebeen expeditiously moves across the cavern entrance to climb quite limberly over the cave's stalagmite pile to where Kristoff had sent his Francotte Pinfire revolver flying far across the rocks, never to be retrieved by a peg-legged amputee.

But the holy spring's water **had** apparently given the wicked peg-leg back the use of both his legs. Yet was that all it had rendered to the unworthy soul?

"If ye so much as touch zat bow and arrow, boy, I blow zat leettle girl's orangey head off, be of no doubt in a patch-eye-less Houtebeen's aim." Displaying his functional eye from beneath the arrogantly tossed aside patch covering, Houtebeen dares Kristoff to risk Anna's life for an attempted reach for his Saami bow and arrow that the mountain man had foolishly placed on a boulder nearby, believing the battle was over and his girl needed comforting more.

For the wicked pirate was no longer saddled with the missing eyeball's frailty, nor the lack of one leg as he actually scoops up with his invigorated left hand his discarded 12 shot pistol weapon as he squints his formerly poked out eye pupil to aim his .31 weapon and fire its deafening shot from the cavern across the mountain spur's platform with vindictive precision that rings through the hushed shocked stillness.

Quick response Eugene's swift long arm pulls Idun away as Kristoff holds Anna and Elsa down to the ground level's safety.

"Papa!" Elsa screams, fighting off Kristoff to jump up from the ground where she and Anna were huddled, to try to throw up a hurried ice shield or something to stand in the bullet's way. But the emotionally drained girl couldn't focus split second accuracy necessary quickly enough to sustain or deflect the revolver's blast.

"Elsa!" Seeing the frightened uncertainty in her terrified eyes, Prince Hans of the Southern Isles rises to the occasion. In that earsplitting fast-moving bullet's wake, he pulls Elsa away in an athletic spin, switching places with the astonished young Queen.

Hans was fully prepared to take the hit for her and her Papa as some small degree of final soulful restitution for his past wrongs to her and her family – or perhaps even something far deeper of spirit. Something, dare he even think it, called _love_…

But the unassailable projectile was so full of disdainful accuracy that its bullet 12mm cartridge blows a hole straight through his new navy blue jacket, into Hans' fleshy upper chest/shoulder area, missing all bones and detracting cartilage to come straight out his already scarred back through the other side. Though it was lessened in velocity by the impact to Hans' shoulder, the bullet still penetrates into Agdar's unaware torso.

"Papa!" The Arendelle sisters scream in horror as their beloved, miraculously healed father who had just magically been levitated all aglow with healing light to his two feet on the mountain spur's rocky ground, is mowed down by the evil villain's sudden bullet shot that cut through Hans and into the Northern King's chest and into his slowly beating to life heart. As Agdar falls backwards, Rapunzel and Olaf from behind do their best to catch his fall.

"Forgive me, again, Snowflake." Hans chokes back the pain of his own ballistic trauma wound as he sinks to his knees, feeling a total failure before the Queen of his heart for not saving her father for her.

"Now, do ye fear me, my leettle scullery maid of a Queen? Come zis way and give me a kiss, my platinum beauty. Or yer future husband's trigger finger may be likely to be taking a aim at next at yer dear sweet mother. Or perhaps zat already brain-dead naughty leetle sister of yers, my Elsie! Houtebeen – niet – not a peg leg anymore – ha ha! I am Cornelius Jol! A force of a whole man in this world again – would perhaps enjoy zat even more!" Evil invigorated Captain Houtebeen – _Cornelius Jol_ – gloats as he takes a few greedy licentious paces towards her with his trusty 12 shot weapon. Even his enegetic left hand held deft good aim still as the pirate reloads a trained on vacillating aim between Idun and Anna's pretty heads.

With a fear struck hysterically alarmed Elsa glancing over for counsel from her struck down Papa, whom they witnessed had just been healed by the hand of God only to have this living devil steal his life away in the flash of a second before her devastated eyes.

"No more." Through her tears, the Ice Queen's stinging blue eyes slit in indignant fury at this vile monster who was threatening to take her beloveds away from her lonely soul one by one.

After locking eyes with Kristoff in a frightened nodded trustful order to take care of Anna at all costs, Elsa finds her center enough to give her mother, behind Eugene a reassuring glance. And to Anna, who was shaking her head and mouthing 'don't do it!' vehemently behind a defensive Kristoff, Elsa gives her most dazzling, determined, got-it-together big sister smile.

Elsa removes her cerulean blue gloves as she walks in a brisk gait towards the pirate with all the regal purpose and imperious conviction befitting to royalty.

"Elsa! Please, no!" Ignoring the pain of the bullet punctured opened wound straight through his upper chest near his shoulder, Hans lunges forward to grab hold of Elsa's hand fearlessly halting her determined stride.

Though in utter terror as she cradled her downed husband's head in her lap, Queen Idun is impressed at how the undaunted young man braves Elsa's subzero forces, even though her eyes were already alight with that blue white frost, to touch the bare skin of her already icing up hands.

"'The Lord Himself goes before me and will be with me. He will never leave nor forsake me. I will not be afraid or discouraged.'" To relate to Hans the strength of her conviction, Elsa recites Scripture, applied personally, as her eyes defrost for a moment enough to connect warmly in his. She then stares down in inexpressible surprise at their unencumbered hands' grip that Hans kept entwined all the while she spoke, even as her cryokinetic powers were building to an intolerable frozen temperature.

"Thank you for the beautiful dream, Prince Hans. However ephemeral it may have been, it was **real**, and it was **_mine_**." With a resigned sincere smile at the soulfully regretful abandonment of what ifs, Elsa whispers breathily to the handsome redhead in Naval uniform. Her eyes were full of so much more sentiment that she could never put into words about her unauthorized, before unrealized, emotions that had grown for him on this life-altering journey together.

With an abrupt purposeful ice surge of her fingertips she wrenches away her hand from his to cause Hans to fall back in more heartache than physical pain. Then Elsa, even in this dreadful moment, easily empathizes with his fresh wound, to place a layer of ice on the pain receptors of his throbbing double sided open contusion as she turns to leave.

With majestic courage and stately purpose of what she must do, Queen Elsa of Arendelle walks her high heels across the scree pebbled ground towards where the nefarious other, though far less winsome, redheaded man stood.

As she moves towards the red-faced sneering pirate, staring him face down at the barrel of the loaded and cocked 12 shot revolver, Elsa fights the urge to blast him away. The trained level-headed tactician her dear Papa taught her to be would not unveil her ice powers until she could be absolutely certain his deadly weapon would not be allowed to harm Anna or her mother as he threatened.

_Two more steps, Elsa, and you can be sure. Just one step more, and I** will not miss**_ freezing that pirate's cold heart for what he's done to my poor Papa –

As a black foreboding cloud brings a profound sense of thick darkness to the Midnight Sun afternoon, Elsa's angry bitterness builds in similar weighty dampness with each step. The heavily lashed unflinching Ice Queen glares down the evil pirate ship Captain's pair of ugly gray black eyes that were growing more hideous and more serpent-like by the second.

A few well-placed paces more and Elsa is ready to unleash her rigid frozen fury when –

Captain Cornelius Jol III's body begins to suddenly twist violently as the man struggles to keep his cherished Francotte Pinfire in his left hand. But even those voluntary reflexes fail him. His entire restored full frame was wriggling and jerking around so tempestuously that the gun is finally is tossed right to Elsa's feet. As she kneels to pick it up, her momentarily diverted eyes in the next second lift again to let out a terrified scream at the pirate just meters before her.

"Niet! Stop it!" Houtebeen was ranting and raving like a lunatic as the man's angry arms thrash about as he tries to grasp in vain his shivering left hand to his throbbing palpitating injured right hand. For out of the crusted blood of his pierced right palm, black green slime begins to ooze out of the pirate's gaping wound.

At first it flows with a slow ebb, until the inexplicable slime turns into solid chunks of greenish gray black seaweed-like substance.

Elsa gasps, the ice buildup in her body needing to find release, soon begins to freeze up the mountain crevice in her fear until the entire precipice top turns shades of frosted white.

**_T-CHK! T-CHK! T-CHK!_** **_T-CHK!_**

**_One! Two! Three! Four! _**

Four polished stone tipped golden shafted arrows zing through the air at the despicable human who was shaking and writhing so uncontrollably strange that every one of nature's voices howling on the wind were telling the Wind Whisperer to put the evil villain out of his misery, once and for all, before it was too late.

And especially before he harmed frozen-in-place just mere feet before him Elsa.

There was something about the way the wicked pirate's newly opened contusion trauma wounds created flowing oozing streams, each time the ferocious pirate primally screamed and yanked Kristoff's squarely lobbed arrows from his skewered form. The arrows that had precisely gashed Houtebeen's other arm, two legs and his center chest, once removed, all begin to spill over with that garish green dark fluid instead of blood that spews from his ruptured lacerations. The gleaming black-green liquid transforms into wriggling, squirming with their own form of agitated consciousness, it seemed.

"Vat is happening to me?!" Houtebeen's final human gravelly voiced query is scattered on the wind that starts to roil and roll as would a fierce sudden summer squall over the ocean in the midst of the storm.

**_S-S-CCREEEEEECHHH!_**

**"Elsa!"** Giving each other frightened stares, Anna and Hans cry out in unison as they both sprint like young gazelles across the plateau to grab a mesmerized in place young Queen who was enveloped in the dark shadowy aura that the eclipsed sun harbored the fugitive pirate within.

With a tremendous, otherworldly bestial roar, to the deafened angry dark sky, every soul shutters with an unknown fear of what they could not see there behind the thick veil.

And when any small vestige of light is finally relinquished from the sky, Anna and Hans were side-by-side staring up, up, up at a gargantuan sixty foot tall Draugen sea monster in all its seaweed and dark garish green algae-stained shadowy glory.

The fact that the screeching hideous beast was standing in the exact spot the wicked pirate was holding court near the cavern entrance, added to the evidence of the self animated seaweed-like swinging barnacles. Not to mention the serpentine scales that were wildly swaying to swish about that had exuding from each of its body parts that Kristoff's Saami arrows had pierced into the pirate just moments before he was turned into this huge monster of fearsome legend, proved that it was he.

**_SCREEEEECHH!_**

From the Polynesian Taniwha, the Finnish Tursas, the Filipino Bakunawa, the Greek Charybolis, the Japanese Umibozu, to the South American Yacumama – every land with a sea, every culture with an imagination of mythology, was struck with fear by a ferocious creature that sprung from the sea that was hankering to ravage all who stood in their path left in their watery wake.

Whatever the legend, whatever name they were called by, these marine monsters were all known to sea-faring people around the globe to be formidable and frightening enough to strike fear in many a sailor's heart.

And this Norwegian version was this legendary ghostly Norse terror of the sea, of a wicked dead seaman who haunted the ocean as a ghost, come back for vengeance in its wandering despair.

So what better form would the lost soul of Captain Houtebeen take when he was found unworthy? This hideous creature fit the clawing insipid man in life very well indeed in death as being most dangerous, the most foul, and the most deadly.

Also the most terrifying, as this ghostly specter of a _Draugen_, covered in seaweed, in reality lived up every bit to its horrible legend – and more so, as close up and personal, as the young Queen of this land found out.

Elsa had already passed out in sheer terror and stress as she hung limply in the drooling creature's monstrous grey-green wriggling hands.

"ELSA!" But Princess Anna was way too gutsy to be scared of anything or anyone who was threatening her big sister, legend or real.

"Anna! Get behind me! I'll be the one to face this nautical aberration!" Prince Hans raises an arm to hold back Anna in chivalrous defense. His calculating mind was already reeling in his brave stance and daring stare up at the monster over ten times his height.

"Don't you tell me what to do!" But Princess Anna was anything but a damsel in distress as she crossly pushes past Hans' gallant guarded arm with boldness.

The frightening sight of her fainted older sister being delicately clutched in a gargantuan monster's huge scaly palm for who knows what rotten purpose was more than Anna could bear.

At least silently.

**"LET MY SISTER GO, YOU BIG UGLY BOWL OF ANGRY BOILED SPINACH!"** Anna finally yells at the humongously tall monster, unafraid of insulting the greater foe, as if the mystical creature were no more than a schoolyard bully.

**_R-RROARR!_**

The imposing Draugen erupts in another mind blowing scream, literally blowing feisty, demanding Anna back away with the gale force of its foul sea-bilge breath.

**"And don't you try to blow me off, too, you beady-eyed, wriggling, trying to totally male overpower…_err_…WORMY MANPIT!"**

After giving pause to her colorfully insulting name-calling, Anna's ferocity was pretty darn frightening – at least unsettling, if you were of the 'xy-gene' sex.

But the sixty foot tall monster with two rows of sharpened teeth on its extra wide mouth, had the advantage here, despite Anna's harsh words.

**_S-SW-WIIP-PE!_**

With one wide murderous swipe of its seaweed covered arm down at the little annoying 'amoeba bug' squeaking up and shaking her fists at him, Captain Houtebeen never had any love lost for this frustrating little meisje in normal human temper. And now, more devilish a monster than human, due to his ill begotten transformation, Cornelius Jol III, AKA Captain Houtebeen was more than an irate bad tempered old man.

He was now a ghostly apparition sentenced to forever float upon the seas in order to sink unfortunate boats of sailors and fisherman by slicing their crafts apart with the sharp eruption of his frightful fatal scream…

"ANNA!" As the sea monster was about to unleash his most deadly screech, Kristoff somehow manages to peer through the dusky mists for a split second as he senses his true love in danger. He calls his wife's name intensely as he makes a mad dash forward to retrieve her.

Kristoff had been constantly attempting to contact Anna for the past few minutes when she went missing inside the dark shield, and was struck with fear when she didn't respond. But the huge monster's long seaweed extensions on its pair of humongous legs were all alive with a mind of their own that kept his pounding fists and Eugene, armed with this frying pan, battered away, not letting them get past to where Anna and Hans were closer to the Draugen's main body.

So, for now, Kristoff could only glimpse inside helplessly. It was up to Hans and Anna versus the mighty monster, as they stood just a few feet away from the lizard like creatures knobbly toed feet.

One of which was now about to be disattached from its body, if Prince Hans' deft sharp sword had any say in the matter.

**_S-C-CREEAAMMMM!_**

The turbulent squall of sheer agony that spews from ghastly creature's double rowed fanged mouth was deafening as Hans and the naval sword Elsa had bestowed upon her fleet's newest 'Kommander' just days ago, smashes aggressively down with an efficient leapt diagonal blow from the hillside.

Panting, Hans completes the textbook example of swordsmanship's greatest maneuvering technique.

As, after simultaneously pulling a fuming discontented Anna out of the Draugen's flailing arms path— "Hey!" – Hans defied gravity with his momentum speed's sprinted running up the boulder hillside to the left of the creature with a leap down of his expertly gripped sword. The expert swordsman had neatly sliced off half of the ilky green sea monster's assailable left side's foot and all the attached extended seaweed appendages with it.

**_S-S-CCRAA-KKHH!_**

At the monster's ferocious cry, Elsa awakens momentarily look down from the dizzying height to see how Hans was heroically risking his life and limb to keep Anna safe and alive single-handedly, with heroic measure after courageous measure.

_So this is what Mama feels for Papa…_

Elsa was delirious and dizzy from the sudden waving high altitude, as well as the intoxicating natural toxins upon the creature's venomous sacks attached at its neck and chest under its seaweed extenders. The toxins were meant to lull unsuspecting seamen to sleep on the ocean as it sinks their ship beneath them, affecting her mental functions.

And yet, there was nothing amiss with the girl's heart as she muses with dreamy pride at the young Danish man standing valiantly alongside her sister below.

* * *

"Oh, good job, Red. Now you've made it mad!" As he returns to her side, Anna accusingly punches Hans in the upper shoulder of his arm, unaware – most likely – that he had sustained a puncture wound penetration straight through, in that exact spot earlier.

"Watch out, Princess Anna!" Hans fights the pain to push Anna's lithe little body away to avoid some slithering seaweed projectiles trying to ensnare her as he gallantly slices them off until they writhe on the ground.

**_SWISH! SLASH!_**

"Thanks! But you could have been a little faster!" Anna browbeats the young man, who is suddenly genuinely petrified when he sees the giant Draugen start to back away from himself and Anna begin to climb higher up the Wilheimstind mountain peak.

"A thousand pardons, Princess, for my tardiness! Whoa! Hold on!" Without waiting for the feisty little girl's permission, a patronizingly quick bowed Prince Hans scoops her small body up in his arms and starts to dash quickly in between the rainfall of crashing rocks and jagged broken pieces of the mountain that the carelessly rough seaweed creature knocks down in its ascending wake.

"Wait! It's getting away with Elsa!" She pounds his back this time in just the right spot again on his tender left shoulder, causing Hans to see stars.

_Stars... And the girl with the dust of the stars in her eyes…_ Hans has to shake himself to come to with one last glimpse of Queen Elsa's beautiful pure lovely violet accented eyes that were closed in a peaceful glowing smile, even as the giant monster seemed to be carting her around in its unbelievably careful hand, as if not to crush her delicate body.

However, it was not so careful when it came to attacking them. The beast pounds the rock face to let down some more rocks as it starts to carry his stolen beauty higher up the mountain peak. It seemed only a bit inconvenienced by the one stump of half a foot that, as they watch in horror, begins to reconstitute as a plant might, even while it ascends the mountain peak.

It pauses to glower down at them with those beady black eyes before continuing to carry the Ice Queen beauty higher up the mountain with him. But not before giving one last potent scream of terror in their direction.

**_S-CC-RR-EEECHH!_**

From out of nowhere, without uttering a single word, Kristoff had found his way through the dark veil to silently come running up, with Eugene not so far behind. Immediately the serious blonde mountaineer throws his grappling hook up to secure his rope for a free climb up the mountain beneath where the gargantuan behemoth was already scaling quickly, despite its injury.

After only a second or two of thought, Hans digs through the satchel that Kristoff had stoically dropped at their feet to find only one extra grappling hook inside the leather bag.

The two brothers standing at this saddle of the mountain exchange a glance with one another— Eugene's skeptical, and Hans' determined.

"Care to flip a coin?" Eugene jovially attempts to lighten the heavy mood.

"I can't go on without her." Is all Hans simply answers in all honesty for once in his conniving life, not giving a smirking Flynn Rider the choice.

"Never doubted that for a second. You just go for it, Lillebror." Eugene throws his hands up to the air in exasperation at the other man's hopeless romanticism that would probably get them both killed.

"S'pose those lovely ladies of ours are worth every line of every sonnet. If you're crazy enough to sing along." Eugene Fitzherbert sniggers with a vision of his own wide-eyed beauty's finer Brownie points.

Hans throws the grappling hook upwards with a strong thrusting arm and a hopeful prayer. Of all the athletics the wiry young man has had great accomplishment in all of his young life, from fencing to archery to horseback riding to shooting weaponry of all types, mountain climbing was never one of his ventures of expertise.

Though right now he wished it was, as he envies Kristoff Bjorgman's agility and speed that had taken the experienced mountain man already halfway up the distance between the monster and where he started below in no time flat.

And the younger blonde man was continuing to make undaunted good time up his rope as shoulder injured Hans could only fall behind in his dust, though the Danish Prince was trying his best keep up.

"Oh wait, there's another grappling hook thing-a-ma-jig in here. Does that mean I have to give it a try too, after all?" Eugene halfheartedly calls up after his restless hands couldn't help but rifle a look through the pouch to see what goodies were inside and found a secret pocket where a lighter weight rope and tackle set was rolled up tight.

"I guess I owe that gal at least this much for all the trouble I caused. But if I break my neck, don't say I didn't warn you." The former jewel thief who hated the outdoors, mainly because words like 'work' and 'sweat' were usually compatible with outdoor activities, says to himself as he halfheartedly tosses the grappling steel end of the rope upwards, making a lucky shot as it hooks on firmly to a rock jutting out above.

"Okay, don't try to argue with me. Anyone? Okay! Okay! – _gulp_ – Here I go!" But when Eugene's first sorry attempt at finding a foothold ends in the whiny disaster of him falling on his precious face, Anna steps up to the plate.

"You two amateur losers get out of my way. **This** is how you're supposed to climb a mountain!" Spitting evenly on either hand in a rather unladylike manner, Anna berates the two badly arm injured men (Who were, by the way, both injured in protecting her. But them's semantics.)

Learning a thing or two from her husband on the proper way to treat a mountain, so it treats you right, Anna pushes past Eugene to overtake his grappling rope, which was actually the special one Kristoff carried along for his little lady who liked to get into his everything. And that means _everything_.

She starts to scurry purposefully up the rope, making sure she had footholds and handholds in the proper places each time. She was soon close to Hans' heels, for she had learned the techniques of edging and traversing underclings from her big blonde teddy bear like a regular mountain-mama after he had instructed her how, albeit after some persistent feminine prodding and many scrapes and falls.

But actually, Anna's light flexible body's pretty well worked elastic muscles wouldn't be doing so badly in catching up to even fast-moving, brawny, strapping Kristoff, if only that pesky **jaw** muscle of hers would've kept still.

"WE'RE COMING TO STOP YOU FROM TAKING MY SISTER, YOU BIG NASTY SMELLING PILE OF CHEWED-UP, SPIT-OUT SEAWEED! YOU WERE A RIGHT HOMELY HUMAN, AND EVEN UGLIER MONSTER, PIRATE! SO THERE!"

It may not have been a vengefully thrown snowball this time, but Princess Anna sure had a big mouth when it came to expressing her intent in a wholly uncomplimentary fashion.

In the next second, the gargantuan Draugen, who was the ghostly epitomized evil of vain Captain Houtebeen, now exacts his reprisal to the noisy imp with one of his most vehement screams.

**_GRO-WWLL-SCC-RREE-CHH-RR-OOARR!_**

Also known as the feared _Bielgomai_, the humongous monster of ancient Saami legendary evil, it breaks the sound barrier with its wave upon wave of wicked sonic pulsations emanating from the belly of the beast.

The island mountain's amplification adds bite to the Draugen's screeching cry as the entire Wilhelmstind peak shivers and shakes uncontrollably. The vibrations and the impact of the sound waves knock off Eugene, Anna, Hans, and even Kristoff from the mountainside to set them rolling downwards towards where Rapunzel and Queen Idun were trying to retain bullet ridden King Agdar, with the help of Olaf and Pascal, from being vibrated off the edge of the mountain precipice they were near.

The massive sound wave vortex, despite all their desperate effort, knocks the entire party clinging to the edge, off the spur ridge down the 90 foot drop to the unforgiving chasm floor below…

The high decibel low emitted sound wave pulse radiates from the Draugen across the currently inactive rocky volcanic crevasse landmass as a rockslide of its stone, debris and scree cause its mass of rocks and pebbles to shake and roll the entire moraine towards the open ledge. The terrible shriek's sheer harmonic force knocks everyone backwards until they're all helplessly shaken and agitated off their feet until they, one by one, fall over the headwall cliff side over the spur's rock face edge to the unforgiving killer drop below…

"Rockslide! Anna! Rappel! Rappel!" Lead mountaineer Kristoff instinctively turned his head just in time to call out below to his wife the mountaineering term he taught her, to quickly drop back on her rope, just as his head is conked by a large falling, craggly broken hunk of stone.

"Kristoff!" Anna screams in worry, trying to climb higher quickly in order to reach her love's descending body. Hans, with no further thought about the added danger to his own neck, swings around with an agile leg kick off to pull the headstrong devil-may-care girl to the safety of his own warm body's protection as he wraps his entire body frame in a selfless act the cover for the younger Princess.

He presses himself around Anna as tightly as he could hold onto the orangey caramel-haired Princess and the grappling rope he was attempting to quickly slide down, knowing Elsa would want him to protect her little sister in her place.

"Hey! Get off!" Anna's protests soon go unheard though, as courageous Prince Hans is too rendered unconscious while defending her body as he, along with Kristoff, is tossed down the hillside to bounce along the pointed sharp rocks below knocked down by the vicious scream of the monster overhead.

But he doesn't let go, even as the world comes crashing down around and none of them could hold on to their lifelines any longer.

"AHHHH!" All four of the climbers are knocked off the shivering mountain's low terrain, as Kristoff, Eugene, Hans and Anna are each mercilessly pelted with rocks and rubble and boulder debris that bounce down the mountainside from above due to the intense sound vibrations of the angry monster in its wake. The Draugen's shriek repels them all to tumble down to the lower lesser point of the ridge's col in a big pile. There, amidst the rolling rockslide's quavering rubble, the human bodies are pushed back towards the mountain edge by the earsplitting sonic force of the massive creature's fiercest scream as it continues to send hackles up everyone's neck, if they had still been conscious to hear it.

Try as they might, even the strongest among them, could not stand back up to the wicked willed creature of the deep's unleashed earth-trembling fury. The very roiling dirt, the quivering pebbles and shuddering stones at their feet are eroded off the cliff side at the terrible shrieks of the vicious Draugen's unrelenting screams.

A yelping Olaf goes off the edge first; then an unconscious King Agdar and his wife, whose arms would not let her darling go no matter what it meant for herself; next, the trying to ballet, waltz, do the salsa, boogie and tap dance around the incoming rocks Rapunzel and Pascal together until the music stops for them, too.

And soon, along with the remainder of the rockslide scree, Anna, still cocooned tightly in Hans' protective arms, with Eugene and Kristoff falling a-tangled in their own roped harness lines, all helplessly vibrated from the cliff to the ninety foot killer drop below…

* * *

_meisje_ – little girl in Dutch

_min alskale_ \- my darling in Swedish

_Niet_! – No! in Dutch

* * *

So how's that for a CLIFFHANGER?! A Literal actual Cliff- hanger! :)

Lots of things are happening in the action/adventure section of this story now! Please review your favorite parts! What do you think of the Helsa angle? Comments are appreciated, Frozen friends! ^_^

God bless!


	42. Chapter 41 - Wind Chimes

_We do not own "Frozen" nor any of its characters._

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act III**

**Chapter 41**

**"Wind Chimes"**

As one after another of our heroes and heroines are sent careening over the cliff to their deaths, the knowledge that they would be leaving poor Elsa at the whim of that evil monster called a Draugen-the transmuted, depraved black soul of Captain Houtebeen unleashed-was eating at her best friend.

So more than to escape her own freefalling demise, more than even a plea to at least let her dear Mama and Papa, who had already suffered so much by the pirate's wicked hand, to be spared, or her adored Kristoff, or any of the other innocent lives about to be snuffed out by the crush of gravity –

Princess Anna, who was one of the only ones still conscious after that violent creature's scream had shaken them all off the mountain spur ledge, in these few seconds she had left on this earth, makes a heart-wrenched plea for her precious delicate sister, whom she loved without end, to be brought safely home.

"Oh, God in Heaven! That wicked monster took Elsa! Please help my sister escape!" Tears were flying from Anna's eyes that she never had wept so desperately before. She sincerely cries out with all of her fervent heart and believing soul for her cherished sister as this young woman with unsinkable faith, opened her eyes to find herself and several of the others who accompanied her on this journey, plummeting down the mountainside, headlong through the whistling wind to their deaths.

Falling into scrapes from great heights all her young life allowed her to not suffer any ill effects of vertigo, spirited Anna was fearless enough of both the pain of death and her assured spot in Heaven, should she require it prematurely.

But she **would** miss having the chance of living a life with her Kristoff first, just as the couple was starting out, deducted kransekake prediction and all of children who now never would be born.

And, of all the people in the world, Anna never would've thought it would be the despised, callous, unfeeling villain Hans Westergaard's arms that she would be dying in. She looks down to see his vigilant wiry arms were still about her, protectively, though Prince Hans was now just as deservedly unconscious as everyone else due to the rockslide's concussive force.

But in these final moments of truth, sweet-souled, sincerely loving and honest Princess Anna replaces the past anger and resentment towards him with gratitude that he gave her this last conscious chance to ask God for help for her beloved in their most desperate hour – no_, remaining seconds_– of need.

"Please don't leave Elsa alone and scared." _I think she'll miss me too much, you know? I know I will miss her **so **terribly. Please, Lord, take care of my sister! _In these dwindling moments of final awareness thought, Anna was sniffling back her warm tears for Elsa as they continue to stream upwards from her descending face. The overwrought girl didn't even care that her wept moisture was hitting that Hans right in the kisser.

_No one wants to be alone! "_Please save Elsa!" Her deepest sentiment echoes through her mind as everything flashes and flickers away in the breath of a melting little snowflake before tender Anna's dizzy, lightheaded eyes.

But the pleading voice of a single genuine prayerful heart is all that it takes to move the world.

"We will, my precious child. We **will** save your sister and we **won't** ever let her be alone again."

Anna's head snaps up from her slipping into unconsciousness to hear her vivid prayer verbally answered by her earthly father who had been awakened somehow, despite being mortally wounded and energy-drained, because of his little girl's soulful plea.

King Agdar's moving lips may have been frigid with cold, but every word spoken through them was full of fatherly warmth of love as he is brought to from his subconscious at the precise necessary moment he had to be.

When his eyes snap open, just meters above the hard surface of the unforgiving ground that would have meant the death of them all, the King's determined irises fill with a bluish white light much similar in the glow that Anna had glimpsed in Elsa's eyes when her powers surged.

But this level of fierce luminosity was even more intense.

For King Agdar's years of well-honed control gave his ice powers, when finally sanctioned to be fully realized, a ferocity that was a mighty thing to behold, indeed.

Especially when his entirely masculine psyche and completely paternal mindset was tested by his protective need to defend his firstborn child and the little sister who were the product of the utter love he and his cherished wife shared.

His Elsa was the light of his eyes and his Anna, the laughter in his ears. His precious babes were the two little stars who gave this once lonely monarch, who before believed his life to be a solitary journey, the joy of living.

And the reinvigorated Sovereign of Norway would easily be an indefatigable force to be reckoned with in defense of his children, as his eyes flash with a blinding brilliant light…

**_WHOO-SSH! TINKLE...TINKLE..._**

The sound of tinkling bells, much akin to the wind chimes she grew up hearing in Arendelle windowpanes all her life, and the swishing of ice crystals fill Anna's ears. She comes to consciousness just milliseconds before she was about to crash to a crushing death and lose her fight with gravity, headfirst.

Instead, she is surrounded by a supercooled cloud of a moist cold flurry, like a net that envelops her falling body but does not freeze it, rather keeping her insulated enough to sustain the impact with the earth.

The dizzy girl is flabbergasted to see reindeer Sven float by her plummeting eyes. Trying to focus her giddy mind's whirring sensation, an irrational, foolish smile comes to Anna's lips as she imagines the cold ice frosting her body must have been affecting her brain synapses, too.

Anna shakes her head, only this time she looks out again to see Kristoff, who had been falling some feet above her, for the mountaineer was the last to fall from the cliff, being pulled onto Sven's back by Job. There was another reindeer soaring nearby as it carries another man she had never seen before. His only distinguishing features were a tall gray hat and a purple uniform jacket as he rides alongside the more familiar dark pirate first mate balancing Kristoff upon his reindeer.

The hoofed creatures were swiftly climbing through the thin air as upwards they rise to run away with her husband...

But no – they weren't running!

They were flying!

… _Wait!… Flying reindeer? Kristoff is _**_flying _**_on Sven?!_

**_SLAP_**!

**_SLAP_**!

Anna smacks her face wide-awake and then gives Hans' passed out one a red-handed whack for good measure, as well, when she comes to, still securely wrapped tight in the Danish Prince's arms as if in a desperate lover's embrace.

_Eww-eww! How the heck did that happen?!_

**_SLAP_**! **_SLAPP!_**

After she had slapped her own face, and then satisfied herself by again slapping Hans' other now extremely red cheek to match his hair thoroughly, Anna straightens herself up from where that Westergaard had his weakling excuses for arms leeched about her, taking advantage of her unconscious state.

_Too bad you're out cold already, or I'd get the chance to sock you clean again until you **really** were!_

Untangling herself with a distasteful look on her cute woozy features, Anna, once righted, surveys that each of the other falling victims had too had been enveloped by a likewise similar, regulated cloud of frosted ice beneath them, just as herself and Hans had been.

So the double 'ice cushion' beneath Anna was twice as thick and soft as a 'snow pillow', thanks to the frustrating redhead's intervention again.

_Don't think this means I'm going to be nicer to you, Red! You're probably just trying to make points with Papa and Mama, knowing you, you sly dog!_

The freshly formed ice that had slowed their descent also served as a rigidly brittle, yet constantly well-maintained, unbreakable net of sorts. It saved all of them from plunging to break necks and/or appendages the remainder of the way, for the super-cooled air cushioned their fall.

"Papa?" Anna watches her father lastly float down to the earth on swirling wisps of controlled ice that encased him with a thick frosted verglas. The quick reacting King had formed an icy vapor cloud around each of the rockslide victims, including himself and his lady wife still clinging to him, by way of his now exposed innate powers.

All those years growing up so tight-knit, with few people beyond faithful Kai, Gerda, and Johanna, outside of her immediate family, Anna only had her parents always there to play at, talk to, sing with and learn from.

Her father was that strong arm who would pick her up to reach up high, then hold her tight when she fell low, to cry upon and laugh with, like any other normal Papa would.

And never, ever once, in all their close times together, did she imagine her kind-eyed, warm-hearted Papa had held this icy secret from her. Just like Elsa.

All those years, Anna had absolutely no idea that her dear father could wield the power of ice and cold like Elsa, too.

_Wow. I must've been pretty dense when I was a little girl not to have seen this one coming! Good thing I grew out of that oblivious stage!_

Self-assured Anna ponders to herself from where she was distractedly stomping grateful boots on the ground again. She didn't realize she was stepping on the smashed-to-a-pancake, flattened Olaf's face section. The snowman's dislocated, bugged out eyes slowly blink back to life where his snow was plastered to the rocky ground.

"Ow! Watch the teeth! I've only got two of them to floss!" Olaf, the flattened floor sticker, warns up at her pleasantly enough as Anna guiltily leaps off the pancake flat animated face. Her snowfriend's bottom layer, that had been left down here at the mountain base floor, comes rolling up to help re-form and push together the rest of Olaf's scattered snow pile mug back together with his sliding across the ground butt.

"Is everyone unharmed?" King Agdar immediately assumes the role of responsible leader he was raised his whole life to be as he scans the astonished faces of those his ice-breaker just saved. He then takes his first gingerly lurched stride over the land with his new leg. The bullet penetration Hans had intercepted the velocity of earlier, made it not deep enough to pierce Agdar's vital organs, nor his ice coated heart, that was still, fortunately, in the process of healing. So the projectile was rejected, and his own protective ice had closed up the ballistic wound hole from the inside out in that moment the King's powers surged to life.

Defrosting down to normal temperature, feeling wholly in control of himself, more now than he ever had been before in his entire regulated life, the King physically takes one tentative stride at a time, leaning on Idun as she awakens with her stabilizing arm under his renewed one.

With pale blue eyes squinting for the lack of solar rays, Agdar stares upon his miraculously repaired left leg and arm, devoid of the constant pain he had endured these past torturous four years in harsh confinement.

Immediately, the reverent King falls his knees and gives a bowed head in prayer to the Lord sovereign of all, who in His infinite goodness had healed an unworthy mortal man.

"By God's supreme wisdom, these rejuvenated gifts have been granted back to me for an express reason, Idun. You and I both understand that." Agdar's baritone voice was strong in his belief, yet soft in tenor to his fragile emotional wife whom he gently kisses with cool lips to her warm inviting ones. He strokes her shallow cheek with his reestablished left arm, just as strong and ardent as he had always done in the past.

"The Lord has one last purpose for this world-weary man." He breathes into his delicate wife's deep brown hair, and she meets his tears with her own as she nods up at him.

"Praise be to the Lord." Queen Idun's lilting soprano whispers understanding into the crook of her restored husband's neck.

"Papa! Mama!" Anna was in tears as she rushes up to join her parents in a loving embrace. The frightened young woman felt like a little girl again, as she turns her weeping face into the safe bosom of her family.

"'_When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and raises them from all their troubles_.'" (Psalm 34:17)

"The Lord opened my ears to hear you, my laughing sunflower. You did well, Sweetheart." Agdar murmurs to his little girl as he hugs her tight.

"But… How do we save Elsa, Papa? That monster's getting away!" Anna cries with youthful impatience and great fear into her Papa's again strong chest.

"With faith, my little shooting star. Have no doubt, we will bring Elsa home." The King says with resolute resolve as he kisses his daughter's forehead with as much warmth as he could muster, as his shrewd mind was already formulating his objective.

He then takes one look at his devoted Queen, their minds so in sync as she nods and goes to attend the badly injured with her special gift.

"Give me a moment to chart our next move." With great ponderance upon his noble brow, King Agdar then walks, on surer legs with each brisk step, towards the peak of the hilltop where one could scan the ocean surrounding the island more clearly as he gathers his thoughts on their next action.

"Wow. I thought we were all going to be pushing up daisies back there. Your dad's a pretty cool customer. _Ouchy, that smarts…_ " Rubbing his rather raw backside that he had landed to bounce on so many times down this blessed mountain he cared not to count, Eugene, the next to awaken as he lays down his sleeping beauty of a wife to a soft grassy knoll, comments to a still shaken up Anna. "Now we know who Queenie takes after." He smiles down at her, but Anna goes unnaturally silent, her brows knit together in utmost concern for her aforementioned sibling.

Flynn Rider, no stranger to mystical healing magic that brings you back from the 'almost dead' was also getting a handle on this whole being bounced stem to stern thing they had going on up here in Norway in an abnormal rate. The rogue thief was learning to roll with it and enjoy being a hero every now and then, too. With a sympathetic sigh, Eugene tickles the hair at the back of Anna's scruffy ear playfully.

"Don't sweat it, Pixie. You've got a super powered old man on the job now, your magic arrow lobbing hubby, as well as us two 'sorry losers' to count on to find your sis. We've got your back. Right, Lillebror? Huh? Oh, he's still down for the count. Poor guy took quite a beating in that rockslide for you, missy, after taking that slug for Elsa and your Pops. Looks like your Mom's working on him now. Lucky stiff gets all the beautiful women drooling on his skinny behind, sooner or later. Must be that slick red hair that turns all the chicks on. Or those pretty boy 'come-hither' eyes. And here I thought I had the market cornered for the ladies." Swinging his frying pan over his shoulder and twirling it about, Eugene prattles, trying to make pleasant conversation with a shellshocked Anna to cheer her up as his own wife was, unbeknownst to him, scurrying around looking for her missing fuzzball of a sheep.

"Eugene! Stop playing with your pan and help me find Lamby!" Wifely Rapunzel soon admonishes her idly pan flipping mate after dashing up to give Anna a relieved to be alive sisterly hug.

"One pain in the butt at a time, Liebling." Eugene was still massaging his aching posterior that the Ice King's snow cloud softened the crash thereof, fortunately. It slowed his and Rapunzel's plopped atop him fall, but an iron skillet never made for a good seat cushion.

"And Kristoff and Sven, for that matter, too?" Not wanting to alarm Anna any further than she already was about Elsa, Rapunzel whispers to her blowhard husband, who shrugs after a quick scan of the area for the blonde mountain man and his reindeer friend.

"Oh, yeah. Where's Sven got off to, Kristoff?" Big eared but inattentive Anna says to the unsettling empty wind beside her, her dazed mind still trying to process all that happened to have noticed her other half missing. For her big, strong, silent type always was just there for her.

"WHERE'S KRISTOFF!?" Anna starts to freak out when she looks around for her lovable blonde boy. But Kristoff, nor his trusty reindeer were anywhere to be seen at the bottom of the Wilhelmstind mountain.

Perhaps they weren't on the ground level of Mosken island's mountain base.

But maybe in the skies above it.

_That wasn't just a dream before?_

"Amazing!" Recalling her fuzzy sightings, Anna never lost the childlike wonder that she could easily tap into, despite her worries, as her believed hallucinations from before suddenly come flooding back.

Her wide green-blue eyes drink in with a renewed excitement, Kristoff, astride Sven's back, as the pair traverses the air as if it had an invisible road across it.

There was another reindeer, too. One sleeker, blonder in fur colored than Sven's grey taupe shading, with Job at the reins of the smaller, decidedly female rangifer that streaks across sunless sky.

"Damn! I was right all along! Ha ha! Look at 'em go!" Eugene smacks his bent over haunches with a hoot and a laugh at the reindeer(s) that really really were flying in this wondrous Norwegian sky.

"I told you! Reindeer here do really fly?! I didn't just take too hard a fall to my noggin, right? Like the pink elephants with those big ole ears to fly away with that I visualize when I'm drunk?" Flynn admits his little vice's aftereffects to Rapunzel, his normally languid eyes blinking several times at her.

She tears her own astonished eyes away from the pair of reindeer galloping up through the sky as they ride upon the air stream themselves it seemed. Then Rapunzel reaches a pair of experienced fingers around her husband's lower abdomen to pinch his tight buns in the rear.

"Ouchy!" He jumps ten feet off the ground.

"Nope. Not too punch-drunk. Sorry." Rapunzel teases and apologizes at the same time she helps her guy massage his bothered back end.

"But, to answer your prior question, young man, reindeer do not normally fly through the sky, even in Norway." In his lofty voice, with a heavy heart and whirring mind that had already constructed a plan of how to reclaim his kidnapped older daughter most expeditiously, King Agdar squints his clear blue eyes to scan the horizon.

He just catches the last glimpses of the pair of quadrupeds and their riders making good time across the skyscape.

It was only legend, story, a myth perhaps that his youthful royal servant who, over the years, became more of a friend, often told.

When Agdar was a young man growing up, the young woman who first came to clean the castle, named 'Gerda', often told stories in song to the boy child Prince from her youthful adventures. And the solitary youth who was destined to be King someday had listened to the bright eyed girl who had been taken on as head housekeeper of the castle, with rapt attention.

The lonely boy was widely entertained by Gerda's no less than thrilling recount of an icy escapade in the far North of his country's Arctic circle region, where she and her husband, Kai, young Agdar's intelligent in-house tutor, met a certain elemental Queen…

"Could it be?" Still catching his breath from circumventing the ninety foot drop amidst being restored to his full self again, King Agdar was just readying to summon all his powers together to allow them extra speed to give chase to the monstrously transformed sea pirate who kidnapped his daughter. That's when a certain unusually cold breeze blows in from the Northeast with a bizarre yet familiar feeling that overtakes his every sense…

**_Jingle, jingle, jingle jingle…_**

Little snow bells ring throughout the hazy overcast skies that suddenly turn it pallid white with the hundred million star shaped flakes of a sudden snow blizzard. A four horse-drawn pristine white in a coating of frosted ice, Royal Brougham carriage cuts across the filmy dark sky.

The Victorian era large and luxurious enclosed carriage signaled wealth and nobility, and this ice enchanted one held something even more mysterious as its ringing snow bells tinkle like wind chimes.

The coach comes to a stop directly in front of the resolute cool-as-a-cucumber King. When everyone else had taken a step back in stunned apprehension, Agdar stood his ground, collected and unperturbed.

The curtain of snow swirling around the carriage suddenly parts, and at the door, she appears. The carriage exit magically is whisked open, letting out a brisk cold front of chilled air to pass through the mountain's saddle, as the ethereal figure of a tall, imposing, yet graceful, woman steps out.

"So you have finally realized your true potential, my Wind chime boy. I have been awaiting this day for nearly half a century." The frigid strains of her lyrically defined high soprano C intoned voice rings throughout the still air at this valley base of the mountain island.

"Your Majesty." The entire audience is surprised when the regal sovereign King of Arendelle falls to his knees to bow his head before the pale bluish-white faced woman shrouded in mystery.

"Please help me rescue my daughter." Agdar prostrates himself before this sedate ageless woman. Her crystal blue cool eyes smile down upon his reverent respect for the lady whom the King himself had been in the presence of only once before in his recollection, when he was a young boy just coming into his complicated by the ice-developing-in-his body teens.

"There is a great wickedness unleashed upon your shores. I have watched it from afar, but could no longer stand idly by while this tragedy occurred, without giving what little it is I have left to offer you." And with these ominous words, the legendary Snow Queen of the North herself lifts a finest silken chiffon sleeve to reveal a glowing magic mirror.

And through it, all the good and evil of the world, past, and the present, and even a glimpse of the future, could be seen…

…As the wind chimes tremble…

* * *

It was a beautiful summer day in the Regency Era turn-of-the-century kingdom of Arendelle. The morning had awakened to a sparkling 75° sunshiny day ahead. It was one full of bright promises and true love for the years come, also known as the perfect afternoon for Norwegian wedding. Through the church Chapel's wide open doors to the sacred ceremony's mass taking place, a special hymn rings through the breezes.

"_Where roses bloom so sweetly in the vale, there shall you find the Christkind, without fail."_

The little children who could not sit still in the pews on this sunshiny day during the two-hour long marriage ceremony, were allowed to quietly play outside in the churchyard. There they find the Lord's sunshine and fragrant flowers that never stopped blowing in the wind sweetly giving praise in their own way.

Especially Kai and Gerda's lovely red rosebush. It was the pride and joy of the rectory's liturgical occupants who soon had hired the vibrant young bride-to-be Gerda, and her future husband Kai to restore the church's dilapidated frontage yard and garden.

What a job the pair of young lovers did, though not much more past babes himself, as Kai and Gerda not only dispelled the overgrown weeds and unwanted overgrowth, but the industrious teens had somehow managed to reinvigorate the infertile land. They produced new life in the parish flowerbeds with nothing more than their entwined bare hands and hearts filled with love for one another and the Lord, so often raised in praise-filled grateful song as they plowed and planted.

And as the happy couple themselves walked down the aisles of this blessed chapel's red rose decorated bowery as one, not two, the Snow Queen herself quietly, covertly attended the wedding of her young friends joined in the bonds of Holy Matrimony in God's sight where she gazed on from afar with pride.

The friendless Snow Queen had wanted to show unending appreciation for the amity the two young children, who had matured into young adults before her ancient eyes. For forever young at heart Gerda and Kai had taught the chilled Queen more aspects of life that all her hundreds of years never knew she never knew.

And her coming in the light of day to celebrate their wedding in true friendship brought a blessing to the Snow Queen's long empty life that she never expected.

But while one bountiful emotion of warmth had been stirred within the Snow Queen's once frozen cold heart, just as she was about to retreat back into her teleporting mirror and return her vast empty home in the North, another occurred.

Her ears, well attuned to nature's sounds, picked up the tinkling of wind chimes that reminded her of ice crystals and sleigh bells shimmering in the winter Wonderland's breeze.

She followed the sound of the wind chimes whistling on the wind until it led her to the lilting coos of a newborn baby inside the balcony window. There, the wind chime's golden snowflake and crocus petals were swaying in the breeze with the same designs blowing on the embroidered gauzy filmy curtain, for the crocus flower was the symbol of the kingdom of Arendelle.

The Snow Queen, who had dominion over all the lands where Arctic snows held rule, was too curious not to enter the this southern Norwegian palace.

She meant no harm. The timeless pale woman who commanded the snow since memories gone by in long agos and faraways, only wished to peek in the balcony to see what certain creature was making that most interesting of sounds.

Not the squeak of a Penguin, nor the bellow of a polar bear. It was not a twitter of a dolphin, not the bleat of a lamb, nor the baleful moan of a reindeer. No, this was a singular noise unlike any other this ancient Queen of the snow had almost forgotten what it could be like, for she did not mix with humans much, preferring animals and elemental spirits in their simplicity.

A newborn human child's innocent gurgling coos and self amused giggles made that chunk of ice that formed the Snow Queen's heart, melt just a few sizes that day…

She stepped through her magic mirror and through its refracted ice into the cool mirror within the newest member of the royal family's nursery. His inattentive young nursemaid named Johanne was too busy daydreaming out the window, trying to catch a glimpse of her handsome brother and his new bride in the churchyard across, to even notice her. The lively young Johanne, with a guilty peek back towards the nursery and its single slumbering occupant, then snuck out down the trellis for just a quick visit. She would be a derelict sister not to wish her dear brother and his new bride well and watch the momentous kransekake offspring prediction ceremony take place. Not to mention secure a piece of the delicious cake for her rumbling tummy.

That was when the Snow Queen stopped. Literally everything in that moment stopped for her, save for the swaying windchimes tinkling in her ears as the young Arendelle Prince's inquisitive coos call to her.

The tiny bouncing babe's sweet chortles and baby blue eyes that were just on the verge of turning a shade of light hazel, peeked through the royal cradle.

When he saw the silent inscrutable pale woman all wrapped in white fur's and draping chiffons of silvery white, this royal baby does something none other – no human, or otherwise – had ever done to the powerful, fearsome woman –

He reached both his warm arms up to the impassive, expressionless woman who was peering inquisitively down. The baby boy smiled brightly with the open-ended offer of a warm hug as no other sound but the wind chimes swayed music all around him.

Without fear, without selfish need or want, this beautiful child extended his tiny hands out to the woman who had lived in solitude so long as an immortal being she had forgotten what it was like to dream of mortal joy to hold another warm body close.

She had long ago covered up any interest in the warmth of human emotions. The Snow Queen glimpsed the forbidden fruit many times through her mirror without comprehending that the frozen promise of never suffering, never feeling in a solitary kingdom of isolation was bleak. All for the pure ideal to never endure the eventual pain that came with the tender beating of warm heart, the Snow Queen had eons ago forsaken the intensity of passion of love in exchange for living alone in the enormous glistening castle she had built.

Made brilliant by the cool flicker of the Northern Lights, it stretched on for miles upon endless cold miles. This Snow Castle had hundreds of halls that all eventually led in their convoluted maze to a frozen lake center of her throne room, completed glacially cold by the Queen's snow coated world.

But the entire ice structure was so immense –and so very empty—that it never had a touch of gaity, nor music. No dancing, no singing. Simply vast cold emptiness amidst the Queen's logically cold "mirror of reason" existed there.

But ever since that day a little girl of faith named Gerda came to solve the enigma of the Snow Queen's magic where 'reason' left no room for 'joy', the solitary powerful woman's self-imposed endless winter had begun to crumble and melt.

It started with a nightingale's soft song that she allowed enter her cool window one quizzical evening. Then a flower she ventured to breathe in the sweet scent of one light of the morning.

Night after night, gazing through the magic mirror, she glimpsed life outside the scope of her universe, now without disdain. The Snow Queen even tried to imagine what it would be like to be a living breathing human being, with all their frailties and feelings that she had seen in her young friends, Gerda and Kai. And also she longed to know more of the bravery and courage of that special stranger named Ragi, who fought the Devil himself for her kingdom that day…

Through these extraordinary mortals, she was made aware of a special undying strength that no glass house immortal ever possessed. A strength called 'love'…

All that flashed in the tall pale female's whirring mind, intoxicated by the clear bell-like sounds of the tinkling wind chime's music, along with the most beautiful thing she had ever seen—this tiny human child's crystal clear shining blue eyes.

She felt them envelop her consciousness, as this fearless child invites this awe-inspiring creature of legend into his innocent world of humanity's hope spring eternal, as seen through the crystal clear eyes of a child…

And when she reached out her tensed hand, the tiny baby grasped on tight, pulling the phlegmatic, self-possessed Snow Queen to him. With an astonished breath at this fearless boy's unrelenting grip seeking the attention of love amidst the singing wind chimes, the cold woman couldn't help herself from leaning down over the cradle to pick up the fragile human child. She held the dauntless, unafraid, wide-eyed baby, who never cried, high up in the air with her frozen arms in the aurora borealis Northern Lights' late evening to get a better look at him.

That's when a sudden rush of glistening icy tears overflowed from her glimmering eyes. She couldn't stop them. She only silently made the wish that this baby's blue eyes would remain forever beautiful and just as stunningly crystal clear.

The secret dream that a child such as this could be hers some day, was born.

That is when the little boy child stretched his curious little finger out to touch the glistening frozen cold tears on her unbidden wishful womanly cheek –

And from that point on, his life and hers would then forever be intertwined from henceforth…

_**SSZZTTT!**_

An icy jolt crackled across her senses. Never before had anyone ever reached out to touch the cold dispassionate Queen of the North while her ice was mid-constructing. Nor did she shed tears on any person before. She had kept herself locked inside her ice fortress in fear of anything warm by day, only daring to travel in the cool of night to gaze on life outside, when her lonely icy heart was more blue than white…

**_Tinkle Tinkle Tinkle…_**

In the moment her prim icy guard was down, the unaware Snow Queen had unwittingly relinquished some of her cold icy magic and gained a great deal more of humanity's flickering embers through this mortal baby's warmth.

And the baby boy, that day had lost a touch of his body's warmth in exchange for a single tear's worth of the timeless frozen beauty called 'the Snow Queen's' infinite ice powers…

As the wind chimes unceasingly tinkle…

_**Whoosh! Tinkle tinkle tinkle…**_

"Oh dear! Did I leave the window open?! Mustn't let the new baby Prince catch a cold from this chilly breeze, can we, little Agdar? It's not supposed to be this cold on a blissful June summer day! Besides, you were supposed be sleeping, for Johanne, weren't you, silly?" A second later, with a flash from a mirror transport of the Snow Queen back to her own abode, the young royal nursemaid/sister of the groom, Johanne, had trotted back to the nursery, with a guilty look and kransekake wedding cake frosting on her lips.

"Hee hee hee! _Gurgle gurgle_!" Happy to greet the world with a new sparkling light behind his eyes, as the dangling wind chimes continue to bring merrily ring, little baby Prince Agdar seemed to giggle and say: _'the cold doesn't bother me!_'

His giddy little arms reach out to someone invisible over Johanne's shoulder as she was rocking him warm. With a strong-armed pull he manages to reopen one of the balcony doors Johanne was trying to close. The baby appeared to want to let the unseasonably cool weather back in, just to ring the windchimes so they twirled and swayed their snowflake flowers and likewise his sweet little ginger hair sprigs, as the cool breeze seeped into his soul…

Young Prince Agdar, with the icy kiss of the Snow Queen herself still on his cute little chubby cheek, giggled up at his teenaged babysitter, leaving Johanne to wonder if he was possessed. It was almost as if the tiny baby knew something she did not.

His blue eyes flash an icy white for a moment as he mischievously smudges across the window some of the blue white icing from the piece of wedding cake his irked nanny tried to keep from him.

And he laughed aloud with glee as the entire world, glowing in the aurora borealis over his cradle, cast an icy blue hue from the refracted glass over his sweet features…

"Oh, you messy, bad boy! I had better say the Lord's prayer for you especially, you naughty Prince Agdy!" Johanne recalls how Gerda would constantly pray the words Jesus instructed when she was tried in times of trouble and heartache.

A dirty and greasy icy caked window and baby in the palace nursery certainly was that to the poor temper-tested girl.

Johanne sighed and began to pray fervently over the little prince.

"Fader vår, du som er i himmelen, helliget vorde ditt navn.  
La ditt rike komme. La din vilje skje, på jorden som i himmelen.  
Gi oss i dag vårt daglige brød.  
Og forlat oss vår skyld, som vi òg forlater våre skyldnere."

_"'Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name._  
_Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven._  
_Give us this day our daily bread._  
_**And forgive us our trespasses, **as we forgive those who trespass against us.'"_

Johanne emphasized this last phrase expressly as she wipes the infant child's blue sticky hands with her handkerchief. Despite all the trouble he had been causing, Johanne couldn't help but share in his pure faced adorable smile as she tucked her little charge to the safety of his crib.

Tickling his sweet tummy, she rocked him to sleep with the remainder of the prayer.

"Led oss ikke inn i fristelse, men frels oss fra det onde. Amen."

_"'And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.'"_

* * *

"Amen." King Agdar punctuates the prayer as he and Snow Queen come back from revisiting the past memory together in the flash of a moment through the magic mirror.

"Please help me keep my child safe." With tears in his pallid blue eyes full of authentic humility and genuine heart-wrenched paternal care, King Agdar was not too high and mighty to beg for his precious girl. "Help me bring my child to safety."

"I have not been the force that I was once for sometime now. Twenty-one winters have passed since I had given half of my life's energy to achieve my greatest dream. _And I regret him not for a moment_." The once detached, cold woman finishes the last of her statement in a soft whisper with a heart full of something almost like warmth as an ambient light behind her eyes glows while she directs her glance upwards to the northern skies full of pride.

"But I cannot travel with you, my Wind chime boy. Only in spirit now." Agdar just now notices how translucent and faded the already muted, washed-out Snow Queen's physical form was becoming, the longer they spoke.

"So…She's not really here?" A simple inquiring voice from the side of his mouth asks Anna in a loud whisper from close by, as Olaf the snowman innocently blinks up at them.

Never surprised by anything snowy magical anymore, Queen Idun gasps when obliviously brazen Olaf sticks his fingers to phase through the icy woman's translucent lower leg, and Anna excitedly makes a backhanded grab for the crystalline crown set atop the Snow Queen's tall blonde head.

"Your Majesty. Please forgive her. Anna is –" Hearing tales of the Queen of the icy North since she was a child in Sweden, fear struck Idun begins to apologize for her headstrong child's irreverent behavior.

"A rare prize of a new bride, for any lucky Prince." The Snow Queen almost proudly comments as her nearly see-through hand tries in vain to pet Anna's cheek with something like motherly affection.

"Okay. Thanks. Nice to meet you, too, Snow Lady." Anna was more weirded-out by the growing more transparent by the moment woman all in silvery white than scared as most other people would be as she tries to be polite as she could.

"Hey! Can we borrow your flying carriage?" Desperately in search of transport as airborne as Kristoff and Sven, who were way ahead of them by now, Anna suddenly brainstorms in a blurted out question.

"Anna! Your manners!" Queen Idun chides her rude daughter openly, as Agdar looks on with a small smile at his little sunflower's peppiness.

"Okay! _**May**_ we borrow your flying carriage? What's the maximum speed on this thing? We like to go fast." Physically kicking the fancy icy Brougham's wheels, the unpretentious girl corrects herself and sentimentally replays a sweet memory as she and Olaf were already checking out the carriage's plush interior and seating arrangements.

Idun holds her shaking head in simpered shame, seeing herself young and brash all over again.

"Yes, that is precisely why I have sent my sky horse-drawn carriage to you. When Ragi, who has been following you all through this journey, saw the danger was too great, he contacted me through our bond." The majestic Snow Queen explains as she ushers Idun into the carriage door.

"Oh wow! This will be better than even riding a boat! All aboard!" Before he bustles in, all unflattened three pieces reconnected, Olaf crassly cries out as Eugene aids a quite badly beat up Hans into the carriage as the younger man was just coming to.

"The injuries on this officer look serious. Idun! This young man requires your special medical attention on our journey." Impressed by any man who wore his Navy's proud uniform, Agdar noted earlier how the obviously well bred young man had selflessly defended his younger daughter.

"We will not let you down, for Queen Elsa's sake, Your Majesty." With great emotion for his pent-up fears of Elsa's safety, Hans chokes out as lucidly as he could while Eugene hauls him into a backseat in the carriage. The courageous Danish Prince had been injured protecting Anna's body with his own as buffer in the rockslide, not to mention the pretty serious bullet wound straight through his shoulder for Elsa.

So, grateful King Agdar takes pity on the Sjoforsvaret officer jacket shredded and back bloodied, face-bruised man as he call for his wife to work her healing hands over the propitious helpful young rescuer of both his daughters.

"My little bro's got a major hero complex, Lord love him." Eugene shrugs as he deposits a pretty battered and beat up from the rockslide Hans inside the carriage back bench where Queen Idun soon goes to work patching poor Hans back up to be beautiful again.

"Rapun—Oof! Furball!" Having caught his skinny gal on the way down, Eugene peeks his head out to call for his late-for-the-ride wife, when she comes dashing up with that same blasted puffball stuck in his face again.

"_P-tu_!" Eugene spits nickels and wool simultaneously.

"Sorry! But when I finally found Lamby hiding under a bush looking so scared, I had to bring him along!" Rapunzel smiles toothily as she adjusts the little sheep on her lap on top of it.

"You're always a softy for a cute face. I guess that's you ended up with a black sheep like me." Eugene smirks under his loving wife's touch to his tender rock-bounced body parts.

"Oh, sorry, Eugene." Rapunzel bites her lip as Pascal snickers at her husband and both look out the carriage window at the Snow Queen conversing with the Ice King.

"There is a man heading the search mission whom I will stake the entire universe upon. Please rely upon him to lead the way. And use this, when you must." The Snow Queen places an invisible hand on Agdar's before he enters the carriage, somehow transferring her small magic mirror into his hand.

"My time is growing short here. I will pray for your triumph over this menace and the salvation of all our children. They met through destiny to stand against this evil, threatening your beloved country and mine, my Wind chime boy. Godspeed." And with that the Snow Queen fades entirely from sight, with a soft kiss to Agdar's cool cheek.

"I only fear the final cost may be much too much for me to bear…" The Snow Queen's once cold heart weeps a crystalline tear for the forewarning of legendary predictions of the battle foretold long ago, now imminently ahead, as her illusion disappears…

"Amen." Is all King Agdar need affirm to his lifelong benefactress as he enters the carriage and the door closes magically behind him.

The sounds of wind chimes jingle on the cool winds that blow every which way in the breeze as the vehicle rises off the ground…

* * *

_Hello, fellow Frozen aficianados!_

_How was that for an explanatory backstory as to the why King Agdar, and thusly his daughter, Queen Elsa, both obtained their Ice magic? ^_^ Please watch the original 'Snow Queen' story's 'Yuki no Jou' anime version where Kai and Gerda get married at the end, and you meet his little sister Johanne, to gain some nuance as to the Snow Queen characters._

_And did you see the new original artwork my Big Sis, Setsuna drew for me for my birthday of the "Frozen Again: But the Greatest of These is Love" cover art? Didn't she do a beautiful job of capturing the love and awakening romance between Kommander Hans Westergaard and Queen Elsa? It really stirs the imagination and hits my story profile of the starring Helsa couple right on! I love it!_

_If you want to see the full size, high resolution artwork of the HansxElsa picture she drew for the book, please search for:_

DeviantArt under SetsunaKou

_or_

Tumblr under TsukimoriKahoko

_She's promised me some more thrilling drawings of Helsa. And Kristanna &amp; Eupunzel coming soon, too!_

_Thanks for viewing the artwork, and reading the story!_

_And please review this high-flying past revisiting chapter!_

_ If she could make her horses and her carriage fly through the icy skies, then why not reindeer? Maybe 'ole St. Nick got his airborne reindeer(s) from our resident Snow Queen! He's from around this neck of the woods in this time frame, isn't the jolly old soul? Just a festive fun food for after thought!_

_God bless you and your families this Labor Day weekend!_

_HarukaKou_


	43. Chapter 42- Let it Go

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act III**

**Chapter 42**

**"Let it Go"**

"Ugh…argh. Damn!" Kristoff Bjorgman clutches at his hammering head. He inhales sharply his breath to blow it back out through his lips as he runs capable fingers through the unruly mess of golden blonde hair, only to find aching spots caked with fresh blood beneath it. But the physical bloody wounds weren't all that caused Kristoff's pain in his head.

The mental thought that the new young husband had to leave his little wife Anna behind when she was in danger was almost too much for him to bear. Although that one last glance to see Anna being safely lowered to the ground in a cloud of icy snow under a glowing King Agdar's control had been enough for the worried ice harvester to judge that she was in good hands – her Father's.

It wasn't like leaving her to the random devices of haphazard cousin Eugene or the questionable trustworthiness of his brother, Hans. The reclaimed King of Arendelle was her father, after all. And with their Dad exhibiting an ice prowess likened to Elsa's, Anna would surely be safe with him.

At least that's what Kristoff had to tell himself. That, plus the added knowledge that Anna would want him to give chase after Elsa with no concern for her own safety, even though it was killing him to leave his Anna behind.

But the Wind Whisperer's every keen sense assured him that she was safe, so he must continue onward. Though Kristoff was extremely concerned for his wife, he knew Anna's good loving heart more than he knew his own, and he felt in there that this was what she wanted him to do.

_Please, God. Don't let that monster hurt Elsa. If something happens to her, Anna will just…_

Unashamed tears form in his own empathetic eyes as Kristoff could even sense his girl's fervent prayers for her beloved sister's welfare from where he was already faraway, just coming to consciousness, flying on Sven in pursuit of that foul monster that confiscated the Queen.

_Flying on Sven?_

As his dizzy gaze travels across the speeding past cloudline, Kristoff was still shaking his muzzy bashed around head to get around the outrageous thought that his well grounded lifelong best friend had suddenly developed a taste the trot full throttle across invisible pathways through the vast sky.

"How are you able to this, Sven?" Holding on tight to the grey fur nape of his best friend's neck as gravity pulls him back from Sven's upward momentum, Kristoff leans his aching head down to the reindeer's furry familiar back to crouch in between Sven's summer 'in velvet' antlers with the carefully whispered question.

Rational Kristoff was almost afraid that if he spoke too loud, this magic spell would be broken, and they all would plunge the hundred foot drop down the mountain.

Not that they didn't just live to survive that before.

{"Not so sure myself, old buddy! All I know is, I was just chewing on some choice lichen I found under the rocks at the mountain base back there while waiting for you guys to come back down. And then that silly little lamb scampered away. I didn't want it to get lost, knowing how Princess Rapunzel liked it, so I decided to pop that Job man onto my back so I could keep an eye on him for you, too, Buddy, while I went to find that lost sheep."} After Sven's soulful big brown eyes give the dark man behind Kristoff on his back a glance, the reindeer continues his excited, elongated story.

{"And lucky thing I did, too!' 'Cause just a few seconds after I pulled the unconscious fellow away, that terrible rockslide started pelting big stones and sharp rocks to crash down just where we were at the mountain base! We likely would have been killed on the spot if I hadn't just moved us!"} Sven was nodding his furry head up and down matter-of-factly as he continues to magically climb the growing thinner air after Ragi, on his lead flying reindeer, ahead of them.

"Yeah, good job…Sven? The flying?" Kristoff loved his childhood pal, but, as he was recently finding out now that they could verbally communicate, Sven had the tendency to be long-winded in getting to the point.

{"Oh, yeah! I was just getting to that part. Hold on, though… Okay… Turn…Yeah! I'm getting the hang of this!"} Sven, the newly commissioned flying reindeer, swiftly executes a 90° then quick 45° turn around a jutting out cliff edge that he soars around and above in following expert Ragi and his nearly perpendicular-to-the-ground in-flight reindeer.

"Dat man up dere just be whisperin' somet'ing into da reindeer's ear, and it be flyin' off da ground." Silent up until this juncture, Job, from behind Kristoff's shoulder on Sven's back, succinctly answers Kristoff's left hanging spoken aloud query as Sven was too focused to elucidate further.

"So why did Ragi drag you along? It's _your_ pirate Captain who drank that water and turned into that vicious monster _we're_ chasing to take down. And this time we can't afford to play nice. A good woman's life is at stake." Speaking with furrowed worried eyes of Elsa, Anna's older sibling who had a heart big enough to include a nobody peasant into her kingdom to marry her little sister, Krisoff symbolically pats the Saami longbow strapped in its quiver to his back. The Ice Harvester, still firmly grasping Sven's harnessed reins, directs his words towards Job in the rear with a degree of wariness to simply trust the Caribbean's role here in saving Elsa if it meant drastic measures in eradicating the pirate villain to do so.

"Dat's what he be deservin', too, fer what crimes he done in da past. And what he wanted to dos to yer little gurl if I hadn't watched him close, too. Da Cap'n always been a monster to da women, so I's not be doubtin' dat holy magic finally gots him right at last." It didn't take much to convince the superstitious Islander of the legendary sought after St. Olaf's spring water's revealing true nature properties.

"Yeah. Anna told me about that. Thanks." Kristoff now stops to recall some of his wife's kindly sentiments about the pirate first mate through their mental bond, in reflection. Despite the fact he and the big and tall former pugilist had an ongoing muscle match – both having the black and blue bruises to prove it –the Ice Harvester shared a growing respect for Job's quiet reliable persona when it came to watching out for Anna, whom she was calling a 'friend' on their psychic message board.

Through the same special bond, as he lifts within his large fingered hands the glowing yellow crystal troll necklace about his neck, Kristoff could also sense Anna's current racing emotions of fear, joy, disgust, pride, disbelief, worry and hope, as his little firebrand was way too worked up to cognitively receive any of his telepathic transmissions right now.

Job nods as he sees the matching crystal necklace glow on Kristoff's neck, the same as it had before on Anna's with love for her guy on the steamship. The dark man had gained respect for this young blonde mountain man's dogged drive and obvious utmost caring for the spunky spirited little girl whom the big Caribbean had himself grown fond of in their trials together.

"I wonder where that monster's heading…" Trying to gain his bearings, instinctively unafraid of heights from years of mountain climbing, Kristoff more murmurs to himself than to either of his traveling companions as, every now and then from the distance over the soaring mountain peak they were vertically transcending, he stretches his neck to glimpse that Draugen's ilky green dark head or seaweed squirming extenders peek out as it climbs the mountain zenith, with an unconscious Elsa yet clutched in it slimy hand.

{"Where every creature, mystical or no, always longs to return to, in the end."} Loud and true, a strident voice suddenly breaks through the outskirts of Kristoff's cursory thoughts where he was astride his own reindeer's airborne back.

"Ragi?" Hearing the older man's penetrating words crystal clear his head, Kristoff breathes his old friend's name. He was still trying to comprehend the well-aged man's always cryptic words, just as he did as a boy when the traveling mystery minstrel would often visit him and spend time to stay with him from every now and then in the mountain men's ice harvesting camp.

Kristoff now realizes that he had learned a great many things in his youth from old Ragi and the wise-eyed gray wolf perched steadily on the reindeer's large arctic wolf, named Holger, was always at Ragi's side for as long as Kristoff could remember.

The tall blonde young man was just starting to understand the connection-if he could wrap his logical mind around what his heart was trying to tell him-exactly who the orphaned boy's parents were and consequently why this enigmatic stranger took the pains to teach him so many aspects of life's abilities.

Kristoff's experienced hands urge a receptive Sven forward to catch up to the original Wind Whisperer who was fearlessly riding that wind on the paler tanned reindeer ahead, faithful Holger at his long coat back, staring Kristoff right in the eye with a timeless wisdom.

"Home." Uttering the word aloud without so much as turning to face an approaching Kristoff he sensed was near, the wandering minstrel himself hadn't known the warmth of a welcoming hearth for decades. Not until he had reconciled with the immortal cold to nurture a growing heart in her time of need with the human love the Queen of the Snow had gained the curiosity and desire to partake in.

"But that's –" Kristoff, upon a determined Sven, now soaring alongside shoulder to shoulder with the taupe female reindeer, gives old Ragi a quizzical look as he tries to imagine the great distance between here and the wicked Dutch pirate's native homeland's destination.

"Da sea." With experienced knowledgeable eyes that scan over the mountain rise they were approaching towards the swirled ocean surrounding below, Job's deep bass voice supplies Ragi's inference for Kristoff, who follows the two older men's gaze forward where the three of them could just make out that seaweed wrapped sixty foot tall sea creature's return to the ocean.

"We have to stop it, before that sea monster takes poor Elsa down under the waves with it!" Kristoff calls out in panicked fear for his sister-in-law's welfare.

"Da Cap'n still be crazy enough to be wantin' a Queen of his own to lord over, even now…" With eyes that had seen more than his share of cruel life on the ocean under this deranged, selfish, old pirate, Job recognized the briny deep's unrelenting call for many a sailor to return to their dearest home – the watery empire where their wild imaginations held rule of the fathomless sea…

* * *

_The whirring ocean tides swirl around a young woman's delirious mind as she is brought closer to the crashing roaring tide shores of the island in the __Norwegian Sea__… _

"How long can a person hold one's breath underwater before they die?" A small girl's high pitched voice posed the weighty question in a cool even tone, as if she were a responsible self-possessed adult.

The calm child, no more than three years old, directs her crystal clear blue eyes to glimmer like a curious pair of gleaming ice sapphires up at her mother with the profoundly deep query.

Much too deep and thought provoking for so small a girl of her age, but Elsa was her father's daughter after all. Idun couldn't help but smile proudly.

"Such a question for so early in the morning, mycket flicka." The Queen, who was rather full with child, looked up from her sunbathing lounge chair to shield her own lustrous eyes from the bright morning midnight sun. Even all the way south of the country in Arendelle, the all day long sun was full strength shimmering on the waves before the beach cove part of the fjord just a little ways from the castle.

Queen Idun loved being outdoors, especially during the summer, and had such a pregnant yearning fetish to come out and soak up the sun, weather permitting, for at least a few hours every morning.

"Did I tell you how beautifully radiant you are in the morning, my Queen?" Just then, romantic King Agdar, after retrieving a picnic basket that Gerda had prepared for the couple and their daughter's noontime repast, gathers Idun's face in his hands, as he leans over and plants a soft kiss on his bulgy tummy love's moist lips.

"Yes, you already did, my King. But I don't mind if you repeat yourself." The young mother enjoys her husband's cool lingering kiss that tasted of frozen ice tea in the bright summer sunlight before the lively polished man takes an over-exaggerated stylish dive into the shining waters of the fjord he adored.

Though the pressing affairs of state were upon the new King of Arendelle's mind in his weighty 23rd year of life, there was nothing more important to the caring ruler than making it a priority to accompany his beautiful wife and their cherished little daughter for some quality family time together on their own private beachfront.

Besides, Elsa had to learn how to swim, and Agdar was the only one who could teach the special child.

Her excellently athletic young father was happy to teach his gifted firstborn child one of his favorite sports, though the thoughtful girl was by no means as eager as her accomplished paternal swimmer.

"The water is at our most perfect temperature so far to date, my Snow Angel! I'd wager today's the lucky day you deem to grace the fjord with your royal presence, little Princess. Your King himself has tested the water for you, just to make sure it was suitably agreeable enough for a future Queen of your caliber." With the teased quiver of his moustached lip, the debonair young leader of the nation had emerged his limber form from a series of well performed swim strokes—the side stroke, the trudgeon, butterfly, dolphin kick, breast and backstroke— that Agdar's agile body displayed in the deeper section of the fjord. Catching his huffed breath, he then stood in the more shallow wading shore with a cool hand inviting his beloved little girl in to learn some of them from an expert.

Although Elsa loved playing with her adored Papa, and trusted him implicitly, the femininely feline like girl decidedly **did not** like the thought of diving, like he did, headlong into the cold, cold water and messing her pretty blonde hair and lovely new lavender frilly bathing suit by getting it _wet._

"Now, come, my little Princess! Let Papa at least teach you the simple dog paddle this fine morning." The tall handsome King gave the sourpuss young girl his most charming smile, but she was too stubborn to cooperate.

The finicky little miss was reticent to even get her new clothing splashed, as Elsa took a step back behind her chuckling mother's seat, and hid her face in Idun's dark brown hair, just as she had retreated each time, and every morning for the entire summer thus far.

"Now, Elsa, Doesn't the doggie paddle sound like fun?" Idun lifted her sun-blocking eyeshade as she spoke to her daughter with languid motherly eyes. The Queen then shared a sweet hopeful smile with her stunningly gorgeous, dripping wet, shirtless husband who nodded several times back at his favorite pair of ladies.

"No. Doggies have messy hair. I prefer kitty cats." The pouty, plump cheeked young child toyed with her precious, already long strands of blonde hair that gleamed a glossy silvery platinum in the fresh sunlight above the waters.

Sleepy for her cat naps, cranky little Princess Elsa always was in a bad mood in the early morning, especially when it was time to get wet. There was no reason to smile when she was wet.

That is, until her wonderful Papa hunched himself over the sparkling waters and began to pant like a dog and make motions to her as a begging canine would.

"Woof! Woof!"' His lyrical baritone sang out in true doggie lingo.

"What is Papa doing?" The fretful frown on her pretty little petted face couldn't help but relinquish the withheld smile as Elsa watched her regal distinguished King of a father rather debase himself with several panted doggie yelps and pathetic barks. The handsome King even purposely messed his coiffed slicked back hair.

"The doggie paddle." The indeed beautifully radiant smiling Queen Idun answered her daughter wryly as she shook her head in laughter at how wonderfully foolish her true love could be at times.

"But… my hair…?" Elsa stubbornly runs a proud hand through her silky long blonde tresses. Though, with Papa acting so funny, she couldn't help but giggle at him as she was on the verge of being cajoled into taking a brave step forward into watery fjord inlet.

"Your new little brother would **love **to doggie paddle with Papa. **He** wouldn't mind getting his hair wet on this last day of summer swimming fun." Her mother rolled out the dare. Then Idun pat carefully her nine-month enlarged tummy with a complacent sigh as she gazed upon the haughty young monarch she married where he continued to act like an excited puppy swimming around the shore. Agdar was sniffing every rock and seashell he could find around, and yelping and panting and barking, even to the point of his nibbling on his wife's toes that were dabbling in the water's edge over her lounge chair.

"Silly doggie!" Thoroughly tickled pink, Idun chuckled at her attractive mate's comical attempts to entice their stubborn child to start swimming in this country of theirs that was 70% ocean and fjord groove surrounded.

"All right! All right! I'm going! And it's going to be a baby sister, Mama!" Peevishly adorable and bossy, Princess Elsa was having way too much mirthful fun by now to notice her beloved hair getting wet as she took her new 'ginger doggie's' offered paw as he tenderly leads her chilly fingers into the summer warm waters. The King gave her gentle instruction in his softest voice as he began to teach the light of his eyes the joy of swimming.

"Just keep your nose and mouth above the surface of the water and you'll be fine. That's right. Now, paddle your hands like a puppy would. There you go! Very good, my Snow Angel! I'm so proud of you!" King Agdar's love for his child was evident in his sweet encouragement as he holds her little frame up flat near the water's crest.

"P-p-papa! Please, don't let me fall!" The young girl pleads as she holds her two short arms out until her fingers grabbed around Agdar's strong forearm to squeeze her soon growing frosty digits around his left limb, freezing it nearly solid. But he could take it.

"I've got you, Elsa. You have to trust your doggie, right? No more fear." Elsa shared a nod in his steadying smile.

"Just let it go. Let your body float like a weightless snowflake, my beautiful Snow Angel. Let it go." His words were strong and his eyes were full of confidence, though hers were growing increasingly fascinated by the shapes of crystalline sculptures of fishes and dolphins and seahorses among the disparate snowflake fractals her creative artistic mind was creating on a different diversionary level in ice along the fjord's bobbing surface.

At least she thought it was all _her_ ice at the time.

"Can I do the magic, Papa?" Elsa whispered conspiratorially in the King's ear as she pulled her 'doggie's' head down close to where she was floating, her innate fear of the water ebbed away with the excitement of her icy abilities at play.

"No, Elsa. No. We must learn to swim before we can play ice castles." Her father's furrowed brow said seriously as he paused in his animated playacting of a dog to articulate to her the importance of self-control.

"But, Papa…!" Floating upside down, the three-year-old just didn't understand why she must conceal her growing ice powers all the time in public as she coquettishly placed one focused finger on the water to send ripples of ice along the wave crests between them.

"All right. Just this once, my Sweetheart, because you were so brave to swim for me today." With a sighed chuckle after glancing around the empty shoreline apprehensively, Agdar looked down at the thin little girl whose voluminous blue eyes were longing today to put her boundless newfound inhibited energy to artistic use.

"Whee!" Elsa whispered excitedly in his ear in cold steamed puffs as she happily manifested her building fear's ice into pretty crystalline designs that rode on the crested waves that Papa created for her.

"Brrr...You two! This is supposed to be a fine **summer** outing! _You_ were meant to learn how to swim, _Young Lady_." Queen Idun pulled down her eyes shade halfway again to admonish her giggling child's playful antics. "And that goes for you too, _Your Majesty."_ She then directed a mocking tease to the little girl's fellow misbehaving royal conspirator.

"Yes, I suppose, but…Both of us puppies can swim at last, can't we, Snow Angel?" The loving father and baby girl sniggered together as the purportedly older dog with new tricks in strong hands monitored Elsa to show off her swimming skills to her surveying mother.

"**I** **can** surely do that doggie paddle, Mama! It's fun! Watch me kick!" The little blonde Princess was proud to demonstrate her new swimming moves.

"Finally, min kärlek! It only took all summer of your father and I begging for you to try." Her mother responded with a lovely heaved smile.

That's when Queen Idun, who had been laughing with joy in her heart at the perfect family her perfect husband gave her with the perfect baby girl suddenly feels another little kick doing their own secret doggie paddle inside.

_KICK!_

But this one was from the unborn child in her bulging stomach who was inconsolable at not being able to play along with the summer fun going on outside.

_KICK!_

"Darling?" The twenty-year-old young Queen said in a small whisper to her husband, who couldn't hear her for all the laughter and splashing fun he and Elsa were having in the water.

_KICK!_

"Min Alskare?" Idun tried to remain calm in her normal voice, but the tension in it had grown when she attempted sit up from her the lounge chair unsuccessfully for the increasing pain.

But neither the King nor his swimming apprentice seemed to have heard her.

_KICK! KICK!_

"**AGDAR!"** Now that urgent soprano called the instantly worried man back to shore as he scooped up his equally shocked daughter swiftly to where his beckoning wife laid.

The panicked, skin instantaneously turned a frosty white as the King fell to his knees at his wife's plaintive side while a terrified, cold, drenched wet Elsa pattered to her shrieked mother's other side, never noticing her similarly frozen pallid Papa.

"**She's coming!" **The Queen of Arendelle caved to her older daughter's desire for a baby **_sister_** as she pet a warm hand each to her child and husband's dual chilly frozen cheeks.

"Yeah! Baby sister is on her way!" The joy melting away her ice, Elsa cried out in sheer joy, clapping her little icy hands together with the full expectation for a new sister dolly to hug later today.

Now, Agdar would love the child to be either girl _or_ boy, as long as it was healthy, and perhaps a gene less like him, but that wasn't the top priority on the young King's mind just then as he met his wife's pained eyes in loving sympathy.

Collecting his frayed senses, Agdar then lifted Idun's full with child body and carried her into the castle where a baby was soon to be born here in this happy kingdom, on this last day of the summer solstice.

And despite the King's natural anxiety as an expectant father, even this second time around, Elsa was ecstatic.

For in her youthful innocence, Princess Elsa believed that her mother had full control of the baby's gender. Though everyone else in the kingdom wanted the new child to be a boy, who would one day rule Norway as its King, Elsa only longed for a little sister to play with, be constant companion and best friend forever, share sisterly secrets with and grow up together, side by side, loving each other for all the summer and winter solstices to come…

* * *

_Min Alskling- _My Darling in Swedish

_Min kärlek – My Love in Swedish_

_Min Lilla Flicka – _My little girl in Swedish


	44. Chapter 43 - Trust

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act III**

**Chapter 43**

**"Trust"**

_At the loud crash of deafening waves, the idyllic sunny dream begins to fade into harsh cold reality..._

Where the salty warm North Atlantic to the West meets the cold, less saline Greenland Sea to the North; from the shallow shelf Barents Sea to the East of this oceanic area of the North Sea in the South; the Norwegian Sea full of oil and natural gas at its deep average two kilometer depth was at the center of the Arctic circle. It is here that the seas transition between boreal and arctic currents with a wide range of spring and neap tides that continuously progress into tidal waves.

The five disparate seas coming in from every direction of the maritime globe converge at this particular point of the ocean causing the contrasting temperatures and currents to collide and create therewith, conflicting tidal flows.

Since water spins counterclockwise North of the equator and clockwise South of the center earth marker, the resulting interaction just beyond the Mosken island's North shore forms a destructive whirlpool's powerful circular water currents – also known as the _maelstrom_ – the ultimate spinning free vortex of violent ocean turbulence that increases speed with the merest tidal shift in this largely unexplored part of the sea.

Indeed, the peak tumultuous thermohaline deep and surface water circulation vastly affected the climate of this most intriguing section of the Norskehavet— the Norwegian sea—whose downdraft was so dangerous that it was deemed off-limits to passing travelers.

And this was not just any ordinary maelstrom—it was the legendary and formidable _Moskenstraumen_ maelstrom— in that even this fearsome sea monster held an inner dread of crossing the great whirlpool when the semi-diurnal tides were in full driving current energy turbulence.

With the vivid memory of a more pleasant seaside visit of years ago close in her dreamlike state, Elsa hears the indistinct, vague sounds of violent swishing thrashed waves that were crashing about her groggy ears.

Queen Elsa fights the overwhelming urge to go back to sleep via the analgesic numbing process of the narcoleptic toxin exuded from the Draugen monster's hand that had caused her uncontrollable somnipathy.

She forces her heavy eyelids open from her happiest, best dream of welcoming her so cherished sister to this world with her loving parents when it is transmuted, in the matter of a few woozy seconds, into a terrifying worst nightmare of being cornered, alone, at some hideous monster's mercy.

There she was, lying amidst a sticky gooey mass of the dark algae coated, foul-stenched Draugen creature that the evil pegleg pirate had grotesquely transformed into before her frightened eyes.

"Noo!" Elsa lets out a high-pitched screech, giving frostbite to several strands of the seaweed withering back from her. All alone, she struggles to break free of the surprisingly strong dark green tethers that had gripped her to the creature's left hand that she was clutched in.

**_Szztt! SzzTT! Szztt! SzzTT! SSZZTTT!_**

She instantly frost-freezes each of the seaweed pieces wriggling about, holding her down, until they grow so heavy with their own weight, they crack off and plummet to the sands below.

But there were so many along the arm, too, all making a grab for the still energy-drained Queen as she tries to crawl away, and she is overwhelmed.

"What do you want of me?" Elsa weakly cries, and the monster senses her fear. As the magical creature starts to feed off her suffering, the seaweed she had iced on its palm regrows to seize her claustrophobic body with the closing-in darkness again.

**_SSZZTTT! SSZZTTT! SSZZTTT! SSZZTTT! SSZZTTT! SSZZTTT!_**

To her horror, even the Ice Queen's most ardent ice blasts seemed impotent against the monster. With every frosted fierce attack shot from her desperate fingers that failed to destabilize the monster, Elsa becomes more and more panicked of her situation. Soon, even her most passionate lethal ice blast is absorbed by the cold-blooded Draugen's outer shell of thick seaweed and barnacles that were nourished by insecurity and fear.

"Let me go!" She begins to hyperventilate after none but the first of her subzero assaults appeared to affect it anymore. All Elsa's spent ice energies seemed to do was gain the sixty foot tall limping monster's unwanted attention.

The Draugen pauses in its trudging trek down the north side of the Wilhelmstind mountain and across its white, sandy beachfront. It halts to gaze across the sea before it takes a first step into the stretch of the Norskehavet that ran a few kilometers between uninhabited Mosken island and the widely inhabited fishing villages dotting the Lofoten archipelago to the north.

As she surveys the scene with terrified eyes, Elsa sees that the deadly, vengeful Draugen appeared to be heading on an indiscriminate rampage across her country. Once it reached populated Lofoton, just to the North of this sea, the Queen of Norway feared for her people's innocent lives.

"Stop! As sovereign of this great country, I order you to vacate from this land and leave my people in peace!" With all the courage and bravery and decorum the young woman could muster, Elsa issues the command, her regal head held high.

The momentarily hesitant Draugen stares down at the minuscule human woman clutched in its gargantuan enormous hand who was making a noisy nuisance of herself, just as pitiable as the heartless Captain always viewed womankind to be.

**R-ROOAARR!**

As its black eyes stare down, astounded for a few moments at the trembling female who dared to challenge him in her audacity, the Draugen's ugly face, in true viciousness, then bears four rows of sharp brownish yellowed teeth at her. Amidst the putrid breath that was even more unconscious rendering than its combined sleep inducing toxic regrown multiple tentacles, Elsa faints.

The monster's seaweed then darkly wraps around the pale, blood drained Elsa's passed out body that once again crumples into its palm's slimy, squirming hand. The Draugen seemed to be considering the blonde in her billowing on the sea breeze purple dress as it holds the Arendelle Queen high up to the skies if she were some gleaming trophy prize.

For the wicked wily pirate's monstrous true form still retained that depraved greedy desire, now even more decayed, deranged and derelict, no matter how much blood and destruction, or who or what the cost must be paid. It lived now to rule and inflict suffering, to overpower the weak, for the strong to survive – and most of all – to exact the most revenge for a life spent in ridicule and pain with a burning hatred that never saw its corrupted way into the cool light.

And the overwhelming darkness only left in his unworthy soul craved to snuff out that light from this worthless Land of the Midnight Sun.

And next, all of insignificant humanity…

* * *

_As the four horse-drawn enchanted enclosed sleigh swiftly rides the wind through the dusky blue twilight sky's cloud cover that had overtaken the Midnight Sun…_

Princess Anna had been vividly explaining to her parents the team's adventures that had brought them to this point, with more than a little bit of Eugene and Rapunzel's input to fill in some of the blank parts of the epic journey that the bright eyed Arendelle Princess missed out on.

King Agdar's contemplative deliberation hung heavy on his deeply furrowed eyebrow as he could only peripherally half listen to his daughter. The majority of his attention was focused on directing the flying ice carriage upwards over the jagged mountainside they were traversing with as much alacrity as possible.

The Ice King ably maneuvers the horse's reins to drive the Snow Queen's magically airborne sleigh as he leans out the window side perch. All while formulating a plan to save his kidnapped daughter from the pirate's fearsome creature the others had described to Agdar that Houtebeen was transformed into when the holy waters judged him unworthy.

_Dear Lord, give your thankful, humblest servant the fortitude to rescue his child from this horror._

It was because_ t_he worthy King truly understood where all true power came from, that he, unlike the wicked-hearted pirate who neither understood nor feared God, had been restored by His grace.

King Agdar's reverent quiet consternation on the perplexing uncertainty of their new mission, with Elsa's life in the balance, causes a cool silence to soon be drawn over the mystical carriage coach's plush interior, once Anna finishes relating their tale.

"God has blessed you with a wondrous gift, your Majesty. I can see where your daughters inherited their beautiful voices from. Thank you for giving me your song." Hans whispers, as the pastures of his green eyes smile up at Idun's gentle touch while her lilting voice finishes the melody as she softly stroked his red hair back in place over his nursed head injuries.

Squeezing the older woman's exhausted hands with warm gratitude, Hans graciously thanks the frail Queen for her healing Christmas song of 'Oh How Beautiful the Sky' that she lullabied to him in his own Danish tongue. Idun had sung his cuts away with her sweet soprano's golden flower imbued voice that fixed all the open scrapes and laceration cut wounds on Hans' bloody back that the young man had endured for her younger daughter's safety.

"It is you, sir, we are indebted to." Idun awards Hans, seated across her, a wan smile as, her work finished. She sits back in her seat to re-collect her generous healing energies. Her warm, thankful hand, appreciative for what Hans had done in saving her child, automatically laces around a lip-twisted Anna's beside her.

But before Anna has the chance to dissuade her innocent mother's high opinion of this impatient-to-sit-still flattering redheaded rascal, the patched up and mended to stand Hans moves from his seat beside Eugene and Rapunzel, to where the King of Arendelle was deep in thought on the other side of the coach.

"Your Majesty, if I may be so bold as to interrupt?"

Norway's King had one hand extended out the window, the other raised to touch the ice carriage's interior ceiling. His keen eyes were doggedly trained down the mountain range that he was simultaneously directing the four white horses prancing in the air with the mere flick of their frosted reins at the icy power of his intent mind.

"Speak." Is the one cool clipped word that passes from the King's ice coated lips. His gaze never breaks to grace Hans with a glance, for quiet, steely Agdar was so full of raw determination to find and rescue his precious eldest daughter, everyone else was hushed not intrude on the in-charge sovereign's frosted cold smoking breaths.

But the Danish Prince continued on, undaunted, for Hans Westergaard had something he felt compelled to say.

"Perhaps, Your Majesty, there is some way for your vast ice powers to assist in propelling me onto one of those mighty steed's backs out there. Then if you may utilize your considerable frozen prowess to un-harness the lead horse, I would request that I may use that noblest creature to employ my humble services in practiced cartography to aid you in expediting the scouting out the lay of the land of the mountain that forms this singular island. I have extensive experience with equines, so I would be able to serve as your Majesty's head lookout from the unencumbered horse's lofty height's 'crow's nest,' speaking strictly in loose Naval terms."

"'Propel you upon one of the horses for a lookout scouting mission'? How creative and innovative a thinker you are, young man." King Agdar looks upon Hans for a moment with enlightened admiration. "But the degree of trust in my ice abilities, not to mention in your own skills of agility and fortitude to brave the cold I would be emitting, is both, at once, admirable and foolhardy." King Agdar, so impressed with the younger, no doubt intrepid naval officer's offer, was inclined to decline it for the uncertainty of his own frozen power's subzero temperatures. Perhaps the Snow Queen's frosted horse could withstand, but a normal human man…

"Let me assure you, I am thoroughly versed with Queen Elsa's ice magic and am more than willing to risk my life with swift travel on flying horseback to aid you in any way to find your kidnapped daughter's whereabouts and rescue her from that iniquitous vile captor." Hans seemed fervent in his unconditional offer as he finally adds one more statement in King Agdar's impressed eyes. "You needn't worry for my individual security, your Majesty. Queen Elsa is all that matters now. It is of imperative vital importance to me, personally, to bring her to safety." Hans finishes his lengthy assurances to the King with a flourished bow of his head to the sovereign whose full attention the young Naval officer had now thoroughly garnered.

Agdar exchanges a somber look with Idun as he pauses before addressing the seemingly competent young man.

"Your name, sir?" King Agdar appreciated the young gentleman's kind, intelligent tone of words as he looks the well poised, well spoken young man up and down in obvious assessment.

"Hans Westergaard." Without title nor affected pretense, the younger man offers his name to the King with respectful, bowed eyes.

"Westergaard? Are you not then one of the princes of our neighbors to the South?" King Agdar scrutinizes the redheaded young lad's unmistakable Danish accent and handsome features, not to mention his cultured deportment that screamed good royal breeding that the 'touch haughty' himself King of Norway held in high regard.

"Yes, your Majesty, you are correct. I am the youngest son of King Herbert of the Southern Isles." Hans answers the Norwegian King with truthful green eyes that did not intend to flaunt his royal roots, but he had been asked directly.

_[Cough, cough] _"Disowned." _[Cough, cough]_ Anna chooses this introductory moment to have a coughing spell, whilst 'politely' dropping a well-placed word of accusation in the middle of her uproarious throat choking.

"Anna? Are you unwell?" With concern, Queen Idun says as she methodically pats her daughter on the back, thinking the girl was literally choking.

"No no no. _I'm fine_**_._** This weather here is just **attempting** to **murder** me! I wish we could **banish** it from our **kingdom**! It** plays tricks** on a girl! No **lying**! It really **takes** the **crown**!" Anna expressly emphasizes some choice words as she gives Hans a warning pair of eyes that told him to 'back off' or she'll spill the beans.

"Anna,_ min lilla flicka,_ you say the strangest things." Now working on Eugene's multiple bumps and bruises in places unmentionable for anyone but a mother's eyes, Queen Idun tries to laugh off her younger child's rude address of this comely young man of Elsa's.

But there was an underlying mistrust and dislike in Anna's demeanor for this red-haired young Dane that was still plainly visible, just as her mother had sensed before. Although, blessedly, her harried husband was yet ignorantly insensible to pick up on anything so subtle as any unwanted romantic tension for either of his daughters.

But one look at this _Hans-ome_ suitor of her elder daughter's, Queen Idun could instinctively see the budding romance in his determined-to-save-the-Queen-with-no-thought-to himself eyes that she had glimpsed in Elsa briefly in similar, _no_, rather in full blossomed _love,_ earlier atop the mountain spur.

Despite their desperate circumstances and her own concern for her daughter's safety, Queen Idun smiles to see her Elsa's hard-won sentiments returned by a young man not only daring, noble and valiant, but also charming, dashing and debonair, even if Anna obviously didn't find him agreeable.

Here, King Agdar returns his arrayed attention back to the conversation.

"Denmark has a fine Navy in the Royal Sovaernet. Yet you wear Norway's Sjoforsvaret uniform because…?" King Agdar's keen eyes were a little curious as to the young maritime officer joining his home country's Navy, when every male royal must serve in his own nation's fleet, as a mandatory rule of thumb.

"Queen Elsa has made me a Kommander in her Navy. I have pledged my life and honor in her service, your Majesty. And now yours. Please trust me with this task in support of our Queen." Hans bows his head reverently to Agdar, who blinks at this young man's enthusiasm for a neighboring country.

"Admirable." Agdar nods, pleased with what he was hearing as he leans back out the window to attend to the carriage's demanding ascent again, sensing the horse team had grown wayward on their own.

"She would **not** make you a Kommander in our Navy!" Anna quietly explodes in a hissy fit whisper right in Hans' humiliated face.

"Ummm, not wanting to pop your balloon, Pixie, but she **did**. We were all there to witness Queenie commission my Lillebror as some high faluting commanding officer—official sword knighting ceremony and all." Eugene put his two cents in here, causing Anna to want to call in the bank on the former thief.

"Ooh, you shut up! What did I expect _you_ to say? You're the criminal who got us all into this mess!" Now Anna was hitting below the belt in her panicked, lashing out fear.

"Ouch. I deserved that." Eugene rubs at his aching behind that Anna just verbally kicked, though Rapunzel looked even more hurt than her thick-skinned husband.

"People change, Anna! Even a guy who's done some bad things or hurt you before, when the moment of truth comes, he can turn out to be your greatest superhero, even the love of your life, if you believe in him." With a smirk over the woolly baby sheep in her arms up at Eugene, compassionate Rapunzel, referring to a blushing Hans and her own heart-throb indirectly, each one on either side of her, says to Anna with wide eyes and an experienced nuzzle to her once again hirsute stubbly love's stunningly good-looking chin.

"Thanks, Liebling… I think." With Pascal in a quizzical orange shade on his shoulder, Eugene responds to his little woman. He pulls her lissome body, pesky lamb in her arms and all, onto his lap with that silly crooked grin returning to his once upon a time thieving handsome features as he pets her short shock of brown waves to his chest caressingly.

Anna 'hmphs' and crosses her arms, sitting back in the opposite seat bench, skeptically unimpressed.

"Anna! Manners!" Giving apologetic glances all around, Idun pinches her rude daughter's arm before Agdar comes back to return his attention to the carriage interior and the young redhead who was still resolute in his gung-ho offer, despite Anna giving him a silent look of daggers.

"If you, sir, are amenable to truly trust my abilities, I would be remiss in my duties as your commanding officer not to rely in yours that you have quite rationally offered. Especially considering the fact that my daughter already has placed her confidence in your leadership in making you one of our chief naval officers. I hold her opinion of people's character, as she is the monarch of this land, in high regard." A cool hand placed on Hans' Navy blue uniform's staunch chest, King Agdar puts into account, believing beyond his own gut assessment, that this young man was both capable and genuine in his concern.

Plus the fact that his characteristically tentative elder daughter possessed a hard-won trust quotient for this naval officer was something that should not be easily dismissed.

"Thank you, your Majesty. I will strive to the utmost of my abilities to locate and protect Queen Elsa of Arendelle, at all costs. On my honor." Hans Westergaard, dramatic hand over heart in pledged veneration to both of Norway's monarchs, then immediately swings into action. Hans gives a sad, passing glance of begged forgiveness one more time to a grimaced Anna, for both remembered his uttering that lofty phrase once before when she left him in charge of all of Arendelle during Elsa's Eternal Winter crisis.

Then, in one motion, familiar with horse-drawn carriages of all varieties, the tall slender man reaches up over his head to unlatch the carriage's roof hatch before lifting his sinewy body by the force of his upper arm muscles, and consequently his limber legs, to launch himself onto the Snow Queen's enclosed ice sleigh roof.

Defying the massive pull of gravity and turbulent wind velocity with King Agdar's ice shielded assistance, Hans utilizes his thin agile frame's sheer force of will to climb across the gale whipped carriage top.

Once he reaches the horses, he speaks gently in his melodic tenor to each of the snow white horses as he carefully passes along their ice projected forms. Nimbly, Hans secures his legs around the lead pale white mare, petting her mane with the sincere tender plea whispered in her ear: "Please help me find my beloved one."

After he and every other eye watching the midair stunt with either admiration or wonder pause to release their held back breath, the Ice King's pale blue eyes begin to glow. Agdar then focuses all of his energy to act as extended hands and fingers until he is able to unleash the frozen tight straps that attached it to the rest of the team from around the left side lead horse Hans had chosen, until it was released to fly freely through the misty sky.

Unfettered, the noble steed and its heroic rider race forward from the weighty carriage upon the King's projected ice path. Man and horse are propelled swiftly along as this magical horse's crystal hooves pound the ice track trail into hail sized shards beneath their intense galloping path upwards.

"Wow! Look at him go! Like a death-defying, daring young man on his flying trapeze as he cuts clear across the sky! Oh-oh! That has all the makings of a great song! _'He floats through the air with the greatest of ease! His movements are graceful, he tries hard to please! The daring young man on his flying trapeze!'_" Olaf chooses this awed moment to warble a show tune he'd just formulated in his inimitably excited, childlike descriptive manner.

"My Elsa created you in perpetual ice permanence, Snowman?" King Agdar, able to sit back for a small respite now that Hans' scouting horse was taking the lead of the others, with the team in close pursuit after the King's icy hand had re-harnessed the carriage to be balanced.

"'Perpetual Ice Permanence'? Ooh! That makes me sound so cool, Elsa and Anna's Papa!** I love it**!" Pausing from his ditty, Olaf ecstatically bounces up and down on Hans' now empty seat. The sentient snow being, kept frozen by Elsa's constant snow flurry above his head, claps his branches together in effusive glee.

"Her powers have expanded past mine, as I knew they would." Agdar marvels at Elsa's creation proudly as he pats Olaf's packed snow head where an independent free-thinking brain, however questionable at times, existed.

"And as long as you are maintained, my girl is surely out there somewhere, alive." Astute King Agdar concludes with a gratified sigh at the animated mounds of snow his daughter had forged into a lifeform with her own ice powers, and the precious original artist's life that Olaf's snowy continuance signified.

The limber King then stands upon the coach seat to restlessly oversee Kommander Westergaard's progress from that elevated aerial view from the opened carriage roof hatch.

"Weird… JustHans said the same thing of me before we went to go save Elsa when she went missing last time! That was when JustHans zeroed in on Elsa when we were in that rowboat like a homing pigeon way back in Grip, didn't he, Cousin Rapunzel? Maybe that's what true love is, too? Knowing deep inside where the one you love is, giving your all and risking your own life to make sure that someone is safe, even when you think you have no chance of that person's love in return."

"True love?! Olaf, take that back!" Though a jaw-dropped Anna was too mixed up inside to deal with one of Olaf's simple truths in proverb form right now, the Queen of Arendelle looks with great interest to her smiling, married niece in the bench directly across from her.

"Olaf's right! Hans has been as good as gold to all of us since we've found him! Staying up all hours driving the team and constantly taking care of the horses, swordfighting ruffians to protect us, commanding that big ship like an expert, not to mention his wonderful cooking skills keeping us fed all along the trail, without a word of thanks. I think he cares for Elsa a lot or he wouldn't have done all that. Don't you agree, Eugene?" Rapunzel nods her reassuring smile back at her Aunt with her fervent belief that Hans was a first-rate guy. her new brother-in-law had proved it time and time again in so many innumerable ways.

"_'Criminals'_ don't get to have opinions, Blondie. Although…our philanthropic, multi-talented Sideburns definitely has been exhibiting signs of being bitten by the love bug." Eugene could never hold his opinionated tongue for long. Though he does deftly move his precious attractive face to the side to avoid being slapped by a feisty Anna's vicious backhand as she nearly tumbles her top over teakettle when reaching across the coach.

"Not you guys, too! Love?! Hmph! That jerk doesn't know what love is! You weren't there two years ago! **I was**! Hans was** the bad guy** who tried to take over Arendelle, break my frozen heart, leaving me to die, pretend to save Elsa from that Weaselton guy's thugs, only to try to kill her himself later. And then, after _wonderful_ Cousin Eugene over there swiped our holy relics, we find **that Red**, cooking and cleaning on that evil pirate's ship! Hey! How do we even know if **that** **Westergaard** wasn't in on holding my parents captive all those years? He **was** on **that** rotten pirate's ship working for **that** villain, after all… And now he's after Elsa again! Do you think** I'm** going to **trust** him with her if we get her back?! I mean 'when' we get her back! It has to be when...Oh, Mama, we have to save Elsa!"

In a whirlwind blame-building frenzy, a herself dizzied and frustrated Anna bangs her tearful head against the seat headrest. She totally confused her mother by now, with her hysterical rant and rather serious allegations concerning their neighboring Prince of Southern Isles in the many convolutions of her past, and her sister's present relations with the perplexing young man.

Idun, her motherly desire for the longest time that her lonely eldest child to find a suitable mate, along with her feminine intuition that sensed this Prince Hans to be genuine in his sentiment for Elsa already herself, swallows hard with the conflicting reports of him as she hugs her emotionally spent little daughter close to her throbbing chest. Idun smooths back Anna's messy braids as busy maternal hands unconsciously un-braid and re-braid that mass of unkempt ginger hair as she always did for both her little girls growing up.

NO, Anna did not approve of him. Yet knowing her littlest girl to be a fickle will 'o the wisp, much the same as she was in her own headstrong youth, Idun couldn't help but wonder if the strength of a sister's love prejudiced the girl in her judgment of this young Prince. If that was the case, no one would ever be good enough for Elsa.

Just as none would ever have been good enough for _her_ older sister, Primrose, although 'old' King Thomas down in Corona turned out to be the finest example of a loving, supportive man.

_Oh, Primmy! How I long to see you again and tell you, by the grace of God, I'm alive! The **whole** family will all come and visit you, when we save my Elsa. And it is a '**when'**._

"Please say nothing of all this to the King. It will upset him further, unnecessarily." After steeling herself with the happy thought of reuniting with her own beloved big sister, Queen Idun makes the decision for her other half. She meets each eye in the coach with the request for silence on the delicate subject that mind-consumed Agdar was blissfully unaware of.

And not a moment too soon, for King Agdar's long legs swing him back into the snow carriage just at that second.

As the King settles back down from his ice orchestrated perch, Idun was glad her focused husband had not heard any of the quarrelsome exchange. He had enough heartache and anxiety on his mind now to take on another burden, knowing how the protective father would react to Elsa having a suitor – questionable or otherwise. The King had given this obliging young Prince Hans his trust as a dutiful-to-the-crown fellow naval officer, and that was all he needed to know the extent of for now.

Agdar's queen was proud of how her love had held up in controlling the innate ice in his overwhelmed heart thus far, and she wasn't about to reveal anything untoward that would jeopardize that stability.

"Why the uncomfortable silence? Have I missed something, Idun?" The icy, now fairhaired oblivious ruler felt every eye on him as he alights back down into the carriage on his seat.

"No, Darling. Rapunzel was just telling me how invaluable and helpful that young Prince out there has been to them on this journey." Idun speaks only encouragement for her troubled mate, with the knowledge of how fragile a state the recently revived to life sovereign was in.

"Then we are fortunate to have such a resourceful man in the service of our naval forces. Elsa was wise to recognize his worth as an able, insightful, and respectful officer. Three upright, civilized qualities that have become far too neglected in this modern contemporary age."

Outraged Anna nearly says something to her Papa here, but her mother's warning enlarged eyes beside her stop her fuming daughter from opening her mouth. Deflated, and wishing for her big-hearted Kristoff -her stable rock- to be here, the small framed girl shrinks back in her window seat and covers her perturbed face with her caramel colored braids instead. Coupled with her resentment and distrust towards Hans, was Anna's overwhelmed inner fear for Elsa, too as she scrunches her eyes closed tight.

Unaware of Anna's seething turmoil, with satisfied eyes on the Navy man who executed his duty well, whilst he maintains his ice path beneath Hans' horse, King Agdar trains his gaze forward into the rushing winds through the carriage side window to where that young Danish Prince's own red head was lowered down to the flying lead mare. Hans' whispered words of encouragement in her ear cause the noble snowy white horse to race across the blazing trail sky to her fullest, yet before untapped, potential.

Together, man and beast seek out another frozen feminine heart that Kommander Westergaard had thawed with the attentive warmth of his sincere feelings for her, that no one, even himself at times, could trust to believe possible.

With nothing _but_ trust to go on, the rest of the aerial horse-led frosted snow carriage team follow Hans' mounted brave lead across the wind swept Mosken Isle in pursuit of his unattainable dream, if just to keep her alive…

* * *

_min lilla flicka - _my little girl_  
_

_Sovaernet_ \- Royal Danish Navy

_Sjoforsvaret_ \- Royal Norwegian Navy

_Lillebror_\- Little Brother in Danish

* * *

_Thanks for the 'adorable' review on last chapter "Let It Go", Guest-sama! I truly appreciate the kind words on my humble little (OK, not so small a tall tale anymore ^_*) from everyone of my new Frozen friends! I never knew others (It's mandatory for big sisters love everything I write, right? ^0^) would be so enthused about my imagination's unleashed gateways!_

_I am so happy to receive your reviews, that I've even created a special Word file to save as fond memories all of your wonderful input and fun reader viewpoint of my Helsa, Kristanna, Eupunzel- and now the addition of some cool royal parents, Agdun :)? storytime! I **love** to see what you think after each chapter and look forward to watch who responds every week!_

_Please keep them kindly reviews rolling in as we march into Act III's climactic danger part of da-da! "Frozen: Again 'But the Greatest of these is Love'!_

_Thank you and God bless!_

_HarukaKou_


	45. Chapter 44 - The Malevolent Abomination

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act III**

**Chapter 44**

**"The Malevolent Abomination"**

Well ahead of the ice carriage due to their head start and the reindeers' excellent flight speed, Sven's aerial upward mobility ascends the Wilhelmstind mountain rise almost side-by-side with his lighter golden-tan female cervidae counterpart.

Kristoff squints as he tries to focus in between the rangifer's tall antlers at the site ahead.

His brown eyes widen when he first glimpses the monstrous Draugen on the beachfront below.

The sea creature seemed to have grown in stature since last it was seen, from an already extraordinary height of sixty feet to a gargantuan eighty, with razor-sharp double rows of teeth none too obscuring its foul-stenched breath and beady black whirlpools of swirling eyes.

And those dark eyes were gazing towards the ocean with a deep yearning.

Swiftly, the practical young mountain man assesses the dire straits of the kidnapped Queen as an emergency of the highest order.

{"Ragi! We have to get that thing's attention before it dives underwater, and takes Elsa along with it! When we get near, let's split up. We'll take the right and you take the left. Maybe we can distract it long enough for one of us to make a grab for Elsa!"} Kristoff silently sends brainwaves to the older reindeer rider, as if it were second nature.

{"That is a sound plan, my boy. I will fly my Svala towards that abomination's high left flank side while Sven brings you as close as possible to the hand appendage in front where that young woman is being held captive."} Impressed by his son's tactical battle-ready intelligence, the old soldier called 'Ragi' mentally responds to Kristoff. He names his flying reindeer's moniker for the first time as the doe-eyed Rangifer Tarandus hind, with her golden vanilla fur, spins her head around to meet Ragi's steely gaze.

Svala – a graceful bird '_swallow' _in Nordic terminology – then turns her exotic hazel eyes to nod a salutary glance at Sven soaring beside her.

The male reindeer, in the midst of his summer rutting season, merely gulps back as he refocuses on his flight path ahead instead with nervous averted eyes, as several little white birdies fly past.

Not just imaginary birdies, either.

{"Where have you guys been hiding? We've been looking everywhere for you kids on this godforsaken island! Man, I could tell you some stories…"} The leader of the small flock of seagulls drawls out as he lackadaisically crosses the sky to where the two reindeer teams were soaring. But Scuttle's peripheral vision never noticed the humongous, algal covered monster on the beach below.

{"Hey! There's something different about you, Prince My Kristly... Something just about to fly off the tip of my tongue…Don't tell me…"} Scuttle scrutinizes his critical gaze upon the blonde haired man. The ditzy bird did not register the fact that the before grounded reindeer was flying through the air right beside him. No, that would be too obvious.

{"I dunno… Is it the fancy-schmancy cape? Nah! That's not it. But you guys seem so…bigger than life, or something strange… Oh! I get it now!"} Scuttle winks with a knowledgeable smirk suddenly coming to his beak. {"Are you growing a beard? I _have_ heard that does _something_ for the chicks. If you know what I mean."} Rubbing at his own ruffled feather chin plumage as he rudely, yet in his case, accurately, describes the opposite sex's natural attraction to male biology, Scuttle raises his eyebrows with mischievous insinuation at Kristoff's disheveled golden tan stubble now adorning the man's handsomely rugged lower face.

{"I think you better stay out of this one, Scuttle. You just go back over the mountain and check on Anna and the others, see that they're all right. This might get rough."} Rolling his eyes with a dismissive grunt at the seagull's inane banter, Kristoff chooses to ward off the talkative fowl.

{"Ooh, dangerous stuff, eh? You can count on the Scuttle Recon, fellas! We've got your backs! Team! Reconnoiter!"} The saluting bird smacks himself in the head instead as he and his white feathered companions make a circular route to the rear over the mountain rise as carrier seagulls.

Thinking of Anna and her family's whereabouts with a concerned countenance, the young ice harvester touches a hand to the glowing yellow crystals dangling on his troll necklace. He couldn't get through to her, there was some kind of barrier to their bond's communication, but Kristoff knew in his heart that his Anna was safe.

{"Right. Did you get what Ragi said before, Sven?"} The blonde ice harvester was also too preoccupied with his own imperative thoughts of imminent rescue to notice his lifelong partner's sudden bout of shyness when faced with a fluttering pair of feminine eyes from the reindeer's opposite sex.

{"Yeah."} The determined, pseudo-tough guy reindeer bull projects back to his friend in agreement as they surge forward towards certain peril.

"Hang on tight, then. We're going in." Driven, ambitious Kristoff verbally says to the quiet Caribbean behind him on Sven's back, to which brusque Job responds with an affirmative mumbled nod.

As if one spirit, both Wind Whisperers, one young and strapping with virility, the other weathered and old, yet still viable, each simultaneously lean their full body weights on their respective reindeer downward and forward. With all their combined mental control of nature's elements, the two men silently, as surreptitiously as possible so as not to alert the fiend, rush on the headwinds down the cliff's leeward side.

Using gravity's pull to increase their covert traveling speed, the pair of racing airborne reindeer together cross the murky midnight sun sky. Until, just meters behind the unaware Draugen in its slow march towards the sea, they diverge paths – one going high as the other hangs low.

Taking the lead, the first fearless Wind Whisperer named Ragi, doesn't need to tighten intuitive Svala's reins to direct the pale reindeer doe to encircle around the brackish seaweed and kelp covered back of what must be the head of the eighty foot tall garish algae monster.

Once in position, Ragi purposely makes his presence known. The instantly growling, taken off guard Draugen's beady black eyes dizzily trace Svala's brazen insurgent airy twirls and sky prancing around its monstrous dark green seaweed head.

_**R-R-ROARR!**_

The huge slimy mass of undead seaweed and rotting kelp creature lets out a ferocious roar as it amply displays its two jagged sharp rows of decayed yellowed teeth. Its black eyes roll around when the Draugen surveys Ragi's flight about its spinning head, as if the man mounted reindeer was nothing more than an annoying bug to swat with its free right hand.

But that was just what the original Wind Whisperer expected, as he and Svala take experienced evasive action and avoid the clumsy creature's subsequent attacks.

{"Sven! Go! Go! Go!"} Having stayed out of the distracted sea monster's vision range at a low level near the shore, Kristoff seizes this open chance. He flies his own rangifer in an express route towards where an unconscious, yet strangely glowing, fainted Elsa was wrapped in its left hand's sticky seaweed frond, sorus, and haptera laden clutches.

Once Sven pumps his husky robust legs through the sky waves near to the Draugen's squirming palm, Kristoff and Job lean over to use their powerful muscles to wrestle the ilky seaweed stipes from around the passed-out blonde woman.

But each time either the pale mountain man or the dark first mate use their broad shouldered strength to untangle the Queen's limp purple clothed body from one or more of the flexing deep green benthic algal vines, the perfidious species of watery weed just squiggle back around her.

"They don't stop! I never thought a stupid plant could be this strong!" Kristoff mutters in frustration as his rapidly moving hands were never quick enough to successfully pull away the resilient cluster of seaweed.

Yet, no matter how hard the stalwart men tried, it seemed a losing battle. The sadistic plant life each had a mind all their own, even for the pair of strong beefy men to overcome. The greedy Draugen was not about to let its newfound energy source of the Ice Queen's inherent great power go.

"How are we going to get rid of these?!" Kristoff only found solace in the fact that Anna's sister was still alive. Although Elsa was currently out cold – no pun of the _Ice_ Queen intended – her frosted shell was engulfed in a shadowy green aura of a void all about her that was disturbing.

"Like dis maybes." Said in a calm low voice, Job produces an unexpected sharp carving knife tool from his belt as, with a vengeance, the former pirate lackey slashes at the root of each nasty stipe stem that held Elsa down to the Draugen's right palm.

After the vacillating seaweed pieces are lopped off, they plummet, still wriggling, to the white sands near the splashing shore below.

With all due speed, Kristoff moves to claim Elsa's crumpled up form, finally freed of the reprehensible ocean vegetation that had been gorging energy off her unconscious nightmares.

"Come on! Wake up, Elsa! You can fight this!" Shaking her unresponsive body, Kristoff pleadingly bellows in his sister-in-law's ear as he tries to quickly awaken her. The keen-eyed man could see the chopped off stumps of the seaweed beneath her begin to pulsate back to life.

"Argh!" At first unaware in the chaos, Kristoff suddenly couldn't withstand the permafrost dark energy circulating around Elsa prone body. He looks down at his two badly ice-burned hands and his reflexes grudgingly force him to let her go.

_Frostbite?_

Growing up in the mountainous tundra regions in the far North where the Ice Harvesters often took the young lad in their honest hard-working occupation, Kristoff had seen his share of natural frostbite. But never to this fierce isolated degree.

And especially not on a warm summer day such as this.

It was as if the unconscious Arendelle Queen was in a constantly sub-zero rapid quick freeze. There was some sort of thick ice wall of self induced protective stasis produced from her immense uncontrollable fear.

_Please be all right, Elsa! If something bad happens to you, Anna will just fall apart…_

But this additional fearful trepidation is precisely when the Draugen's cut off appendages tremor and start to germinate back to life. The communicative seaweed grows at a rapid rate before Kristoff's horrified eyes, even as they reach for Elsa's poor vulnerable body again.

But this time, his and Job's, too.

It was Kristoff's compassionate fear for her welfare that brought the dark green vines springing back to life. The relentless algal body now wraps around the two men's appendages as well, to suck at all of their ebbing energy levels with the algae's hydrogen sulfide toxic, narcoleptic side effect.

A sleep entranced, yet kicking and fighting Kristoff is yanked off Sven by the vicious multicellular enemy's lamina blade that was attached to the creature's dark moldy green chest area.

The sharp pointed plant blade wraps around Kristoff's unwitting neck and he is wildly thrashed through the air by the animated vines, until the sturdy mountain man with a self-described 'thick skull' is nearly rendered unable to survive much more punishment.

"No more leeching off good people, Cap'n! No more!" Rebellious Job indignantly declares as he recognized the sleep induced quality of this sea monster of nautical legend and forces himself wide awake to leap from Sven's frightened back onto the now ninety foot long Draugen's torso.

The courageous Caribbean man starts punching and kickboxing again at the thick seaweed's finger-like haptera extension vines that were strangled around Kristoff's neck directly at their center source.

**_POW! BAMM! WHACK! SMASSH!_**

Pugilist Job struts his stuff as he utilizes many of his former prize-winning boxing and wrestling techniques. The dark man successfully KO's the attaching weeds, even the Draugen's foot thick in circumference projected lamina blade that was knotted around the tall blonde's neck.

**KA-POWW!**

The Caribbean saved his finest last powerhouse punch for the brackish toxic seaweed vine that cruelly encircled Kristoff's strangled, choking-for-breath neck, until the broken wicked weed wilts to finally let its victim go.

_**EE-RROWWWLL!**_

But the angry Draugen lets off a livid yell in response to the intense pain caused. And in retribution, the bitter creature wrenches Kristoff away from Job with another attacking thick blade stipe that vindictively impales the Islander straight through his side, right through Job's obliques and into his intestines.

It then tosses a gasping, choking, and coughing Kristoff some forty feet down to the rocky shoreline below to his certain death.

**"KRISTOFF!" **Sensing Kristoff's pain and terror, Ragi cries out, as he watches with tormented eyes, his special one and only offspring about to be dashed to the unforgiving jagged stone shore near the reef.

But quick response Sven doesn't let best friend down. The rescuing Rangifer reindeer rushes in record rapid rate – especially for a new apprentice sky racer – and heroically intercepts to catch his forever friend's plummeting body upon his relieved back, just moments before Kristoff is split asunder on the craggly rocks below.

As he sees Sven lower a coughing and sputtering, yet alive, Kristoff to the sands of the beach, Ragi too, could breathe now a sigh of relief.

Although, faithful old soldier, Regimental Oberst Colonel Ragi of the Norwegian Forsvaret Army never has another breath's opportunity to do so.

_**SLAPPP!**_

For one second too long, Ragi's own attention in diverting the unstoppable Draugen's awareness had been drawn away by his inner gut feeling that his blessed Christ-bearer child whom he had watched over from afar for all of Kristoff's young life, was in a danger this old father could not protect his only son from.

_**RROAGGRRARR!**_

The evil Draugen, impatient to continue his trek now that the Moskenstaumen maelstrom was in its daily digression, slaps an enormous contemptible backhand, full of pure hatred, to this puny human's uprise against his might. Smacked clear off his reindeer, his spine nearly shattered in half, Ragi, from where he and Svala were a hundred feet up, is instantly sent careening away from his flying reindeer and down to a watery grave.

The timeless, age-old man plunges beneath the waves of the Norwegian sea, there existed a small window of semi-diurnal peaceful ebb tide where it normally possessed a violent merciless churn.

_Cough, cough! _"RAGI!" Now was the sputtering Kristoff's turn to cry out his childhood mentor and teacher's name as he himself just comes to on Sven's back where they had landed on the beach to watch the awful scene above with shocked, devastated eyes.

{"Kristoff remember… Every creature has…one penetrable Achilles heel…It has…been pierced…"}

As the bubbles that had been rising to the surface of the waters subside into nothing more than a bit of seafoam, Kristoff hears Ragi's final sparse words. The mysterious old man's raspy voice is clear and true as if 'old Ragi' was still right there beside him.

{"Ragi!"}

"Ragi! Answer me!" But silence on all planes comes the only reply as Kristoff witnesses the fretful pale reindeer Svala go swooping down to paw a hoof and scratch at the now calming ocean surface in hopes that her beloved master would miraculously return.

"I have so much to ask you… Pabbi (_Dad_) …" Kristoff wipes the hot tears running down his cheeks as he manfully bites back the rest of them spilt for his lost mentor, friend, and…father. Kristoff ignores the painful seaweed thrashing aches along his entire body, added to by the deep frostbite on both of his hands as he valiantly mounts his reindeer.

"Come on, Sven we can't let Ragi down! He always believed in us! We have to save Elsa!" The dynamic duo of a boy on his faithful reindeer, who an old soldier raised into a good man and his true friend, zing across the murky sky back towards the retreating beast that was already well past the estuary of the North Sea.

The last Wind Whisperer desperately reaches for the bow and arrow still securely strapped in its quiver to his back as they approach the beast.

Sven's eyes go wide as he watches the archer on his back lift his recurved longbow and ready his gifted weapon from the Saami elders.

Living in each other's pockets all their lives, Sven and Kristoff's minds were as one shared unit as they wordlessly need not communicate to sense one another's thoughts even as they charge forward up through the sky.

{"Svala! Please! Get Job out of there!"} The male reindeer calls out in reindeer-ese language to his distraught female counterpart for her much-needed assistance at this critical juncture.

At Sven's urgent deep voice ringing in her ears, the tawny golden reindeer doe abandons her mournful search over the slowly quelled sea's churning waves. Svala swiftly climbs the sky overhead to where the dark skinned former pro-wrestler was now himself captured in that brutal, over fifteen inch thick in diameter plant vine's skewered cinch hold.

Job's mighty hands were still stubbornly pressing back the tenebrous bizarre greenery contorted around his seriously wounded body. But his big hands around the evil seaweed extensions strapping him to the Draugen's extra wide algae covered chest and squeezing the waning life out of the poor man, were all that was standing between the reformed pirate first mate and eternity…

**_KICKK_! **

Experienced in flying in close quarters, Svala zooms straight up to where a struggling Job was clenched to the gargantuan monster's deadly primary vines of its torso. The reindeer doe takes aggressive action as her trainer Ragi taught her long ago, to think on her feet.

Literal, actual feet that then smash against the asphyxiating seaweed vines.

A wide-eyed Sven is impressed with how capable the young doe was in physical combat.

Freed from staving back the sharp thorny seaweed's unwavering attack, a bloodied, impaled Job uses the remainder of his reserve to deliver one last haymaker Sunday punch until the vine is shock-beaten back. The blood-let, exhausted prizefighter then collapses, breathing hard on Svala's back as she makes a swift retreat to the shore.

Kristoff and Sven fly close to the ferociously growling monster down to where Elsa was growingly becoming more enshrouded within the Dragon's algae sorus clustered left hand.

The intuitive Wind Whisperer sees that the unfortunate vulnerable Queen was still unconscious and now completely trapped in the monster's grip. Elsa was radiant with a dark eerie bluish light as the symbiotic creature was feeding on her automatic reflexive ice powers.

Now that the greedy pirate's ultimate form discovered how well Elsa's deep fear driven energy tasted to serve the insatiable Draugen's increasing need for more power, it wouldn't stop until she was run dry.

So that meant peace-loving, live and let live Kristoff Bjorgman had a mission to fulfill.

Namely, to take down the vile insidious abomination before it consumed Anna's vulnerable sister entirely.

With Sven as his proverbial wings, the courageous mountain man kneels high upon his furry shoulder back that the reindeer instinctively balances him upon as they continue to fly. Trusting his best friend's steadiness, thinking of how good it felt to hold Anna in absolute love as Westergaard had suggested, when the Danish Prince was helping her husband learn the mastery of archery, Kristoff tosses back his hood.

His archer's bracer about the wrist of his sinewy muscular arms, the golden blonde young man draws with his steady massive hands to hold the bow and arrow to his perfect anchor point with a serious look on every one of his stunning features.

As Sven unwaveringly flies around and around the monster, Kristoff gives a stabilizing thought to Ragi, takes a deep breath, followed by a prayer for precision against incredible odds as the archer begins to draw arrow after arrow to his legendary Saami bow.

One, two, three and four arrows directly and exactly are set to fly into the foreboding Draugon's primary vital areas.

_**T'CHI! **_

Kristoff concisely lobs the first sharpened stone tipped arrow to the Draugen's chest where a squarely pierced heart should have been.

_**T'CHI!**_

The second golden shaft's spine is sent barreling straight and true evenly into the middle of the monster's slimy algae grown forehead that undaunted Sven had flown them high on the wind at the vicious monster's seething level.

As his eyes adapt to the dulled, pervading light, Kristoff sends off the rest of his volley of flexed double arrows. The brave Wind Whisperer executes perfect draw length to nock point as he aims his bowstring high to its goal of zeroing in on its target.

In total concentration, Kristoff wills the wind itself to pause for that single second. He then releases those simultaneously double shot arrows' well aligned fletching vanes used to stabilize the twin projectiles on their side by side flight. That is, until a singular whispered gust of wind splits the path of the two arrows apart –

_**T'CHI! T'CHI!**_

And the two legendary Sami hunting arrows directly strike their dual targets of the hundred foot tall deadly Draugen sea monster's pair of repugnant beady ebony black eyes.

_**SPLURTT! SPLURTT!**_

**"EERRKKLLOOOWW!"**

Murky dark goo oozes from the malevolent creature's enlarged punctured pupils as the wounded animal lets out blood curling, ear-shattering scream as every one of the Wind Whisperer's right-on-the-mark arrows were sticking out of the evil marine menace's essential orifices.

Indeed, his relentless penetrating arrows had punctured, or at least traumatized, the writhing creature as each one of its vine tendril seaweed strands begin to wriggle in uncontrolled spasms about its wounded body. And that included the previously insoluble seaweed that had wrapped around Elsa's ice encased, insensate body.

{"Now, Sven! This is our chance!"} Kristoff didn't need to even transmit that pressing sentiment to attentive, attuned Sven who was already speedily back-stepping the air towards the injured Draugen's left appendage.

"Elsa! Wake up!" Though it pained the gentle-hearted man to no end, down to earth Kristoff had the practical audacity and candid compassion to forcefully slap the Queen–_no, his sister_–across the face to snap the girl he considered family back from those tormented knit-brow cold inner fears and back to the warm light of harsh reality.

"Hmm? Huh?" Shuddering and lightheaded, a shivering Elsa moans, thoroughly energy drained and quite dizzy.

"Come on, Sis! You're going to make it outta here!" With gritted teeth as he strenuously shreds several weeds surrounding her arms, Kristoff warmly reassures Elsa's bleary, yet terrified expression.

Using his mountaineering innate balance to climb along the quaking monster's left wrist and hand, Kristoff uses all the rippling muscles in his arms to start powerfully ripping the weakened trembling vines that were left. The extensor seaweed there had reached from all spots of its appendage in an attempt to hold Elsa's pulsating body down.

But Kristoff vigorously tears even those thallus algae lengths too, by their very roots, two or three at a time with Herculean strength, as the monster screeches in unmitigated pure agony.

The pirate transformed wicked creature of legend, though momentarily blinded, and in excruciating pain, could exquisitely feel the plucking out of each of those sensate strands attached to it palm. The agony could be compared to the ripping out by imposing force the entire nail of a human being at its distal nail matrix root, or even a violently dismembered finger –

The angrily enraged Draugen erupts in its terrible scream, even as it increases its leeching away of Elsa's energy to exacerbate its quickened plant regeneration ability. It uses its right hand's unquenched thirst for blood to whack Kristoff so hard that the instantly knocked out young man is sent flying back meters through the air and into the watery shoals face down below.

_Anna, I love you, Baby_…

Kristoff managed to project his dearest thought to his love along their psychic link, just before he hit the surface of the waters. The fond phrase was as fervently strong as he ever has thought anything, if just one more time he wanted her to hear it…

The defeated mountain man's inert body floats listlessly back to the shore, un-breathing and utterly motionless.

So that just left distressed, forlorn Sven to doggedly continue his useless tugging on sessile Elsa's body as the Queen's groggy eyes were still struggling to keep open.

But the emotionally anguished reindeer's in-velvet antlers that were striving so very hard to sever that last stubborn weed that was keeping Elsa, Queen of Arendelle, bound to this evil monster's slimy control, suddenly are yanked backwards in the Draugen's violent demonstration of cruel power –

_**CRACKK!**_

As he is thrown into the sea, poor heroic Sven's long impressively tall left antler is snapped in half by the nasty malicious monster who spitefully lashes out its quickly extended haptera seaweed vines wielding much leverage from its power invigorated chest.

The sheer leverage of the creature's sturdy chest vine cracks the rangifer's already seasonably annual ready to shed, fragile in-velvet pride as supreme punishment.

Red blood splooshes about into the waters from the broken tissue marrow of Sven's deciduous stalk's living mass of blood and marrow covered with the furry skin projected from the pedicles of his skull—also called a reindeer's antlers, that were now splintered in half.

The heavy rangifer too sinks to his knees in throbbing misery, not too far from a lifeless floating Kristoff, amidst the rolling waves of the Mosken Island reef.

A whoosy, energy drained Elsa, fighting to shake off the toxic narcolepsy and the frightened anxiety, was unable to comprehend much in her delirious state. But opening her eyes to see Kristoff and Sven down and severely injured, she gasps in panicked terror, her ice coated heart freezing glacially cold.

_There's no one left to save me. I'm alone. Papa, Mama, Anna!_

Elsa's mind is set adrift, as the girl who knew what true loneliness meant, reaches out to the beloved ones closest to her heart in her final moments in this world….

_Prince_ _Hans_…

In the most hidden recesses of her mind, a singular sideburns-swept handsome face surfaces and Elsa laments all the days of 'might have been' that now certainly could never be.

_What a fool I've been to even dream of love like any other normal woman! I was born to this world to live my life alone, a cold Ice Queen of isolation. I mustn't delude myself that I could ever have had anything more!_

_Yet… to never to see myself reflected in his beautiful dreamy green eyes or hear that sweet lilting voice ringing in my ears. Never to be enveloped in the warmth of his strong arms lifting me up with that oh-so-gentle touch ever again…_

_I never knew before that the thought of never seeing him again would make me feel so completely empty inside._

Inside of her chilled heart, Queen Elsa of Arendelle still recalled the embers of how she felt—so unintentionally, so unexpectedly—so very safe wrapped in the security of Hans Westergaard's embrace…

_Dear God, please don't leave me here to die, alone, never knowing if we could have been…_

And this deepest seated, tearfully added regretful fear spike gives the Draugen all the gleaned energy it needed to finally deep submerge before the maelstrom returned to life and halt its vengeful voyage across the sea between this island and the North Lofoten peninsula that was entrance to the Norwegian mainland.

There, the Draugen would use Queen Elsa's deepest fear to wreak havok upon her kingdom with no more annoying impediments called 'humans' or 'heroes' to stand in the way of the depraved true form of the dread pirate once reviled as the heartless Captain Houtebeen…

* * *

_Pabbi_ – 'Father/Dad' in Icelandic

_Forsvaret_ – Norwegian Army

_Oberst – _Colonel in Norwegian Army


	46. Chapter 45 - The Kiss of Life

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act III**

**Chapter 45**

**"The Kiss of Life"**

But one certain hero races through the misty dark dusky skies on invisible wings of angels. Prince Hans, formerly of the Southern Isles, focuses every ounce of his tense body, worrying mind and fervent soul on the one and only prayer he was truly begging the Lord above to grant him:

'_Please let her live. Even if it takes my insignificant life, the merciful beauty that is Queen Elsa must be saved.'_

So, as he, upon the Snow Queen's chosen air lofted mare, transcends the northern crest of the mountain and soars hard down on the leeward side of the ice frosted winds at terrifying speeds, Hans' lightning sharp intelligence strategically makes an assessment of the fierce battle that he was flying headlong towards that had already taken place moments before.

Upon approach, Kommander Westergaard scans the area-the injured, pirate first mate, Job, and a reindeer doe were on the berns of the beachfront; Kristoff was down, as was Sven, with both floating listlessly in the bloodied shallows of shoals, and the mysterious man in a tall hat whom Hans had believed he'd glimpsed with the blond mountaineer, was nowhere to be seen.

So that left Queen Elsa, pure, innocent, graceful Elsa, vulnerable and trapped alone at the monster's mercy, wholly unprotected.

_No. Not unprotected. She will be defended, for as long as I live. _

_This, my vow, to begin to amend for my past wrongs. __My pledge to justify this impossible love..._

With the split-second decision-making skill that well befitted an experienced field commander, Hans Westergaard, firmly, yet gently, digs his heels in to prompt the icy pale white horse to increase its already unbelievable flying velocity with that one prized shining goal in his sight.

"Take heart, my Queen. I will not fail you, this time. I will not depart your side until you are rescued from this menace." With all his regrets of their stormy tortured past driving him to be a better man, a determined Prince Hans flies towards the salvation of the woman whose forgiveness he sought more than all the riches and power and ownership he once thirsted for, in all the world.

* * *

In the midst of her most intense struggle with lonely despair, Elsa hears the echoes of his soft-spoken, yet strong voice eclipse her fears.

Just on the verge of giving up in defeat, Elsa's distraught eyes snap open to peer through the ilky massive looming algae surrounding her entire frame. Looking up, she glimpses an amazing sight that the young woman had only read about in epic storybooks. A vision that the icy curse of her girlish youth would never allow her to believe she could be the fabled Princess of.

Soaring through the skies, a handsome Prince and his noble white steed were striding a-gleam in the last rays of the sunset when Elsa had almost given hope on seeing another morn. But the stalwart purposeful man heroically dares against the odds for that sun not to go down on his lady fair as he races to her rescue.

A wondrous man whose sincere regret had changed their saddened fate as past enemies into a destiny blessed of something perhaps far more than future friends…

_My own chivalrous valiant hero, like in all of those childhood fairytales I didn't believe could be real…_

Delirious with extreme fright and overwhelmed cold, Elsa's frozen shivering heart begins to warm as some of that subzero ice inside melts away. And when a ray of hope catches the fire of her valorous hero's vivid titian red hair as he swoops in on flying horseback, like the stories promised her Prince charming would, Elsa's heart thaws utterly.

As he swiftly approaches, Hans' viridescent eyes reach out to claim and calm Elsa's wild frightened ones. At the same moment, the deft swordsman draws his well honed weapon of choice, the one the Queen herself had bestowed upon her newest Kommander, gleaming in the waning Midnight Sun light from its drawn leathery black scabbard sheath…

But the intertwined gaze is soon broken for both as Queen Elsa's no longer encased in ice body, yet strapped to the sea monster's depraved left palm, is plunged into the Norwegian Sea when the mendacious Draugen submerges as it walks forward into the currents.

Into the depths of the ocean beneath the stilled waves it goes straight down, taking an unwitting Elsa along with it in its watery wake as the creature sends out one final deadly scream towards the last hero from the skies above who had the courage to challenge its monstrous reign.

"**NO! QUEEN ELSA! RRRGHH!"** Her fervently cried out name on his lips as he then emits a passionate throaty war cry, Prince Hans defies the vicious behemoth's agonized sound that screeched instant pain through the former prince's head by way of monstrosity's bewailed harmonic distortions that erupt through the reverberated air.

Nonetheless wielding his naval broadsword's brass wired wrapped grip firmly in both hands, Hans continues, undaunted and unabated. There were no limits to what he could-and would-do for her. The agile Prince ignores the torment ringing at close quarters directly in his hemorrhaging ears to spring from his exactly calculated and maneuvered flying ice horse's back with his extended, precisely relegated blade held forward.

Hans holds onto tightly to his broad sword's hilt with as much zealous strength and considerable concise downward force as every childhood lesson and natural instinct permitted the consummate expert blademan as he performs his greatest feat of swordsmanship to date—

_**S-S-LI-CCE!**_

From his flying steed's tremendous height of over 80 feet up in the air, Hans Westergaard fearlessly plunges downward as he glides through the air in a death-defying thrusted jump.

The Danish Prince fearlessly razes his sharpened sword's blade along the Draugen's shoulder to the hollow beneath the junction with its arm as he descends, lopping off the wicked wriggling extensor as if it were no more than a pernicious weed in need of being pruned.

With the leaped gravity lending added momentum to his perfectly thrusted blade's lunging pressure, Hans' sharp-edged officer's broadsword once again does its dexterous deadly duty by slicing clean off the Draugen's entire left arm. From its algal covered shoulder down to it seaweed-y armpit, the appendage is severed before the redheaded mariner makes a headlong, crashing dive into the ocean, with his avenging sword still clutched securely in hand.

"**EERW-WEE-EER-WLL!"** The venomous sea monster lets out a terrible ear shattering squaw as the ferocious wounded monster slinks away from its brave attacker in utter pain. The Draugen retreats into the welcoming embrace of the ocean deep far away,leaving its amputated left appendage, full of brackish deep green writhing seaweed stipe vines and algae coated tendrils behind.

Resisting the unctuous toxins that spill in garish black green 'blood' splurted from the vile creature's maimed torso and disattached arm, Hans shakes himself in instant full awareness as he bobs to the surface of the narcoleptic inducing inky stained waters.

Looking around with wild pensive eyes, the well trained swimmer sucks in a deep gulp of air before diving beneath the crashing waves of this most dangerous sector of the Norwegian sea without a second thought to himself.

Immediately on the hunt like a keen-eyed red fox, Hans scans the underwater milieu as he utilizes his nautical intuition to home in to where the woman who ruled not only this country – but his heart as well – yet lived.

For she must.

_Elsa has to be alive! I refuse to let her go! __Dear God, take my life for hers!_

Beneath this watery veil, his feverish with swimming sinewy arms and legs catapult the motivated young man towards the Draugen's slowly swaying hand in the undercurrent waves. The monster's severed armature was slowly losing its lifeforce as it rises upwards, buoyant against the ocean tides' density.

But Hans' unassailable hope that Queen Elsa of Arendelle's tender heart still beat in this world is nearly shattered when he finally arrives at monster's wriggling hand, only to find the frozen stiff and cold woman trapped in its waning clutches, totally insensate.

Holding his submerged breath for several minutes now, Hans shakes Elsa's lissome shoulders. When she doesn't open her eyes, he charily uses his sword to cut some of the far too numerous haptera seaweed strands tying her neck down as he hoists her upper body up to him.

Elsa's breathing was nonexistent, and knowing it would take too much precious time to free her from her bonds and escape to the surface, gallant, valorous Hans selflessly shares what little there was left of viable breath from his own spent, exhausted lungs with her.

Never imagining a better way to die, the Danish Prince presses his moist warm lips to the Norwegian Queen's comatose cool dry ones. He then summarily uses his powerful 'silver' tongue to forcefully gain entry into her compliant open mouth in order to allocate his heated breath in to her oral cavity and distribute the precious oxygen through Elsa's deprived system as rapidly as possible.

With all the passion and vigor left in his being, closing his eyes as he pours out all his love for her in this kiss, Hans compassionately performs his own intimately logical early form of underwater mouth-to-mouth resuscitation with a final prayer. Keeping the crush of water out as they physically rise, on a euphoric high due to his own adrenaline internal forces, Hans steadily keeps his lips sealed to Elsa's by way of his life-giving kiss…

* * *

_Minutes ago…_

"Squadron, formation! Methinks our pretty Princess is in that carriage there yonder, with her kin, just as Prince-MyKristly said! But I can't make out her face for sure, so we must investigate further!" Squadron leader Scuttle the seagull speaks out the side of his beak out to his fellow 'Scuttle Recon' members as the five fowl flank flutter their wings back over the mountain rise.

"Whoa. Do these folks up here travel in style or what? Three horses hauling an enclosed carriage… Ritzy…" The ditz of a bird had an uncanny way of noticing the strangest things about a situation as he spots the unmistakably identifiable rescue craft of the fancy Brougham airborne carriage, borrowed from the Snow Queen herself. So this odd phenomenon must be what Kristoff –_erm, Prince MyKristly_ – told the birds to keep an eye out for.

"Hey! Hiya! Howdy! How's the weather up – WHOA!" Dizzily spinning, his feathers fly as he hovers in place alongside his aerial brood. Scuttle is shocked to be nearly run over by the ice propelled vehicle, only making it out alive by the skin of his beak.

"Did anyone catch the license number on that snow carriage?" The seagull warbles as his eyes roll around in his head like a pinball game of marbles. "Wait up! We better stick with them, team. They're liable to get lost and Prince MyKristly ordered us to make sure his pretty Princess was all right. So let's make sure that she is!" Scuttle calls out as he high-tails it after the swiftly moving sleigh.

Once he and his flock catch up, the unruffled white Laridae starts to gesticulate his arms about riotously in the side window to garner Anna's attention as the plucky bird grabs one wing onto the speeding carriage's door handle tight.

Although, it wasn't a sulking Anna, who was still pouting behind her braids in the corner of the flying Brougham carriage coach, that noticed the animated seagull waving outside the window.

It was Eugene.

"If a lowly thief may speak…You do realize, Pixie, there's a hitchhiking admirer of yours just outside that window." In his droll way, keen eyed Flynn Rider notes how the rather large bird was clumsily playing charades at an eye-buried Anna.

The gawky seagull had signalled to an observant, at first glance skeptical, Eugene who happened to be the recipient of his instructed message. He had been tugging his long feathers into a pair of braids shoved in front of his eyes, repeatedly removed and replaced, as Scuttle gave his best rendition of Anna with a pair of wide feminine fluttered eyes in between braid pulls, all whilst pointing to the unawares girl.

"What?" Anna lifts her covered ginger braids from her eyes rather incredulously at the rascally cousin whom she did not have much affection lost for as he pokes at her shoulder from across the seating aisle.

"Oh! It's that same nice birdie who brought my message back to my Kristly before!" Doing a 180° in split change demeanor, Anna quickly cracks open the window of the high speeding vehicle and yanks Scuttle into the carriage by his throttled wind-lashed neck none too gently. The vivacious girl then plops him onto her lap and stares down at the dirty white-gray bird, as if expecting Scuttle to open up and speak to her.

But several moments pass in relative silence while the throttled bird chokes for breath as if he had a hairball lodged in his throat.

"Great. More useless critters for me to cart around. Is this a rescue craft or a traveling zoo, I ask you?" Eugene sourly comments with a roll of his eyes and a smirk down at the sleepy sheep curled in a ball on Rapunzel–and consequently-his shared lap. He then gives a shifty eyed glance and a poked finger at the cocky crimson chameleon on his shoulder as well.

Rapunzel tries to smile as her charming husband constantly prompted her to 'lighten up' when she was in her doldrums, for her Eugene far preferred her stupendous smile. But her aunt's worried gaze upon her pensively anxious King's furrowed brow beside her made his attempts at joviality seem banal.

"Did Kristly send you? Did he track down that rotten-old pirate-turned-icky-seaweed-monster and whup his butt yet? I bet my hunky hero already saved Elsa from that silly spaghetti bowl of a—Ohhh! Kristoff!" Amid her excited grilling of the bird (_sounds tasty ^0^_) on her lap, who could do little more than caw and nod vigorously to her enthusiastic optimistic questioning, she lets out a panicked squeak.

Boisterous Anna suddenly gasps for air as she clutches at her tormented chest, breathing becoming suddenly a hard commodity for her to do.

"Anna! My darling! What is it?!" Her mother leans forward to read her struggling-for-breath daughter as she hugs warm sympathetic arms around the small girl.

"Kristoff!" Anna barely chokes out on Idun's chest. The one pain soaked word says everything as her wild hands violently rip at her collar to locate the troll crystal necklace obscured beneath the folds of her buttery yellow shirt. For, accompanying her gut feeling, the translucent ochre crystal rocks abruptly cease their constant warm vibrations, striking utter dread in Anna's fear-gripped heart.

But the yellow crystals only had a faint pale waning whimper of the vibrant sparkling glow they once displayed just ten short days ago. That's when her new in-laws, Bulda and Cliff, had given the matching set of treasured necklaces to the bride and groom as GranPabbie conducted the official troll wedding ceremony of Princess Anna and her true love Kristoff Bjorgman.

"Agdar!" A frantic Queen Idun empathized with her little girl's heart wrenched pain as she turns to her husband. He was already in mid-motion after placing a supportive cool hand on Idun's over Anna's in-shock trembling digits.

He may not known very much of this young man of Anna's, but the evident fear resulted of evident love on his youngest daughter's every feature was enough to drive the calm composed King to spring to drastic action.

Especially since he himself was presently picking up some unpleasant sensations through his now embraced icy connection that made him highly attuned with the wind and the sky – and perhaps a little snow angel named Elsa, as well…

_If something has happened to those men in that frontline confrontation with the Draugen ahead of them, then my frightened Elsa must be imminent danger, too._

King Agdar glances down at his frosting over hands that he, despite years of honed control, almost could not contain. For the intense level of terror streaming to him that his terrified elder daughter must be feeling right now must be the cause of this sudden surged ice-storm of stark loneliness pervading his frozen heart.

_Elsa! Don't give into your fear, my cherished little Princess! Papa is coming!_

The protectively paternal King looks down at Olaf, who had been merrily a-humming as he had been gazing out the window with the wonder of flying for the first time. And, all at once, Agdar notices the snowman's constant snow flurry that Elsa had created for him.

Though it had been hovering over his snow mound head all this time, the flurry had grown so stretched out and thin over Olaf, it could barely be called a mist. Olaf's wilted carrot stuck in his no longer so rounded facial structure and slushy body mound even had a puddle growing on the floor of the carriage beneath him that causes the silent sovereign further extreme worry.

But the anxious man finds comfort yet again enough to steel his own chilled alarm with the shared glance in his Idun's so affectionate home of warm eyes that always believed in him. His Queen gave him all the bolstered confidence and tender warmth he required to go on living, even when the bitter cold depths of his arctic soul went frigid.

"Everyone. Brace yourselves." In his regal baritone, King Agdar speaks with authority, as, tall and strong once again, the Norwegian monarch stands upon the coach seat with his pair of reinstated agile long legs to boldly face the rushing winds outside overhead at this high altitude.

He just catches a glimpse of the Danish Prince whom the King had trusted to sanction to pilot his ice carriage team along the uneven, oft craggly Wilhelmstind Peak. Admiral Agdar was glad to see that the orienteering experienced fellow Naval man had already gained a good half kilometer distance ahead of their weightier vehicle, while still keeping just in sight of the remaining three horses left attached to the Ice Queen's sleigh to lead.

_He has initiative. The mark of a competent soldier in command._

The Admiral of the Sjoforsvaret can't help but note this of young Westergaard somewhere in the outer consciousness of his troubled, busy mind.

_Buy me some time with that beast of a pirate, Kommander, and I will make you the youngest Vice Admiral in Norwegian history. For the sake of my Snow Angel, I beg you Godspeed._

And with those pertinent thoughts, the Ice King closes his eyes to focus even more cryogenic arctic energy than he should offer to boost the frost-driven speed of the carriage.

Every occupant within instantly begins to shiver, as they all suddenly feel the overwhelming subzero ice penetrate the cabin walls until they were each quivering with breathy puffs of smoke.

And Olaf is revitalized from his uncomplaining dilapidated melty stage with a firmer packed smile.

"We're going to go save Elsa and Kristoff and Sven now, guys! Hold onto your sheeps!" The ever cheerful snowperson announces with a branch held up high and a seatbelt-less big cheery grin rolling away with his head across the raucously shuddering coach floor.

As the entire carriage quakes, Idun hugs a trembling Anna all the tighter to her warm chest, who was now in fear for her _two_ most precious beloveds' safety; Eugene embraces Rapunzel with secret gratitude for the woolly vest of the silly sheep's added warmth; and Scuttle gazes at the snowman's discombobulated head at the seagull's eye level, as the birdbrain dangles from Anna's lap to the floor and says behind his wing:

"Who's this '_Kristoff'_, anyway?" Scuttle wonders aloud.

All of a sudden the snow-pea brained being of frozen accumulation doesn't seem the dumbest in the room anymore as his head smiles condescendingly at the bird.

The Snow Queen's Royal ice carriage, directed by the determined Ice King, speeds through the dusky skies in double-time velocity, now in pursuit of rescuing both of the icy sovereigns' besieged offspring, before it's too late…

* * *

As the Brougham snow carriage ascends the mountain peak then starts to descend at breakneck speed, all squinted eyes were peeled out the small window towards the sea where that hideous humongous monster was beginning to submerge beneath the waves.

King Agdar, by now, was so one with his forward ice projection that he easily levitated to be astride the center horse of the white mare trio driving the carriage he was leading through the sky. He sees, through his frosted white eyes, his beloved daughter lying semiconscious in the malicious monstrosities left palm. And she was about to be dragged under the swells of ocean waves that the Draugen was returning to the depths thereof.

Agdar's frozen quivering heart cries out cold fear for Elsa. He then is about to attempt to blast with an icy tempest the evil monster, but the distance was still too great for an imprecise subzero barrage that would most likely cause the creature to simply dive under the sea in retreat. It was just then that Agdar watches the impossible dilemma taken out of his icy hands.

Impressed King Agdar watches young Hans Westergaard direct his flying steed ahead of them courageously, befitting royal heroes in days of old, to soar straight at the massive Draugen before selflessly leaping from the lofty eighty foot height over the submerging monster's head and chop off its seaweed arm that Elsa was attached to.

Though it pained the overprotective father to realize it, perhaps it was no longer necessary for him to be his two daughters' only hero anymore. And that, in these past five years of separation, his little gems named 'Elsa' and 'Anna' had each found someone to take his place there.

For, as he and every other passenger of the ice driven sky carriage witness with slack jaws the incredible dramatic scene of the adept swordsman in his well plotted attack, by the time they near, the vanished sea monster's entire disattached arm was just rising to the surface of the waters.

And there, as it rises from the sea, at its defunct palm, the heroic redheaded Prince named Hans, was earnestly, undaunted by any atmosphere shift as he ardently keeps up the passionate sharing of his breath with a nearly drowned lady whom he had guarded the majestic lungs of with his kiss of life.

As all the breath Prince Hans of the Southern Isles had left in body is shared liberally with Queen Elsa of Arendelle, everyone's ogled eyes watch as the kiss lasts for what seemed forever before the traumatized young woman's soaked wet body fully accepts the forced breath her gallant Prince had granted her.

Panting, Elsa awakens with a soft smile and the yearning touch of her cool hand to his warm cheek up at Hans. He gazes down upon her with tender emotion as the attentive depth of his true feelings for her entirely melts away that symbiotic dark green aura energy drain of her ice powers and she is set free. Hans' razor sharp broadsword effortlessly slices the remaining spasmodically shivering vines from the Draugen's palm at the end of its dismembered appendage that were tying Elsa down.

Gratified to the young prince for just nobly rescuing his life-threatened daughter, King Agdar surveys with guarded eyes now upon this capable young naval officer as he watches the pair interact in that unmistakable manner. The wary father, actually faced with this unwelcome reality, was now not entirely comfortable with the intimate proximity that ensued between the young Dane and his vulnerable little girl thereafter.

Shaking off the urge to be untoward and zap any man who came within range of his precious little children that he had a hard time acknowledging as independent young ladies, King Agdar enhances his icy carriage's Brougham wheels into a sleigh's solid ice strakes to be able to land on the beachfront foreshore without sinking into the sand.

There, with another flick of his powerfully frosted hand, Agdar creates an ice bridge between the berms and where Hans was carefully using his naval blade to extricate Elsa from her captivity. Once finished parting the seaweed, Hans claims the tender blonde beauty in his strong arms.

Like a knight in shining armor, a dripping wet Prince Hans carries a limp but very much alive Queen Elsa across the icy bridge her father made over the troubled Norwegian waters.

"Elsa!" With a broad smile that ignored Hans entirely after giving him a snarky twist of the lip and glare rather than slap him senseless for kissing her sister, Anna shrieks out loudly as she stumbles out of the sleigh in relief as Elsa greets her with a weary sisterly smile.

A smile that Anna shares with her big sis until her illuminated vibrating eyes gaze across the watery scene to where her Kristoff was lying face down in the backwashed shoals.

Panicked, Anna trips and crashes across the kicked up sands of the beach scarp. She runs straight into the ankle high trough where the ocean's low tide spumes were cresting over her love's downed form.

There, a heaving, kneeled Sven, with one broken antler spilling blood relentlessly into the trough's sea waters until they were a sickening sight all around a blood drenched Kristoff, had vanished to pick up his badly wounded self and somehow trudged over to at least lift his best buddy from his face to his back before the reindeer again collapsed himself at Kristoff's immobile side.

"**Kristoff**! Kristoff! I knew I felt something! Wake up! You can't be dead! I **won't** **let** **you** be dead! Wake up, Kristly!" The devastated Princess Anna yells, demands and cries tears as she harshly slaps her unresponsive lover then gently kisses him in caressed apology. Every emotion she had within her petite frame all scream to be heard by the man who promised her forever together that she refused to abandon the hope of retrieving.

As Idun dashes to her little girl's distraught side, Rapunzel helps Sven by wrapping a bandage around his damaged antler. Pascal pats the mournful eyed rangifer's equally brokenhearted muzzle that was continually trying to nudge his lifelong partner's lifeless body awake, foregoing his own destroyed antler stalk's pain.

"Mama! You can make him better! I know you can do it! Please, make my Kristly opens his eyes for me!" Anna childishly wails on her mother's saddened breast. But Idun, touching a tender hand to the blonde boy's lifeless features, could sense it was too late for her humble healing intervention, even when she was in the best of health herself.

Idun looks at Anna's rabid, hope filled pupils with sorrowful time and age worn sunken eyes.

**"MAMA! YOU HAVE TO HEAL HIM!** " Yanking on Idun's indigo tattered sleeve, Anna screeches at her poor mother as the cold hard reality of a life without her dearest love was tickling at her senses, threatening to set in. And a reality without her Kristoff was one the sprightly, indeflatable bright eyed Princess would **NEVER** accept.

_"I sing the Almighty power of God, that made the mountains rise;_

_That spread the flowing seas ahead, and bade life to lofty skies."_

With a nod, Queen Idun chokes out her lovely church ballad in her soprano's sweet tones as she rubs a motherly hand to Kristoff's stubbly cheek. She sensed the utter goodness of this young man Anna had wisely chosen as her own, from the kindly curve of his strong yet gentle jawline that showed a lot of character to read if one knew how to look at the set of muscles that were used to easily smile or frown.

Anna's Kristoff was a boy who smiled a beautiful wide smile for the girl he loved enough to risk his life to bring her dearest family to safety.

_"Creatures that borrowed life from Thee are subject to Thy care;_

_There's not a place where we can flee, but God is present there."_

She hears her kind-hearted cousin Rapunzel, though the cocoa-haired girl's own powers were long diminished, join in on the healing song over Kristoff. And Anna remembers the hymn from her Chapel choir youth days, which comprised of herself and Mama and Papa—as children growing up, secluded Elsa attended Sunday morning church services when Anna was still asleep—as the faithful family would each take turns in worshipping God in song every Sunday night.

Now, Anna harmonizes with Idun's healing powers, perhaps having an inherited touch of something golden and magical inside herself, for her sweet voice too loved to sing praise. The generous older woman gives her all to the fullest extent of her tearful abilities for her daughter's true love until she is drained dry of the golden glow of her heart's flower over Kristoff.

But the golden flower's magic only reflects a tiny almost insignificant amount of life in the crystalline stone that was dangling in tuned with their meaningful song from the mountain man's still limp, thick neck.

But alas, not in him.

But Anna still stubbornly refused to let go.

"Kristoff? Say something! Tell me I '_talk too much'_! Tell me I'm '_gonna kill myself'_ doing crazy things! Tell me '_all men do it._' when I catch you acting silly. Just…just say _'I love you, Baby", _in that special voice you have just for me. Just for me. Please!" A soft sob finally escapes as a plaintive tear rolls down on Kristoff's unmoving lips.

Anna angrily pounds the ocean surface with her balled-up fists repeatedly, until the starting to gently swirl cool and warm sea water of the quelled Moskenstraumen splashes over her own set of troll necklace crystals. The transparent gems tinkle when an inexplicable shining item crafted of ice and glass rises to the surface of the cresting waters.

"I was so lucky. So lucky to have found you. Don't leave me." Anna pleads, petting Kristoff's broad chest and ample arm muscles she adored to extol. Nose nuzzled to his, rubbing her tears through his drenched wet golden hair and onto his face, the devastated girl leans down and presses her teary soft cheek to her man's firm motionless one.

In her agony, the girl did not notice a snowflake, mysteriously born and tiny, see-though and a-glitter in the reflective mirrored wetness of her anguished tears that transformed upon each, with a snow-capped golden flower that unfurls to twinkle with distinctively outlined crystalline ice perfection.

One by one, the crystal jewels about her special gifted necklace begin to sparkle to life as something magical begins to happen, first to Anna's then mirrored to Kristoff's seven crystal set of each of their wedding presents around their necks.

Although the current Midnight Sun of summertime made it difficult to see the aurora borealis, it was undoubtedly still there. Aglow with true love, the crystalline ice diamonds formed from her tears, as seen through a mystical snowy looking glass risen on the tides from somewhere beneath the sea, transmute into of melting rainbow delirium before Anna's stunned eyes.

From yellow to orange to red to purple to violet to blue to green and back to an iridescent gold, along the vibrant spectrum nature colors the entire over their heads accordingly in an spectacular prismatic light show that explodes in the sky.

The whispers of the swirling wind channel the aurora borealis as the now rainbow colored troll crystals dance with the life of their own. Before Sven's wide, dazzled eyes the icy mirror's glass that appeared afloat beside Kristoff glows when the elemental electrical impulse particles sparked from God's sustaining creation – the sun – hits the earth's atmosphere. The radiant glistening aurora sets off upon the reflective glass surface in a dramatic display of ice crystal refracted light that jolts an almost-dead stopped special heart to beat back to life.

"HGGNNGGH!" Kristoff loudly gasps for the intake of air that was denied his starved lungs not a second too long as all the voices of nature sing a chorus of pure joy to the winds offering fresh air all about this child of nature.

"Kristly?! You came back to me!" Anna's perky voice was the perplexing mixture of sheer laughter and happy tears as she throws herself bodily onto her sturdy young husband's once again breathing and strong oh-so-masculine big muscled chest.

After a quick scan, responsible Kristoff checks that Elsa, who was clinging to Hans' chest, as weak as a proverbial kitten, was rescued and well, and apparently purring. Elsa was still clutched in the arms of the young man who was seriously conversing with her thankful, yet bewildered father, who was at a loss as to this new predicament that the protective King was unwillingly thrust in.

"Of course. How could I go anywhere without you? I heard you calling all the while, in here." Kristoff grabs his best girl in big bear hug as his sits up from the sandbar trough to press his little woman's ear to listen to his heart that thump, thump, thumped for her still, proud and strong.

"So loud and honest and crystal clear. As if you were right at my side the whole time." Reinvigorated by nature's unknown quantities that he had recently discovered himself immersed within, Kristoff gives a silent thought to Ragi as he gazes with glazed eyes over the sea that had swallowed his sacrificing faithful old mentor.

Kristoff then easily lifts his caramel cupcake along with him in strong arms. He tugs at her two braids before running his one big manly hand through the tinkling troll crystals at her neck that still holographically glimmered against the stunning aurora borealis sky they channeled.

His other hand reaches out to pat Sven on the head. The trusty reindeer appeared to benefit from Queen Idun's healing song that was intended for Kristoff, the two inseparable friends so close, it couldn't be denied.

Sven could now walk and stand with little pain and even hold his head high, though that scarred broken antler would probably never grow in again, the breakage too severe. At least not for a long time.

"Oh Kristly! I didn't like that feeling. I thought I lost you." Anna whispers to his chest in a sort of whimpered whine.

Kristoff didn't know if the girl was on the verge of laughing or crying, so he solves either reaction in the best way he knew possible – with a crushing kiss to his new bride's teary wobbling lips.

"Mmmn-mnmm…" Anna makes those pleased murmurs in her throat as their tongues do the rest of the talking during the kiss that satisfied her new husband to no end.

"I'm not so easy to get rid of anymore." Kristoff teases away the last of her pent-up tears by displaying the wedding band on his large ring finger as he tickles under Anna's sweetly giggling chin. He proudly holds up his shoved on by the bride golden wedding band hand high in the multi-hued air, then scoops her up to swing Anna's lithe little body around up higher for all of dazzling Nature to see the even more dazzling pride and joy of his life.

"Oh, and since you asked so sincerely before." Kristoff pauses with the sudden thought as he turns back to meet Anna's adoring eyes glistening down at him as his pumped muscles hold her up high. _"I love you, Baby_." Huskily, Kristoff remembers to add, recalling Anna's fervid plea that, though he was near death, their forever soulful bond was never broken.

"And I love you, too, my big gorgeous Kristly!" The perky Princess pronounces with panache as she stands up on tippy cream booted toes in the beachfront waters to taste her Wind Whisperer's lively loving lips again.

* * *

October Greetings, Frozen friends!

How'd you like that lip-locked action-packed episode? Please drop me a line on what you think of Kommander Westergaard's sword-wielding solution and subsequent rescue of his ice-melty-at-his-command Queen! ^_^

Not to mention Kristanna's magic ice mirror activated/ Aurora borealis/ troll crystal saved close shave with death! ^0^

And don't worry! This isn't the end yet, despite all the kissing! There's much more action and adventure to come for our reunited team in the next chapters!

Thanks for reading!

God Bless!

HarukaKou

P.S. 'Suspense' is my middle name, reviewing friend! Thanks for the thumbs up comment! ^_^


	47. Chapter 46 - The Moment of Truth

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act III**

**Chapter 46**

**"The Moment of Truth "**

'_For the day of reckoning of the LORD Almighty shall be upon everyone that is proud and lofty, and upon everyone that is lifted up; and he shall be humbled' - Isaiah 2:12_

"Don't know if you're up to it, ma'am, but I think this big guy could use some TLC with your inimitable magic golden flower touched variety." Eugene's normally leisurely, jaded voice had enough anxiety in it to warrant Queen Idun and Rapunzel both to look up from the happy reunited scene.

The pair of healing women dash across the beach scarp to where the former thief was attending to a profusely gut bleeding Job on the sandy banks where Svala the reindeer had escaped with the reformed pirate first mate.

"Oh, the poor man!" Her one eye remained trained behind her on her husband and rescued daughter as she trots forward up the sandy banks, with gratitude in so many directions that Elsa seemed physically unharmed, merely energy drained, Queen Idun realizes she must refocus upon the eviscerated dark Caribbean. Once at his side, she, Rapunzel and Pascal go to work on the downed man with busy bandages, helpful hands, and a sweet song.

The female reindeer, who had been nuzzling Job so he wouldn't fall dangerously unconscious for loss of blood, then scampers down to the shorefront. There, dear self-sacrificing Sven, who had already benefited from the Queen's soft soprano tones of healing enough to hold his head high even if the pride of his right antler was still cracked clean off, greets the doe was bashful eyes.

**_HOMN!_**

{"Kristoff! The mirror!"} But Sven's big round eyes shy away from Svala's flirtatiously impressed feminine ones to catch sight of that uncanny bit of glass set in an unadorned oval frame. The shining object had miraculously floated to this very sector of shoreline at the precise moment it needed to, in order to reflect and refract the aurora borealis laden sunlight to revive his best friend.

"Hmm?" Though young and virile Kristoff was loathe to break the passionate lip lock he and his new wife were sharing, the mountain man could sense the urgency in Sven's tone in his head.

In fact, Kristoff Bjorgman could suddenly hear so many various voices of nature swirling all around his inundated mind. So much so, it was threatening to sweep over him like a tidal wave of sentience, like before on the ship from under the sea, but even a thousand times stronger.

Yet somehow, Kristoff was neither panicked nor fearful that the multitude of voices racing through his brain would overwhelm him anymore.

No, in some strange way, Kristoff could not only control the surging communications running rampant in his mind, but he felt so very one with them. For the first time, the young man felt he could almost wrap his mind around every disparate strain and sound, like a ship's sail to the trade winds, or a windmill's harnessed power increased by a grassy field's blowing land breeze.

{"My son."} For one faction of the second, as Kristoff reached down to the mirror that surfaced afloat on the crests of the waves at his side, he saw his old mentor, Ragi's unaged face, in the glass.

The relieved smile that accompanied the older man's heartfelt words causes the blond mountaineer to smile back to his _'dad'_ gratefully, instantly recognizing it was through Ragi's connection to nature passed onto him that he could bear up to yoke this newfound power.

"Don't die." Kristoff murmurs in breathy desperation, sensing the elder man's consciousness slipping away. Kristoff was always confident enough in himself to be unafraid to display his emotions before others, as an unbidden tear slides down his hard swallowing cheek.

"Pabbi." Somehow, somewhere deep through the window of his now open consciousness, the young man comprehended exactly who this influential wandering minstrel who had always mysteriously appeared for him all through his formative childhood years was now, when Kristoff was lonely, unsure, or afraid.

'Ole Ragi' was that gentle steady hand readily there to instruct, teach, and raise the orphaned boy up in the ways of a honest moral manhood more than anyone else he could remember, like a true _Pappa_ should.

But just as abruptly that Ragi's kindly-despite-a-hard-life-that-showed-on-his-worn-and wrinkled-face, closes his wise old eyes to travel away with the quivering seas, it is replaced by the transcendent visage of this ethereal, palest blonde woman in a tall bluish-white high necked lacy collar whom Kristoff's every deep inner sense recognized as the dignified Snow Queen of legend.

{"Your Pabbi is neither fully dead, nor is he fully alive, little one."} With an enigmatic smile upon her purplish blue lips to match her inscrutable words, the sophisticated pastel blonde woman, wearing her pulled back hair in an elegant up-do, gazes back to Kristoff through the mirror's glass.

"Look! It's her again! It's that weird lady who gave Papa her snow carriage before. We've already met." With a whisper right in Kristoff's ear, Anna's smug and candid exuberance as she stands on tippytoe to point at the Snow Queen while she pops up to peek over her guy's shoulder, certainly took the edge off any dramatic first meetings for this long separated mother and child.

{"Please, allow me to explain. You deserve at least that, my cherished one."}The Snow Queen's tuneful tinkling-with-ice voice continues with a gentle glance that encompassed both Kristoff and Anna within her cool languid gaze.

{"Since that horrible day when a destructive volcano in the South Seas nearly consumed me, good, noble Captain Ragi had nursed me back to health. After all those cold and empty years, he treated me as a normal woman, taught me the power—the warmth—of love. And in so doing, he kept my weakened heart alive by giving me the desire to fight to live for my greatest impossible dream…you, Kristoff."}

The bewildered down-to-earth young man who was coming to realize his mystical origins glances at a just as curious Anna. The sprightly girl grins in his face encouragingly as she straddles her wiry little body to cozily drape over her Kristoff's strong back.

{"Years ago, on the very daybreak morning that you were born, my dormant ice energies were revitalized. And my deepest prayer to the great holy God whom Ragi introduced me to was answered. When, instead of passing my icy curse on you as I feared, my new baby boy with the sunshine golden blonde hair and beautiful cocoa brown eyes was born a perfectly normal human being, with only the slightest touches of the irresistible love of ice running in his veins."}

'_Ice is my life'…_ Kristoff hears his own words echo in his head, now finally understanding his affinity for the coldest creation of the climate weather around.

{"With the last vestiges of snow magic I could perform, in exchange for enough humanity to achieve my dream, your father had allowed himself to channel a great deal of my innate ice energies and enter into a state of cryogenic stasis in trade for me to retain enough of his humanity to keep my warm heart beating with his sacrificial, eternal love."} At this point, the Snow Queen seemed to be gazing somewhere fondly beside her, where a second icy throne to match hers in the beautiful mirrored crystalline throne room sat in silent cold majesty as her equal royal consort within her Snow Palace.

{"Through his pervasive well honed skills of Nature, my Ragi's spirit was yet still strong enough to create mental projections of himself to follow wherever you went, to look after and advise you growing up, my child, when I decided you could never live the normal life I longed for, with just the pair of us locked away in my snowy world. Although my Snow Palace in the far, far North all these years has still been so very cold and empty, it was no longer devoid of the magic of a child's laughter. While you were growing up with faithful little Sven, my special gifted Svalbard calf, I watched you, through the mirror of Ragi's eyes from afar as I maintained his physical form's lowered body temperature's metabolic rate in suspended animation so he was still here beside me in the Snow Palace even when his consciousness traveled with you to represent us both all the while."}

{"But my all too human heart broke in giving you up to live a normal life, my little one. When the winds of destiny blew you to Arendelle, where my precious Wind Chime boy had a child of his own for you to help and love and partner as one—my beloved 'Christ bearer'—and with her effervescent joy to fill the vacant places."} The graceful woman's icy blue eyes land upon Anna with a warmth incongruent to all the ice fixtures and frozen Palace setting behind her as seen through the mirror.

"I like the way your Mamma thinks." The sprightly young Princess comments to her not so blasé, quietly hushed husband who kept his own counsel as he was raptly listening to the story of his beginnings.

"My mother…is…_The_ Snow Queen?" Kristoff repeats to himself in disbelief. His raised extra perceptive senses blown through the prevailing winds that his father whispered into him and that Kristoff seemed to have inherited were assuring him that this amazing tale was actually true.

{"Please listen, my son. All of nature has been disrupted. If that perverse aberration to God's nature is left free to destroy the very beauty of this pristine environment that my Ragi is so part of –still linked to— the Wind Whisperer's wandering soul is in jeopardy. I fear for him to simply fade away from me…"}

There were womanly tears glistening in the icy azure blue pools of eyes emanating from the once frozen glacial heart of the Queen of the Snow as she agonizes over her in-peril mate's waning life force, as the gradient wind begins to die down around them.

Gazing far across the sea then back to the plaintive figure in the reflective glass, to see his mother caressing his father's unconscious vacant face in the Snow Palace, hundreds of miles to the North, the compassionate young man's firm jaw sets with a new determination.

And the reinvigorated wind's next generation starts to build and whip and whir across the countryside surroundings a-fresh again.

{"Your father, the only man who was ever able to penetrate my frozen heart with his selfless warmth, my soulmate, Ragi's very life—and the fate of this kingdom as well—hangs in the balance if you don't stop this evil ghostly presence from destroying this land. Although I am powerless to leave my Palace sanctuary, I will add my most fervent prayer to the God above all for His intervention blessing for your safety under the banner of His righteousness this nation has been founded upon, my golden child."} The Snow Queen's icy blue clear eyes glow back at Kristoff with her hopeful entreaty.

"Oh! _She's_ your Mama, Kristly! So, that's why she was so sticky with me before! What do you get your mother-in-law for her birthday when she's the immortal Snow Queen? I ask you!" Anna had a funny way of saying that darndest most unimportant things in a dramatic moment even as her attention was only half focused on the supposedly mythical mistress of the snow who was addressing the girl's new hubby.

The other major half of her imaginative consciousness was suspiciously a-glaring across the beachfront to where a certain Westergaard was still blatantly cradling her innocent delirious sister right before Anna's bullish, seeing-red eyes.

_And right in front of Papa, too! He's got some nerve! Papa has no idea what kind of jerk that Red is, or he'd –_

Anna's attention diverts back to where the pale woman with the whimsical high necked collar and jeweled tiara had continued to speak to Kristoff via that special frozen ice mirror clutched delicately in his big hands.

"If there's a chance to help Ragi after all he's done for me all these years—I WILL track down that monster and stop its rampage, if it's the last thing I do…Móðir …I promise you both…"

Without a trace of bitterness for childhood's lost years in his golden soul, Kristoff vows in his quiet rumbling way as he puts one hand to the legendary Saami bow and arrow strapped to his strapping bare back and throws a powerful leg over Sven's hindquarters.

The nodding reindeer had been listening to the conversation and agreed with every single one of his best friend's words. The resolute rangifer prepares to launch into the sky path he can now run freely upon thanks to that good man named Ragi whom the hefty mammal too would do anything to bring to safety.

"Okay! What are we waiting for?! Hi there, pretty girl. Wanna be my ride? Let's fly!" Not requiring much more full disclosure, nor further reason to ride the airwaves other than the thrill of adventure ahead, Anna splashes through the water to scurry and trot her skinny little body across the beach scarp. She only pauses momentarily to tickle the doe's chin before hopping onto Svala's back as if she'd been a reindeer wrangler all her young life.

The surprised forlorn-eyed reindeer had cantered up to the soggy trio in their waist-high wading in this northern side of Mosken Island's trough when she felt her master's spirit close through the mirror he was viewed upon for only a few seconds before.

"Whoa, Feisty Pants! What - are you doing?" Looking over his shoulder at the bubbly caramel colored girl with a droll knowing smirk, Kristoff, already mounted on Sven himself as they ready to fly, never tired of how spontaneous his little gamine named Anna could be. He marvels as she again races headlong into danger with as much caution as a firefly that hovers towards the flickering light with no thought to self preservation.

_That's my job, now and forever._

"I'm not letting you out of my sight this time, flutterbudget!" Kristoff says with a pair of incredulous widened eyes and his energetic, diminutive, yet well-formed, Princess who dashes about before his adoring eyes. In challenging response, Anna precariously leans over from her mount to stick her puckered lipped, scrunched-nose face right in her protective husband's space defiantly.

"Well, you heard your Mamma! We've got an angry spaghetti seaweed monster on the loose! There is **No Way **I am **NOT** going to help kick its sorry butt to kingdom come! After what that stupid evil pirate's done to nearly _every_ member of my family – this is a personal vendetta for me! Grr!" With the glowing mirror she had snatched from Kristoff when he wasn't looking in her hand to lead the way, a vexed growling Anna follows the Snow Queen's trail of frost shining on the winds.

"But there's another scrawnier backside I have to slam my foot down on first!" Brooding Anna murmurs to herself in musically sour notes as she signals for Svala to speed off the ground.

As Anna sings out to her husband, laying the ground rules he never would have a say in bending, Snow Prince or no, Kristoff sighs as drenched newcomer-to-flying Sven was having a bit of a struggle with the wet take-off in chase of the frisky female pair who make a pitstop only a few meters ahead down on the foreshore.

There, a confrontation of another, albeit more brutal—emotionally speaking— kind was about to take place…

* * *

_Tense minutes ago…_

"Elsa! My darling little snow Angel! Is she unharmed? Is she breathing?!" Rushing forward to meet the conquering hero, an alarmed King Agdar's low baritone voice is beside himself with worry for his eldest daughter as Prince Hans quickly closes the gap between the distressed parent and his child with as much alacrity as possible across the ice path.

"Yes. I believe she is merely fatigued from the creature's energy draining effects." Striding across the Ice King's bridge, the redheaded Prince himself was still struggling for lack of breath after his heroic feat of swordsmanship and subsequent life-giving kiss to Queen Elsa when she was in imminent danger of a traumatic drowned death that left them all breathless.

Especially this young man who, through strife and terror, had come to realize just how madly and truly in love—for the first time in his entire scheming and plotting to be more than his thirteenth-in-line status adult life ought—he had fallen for the cool-skinned delicate woman clasped safely in his arms pressed to the warmth of his strong chest, with no regard for his own sake anymore.

_Only hers._

But the evident admiration that showed on Hans' face gazing down upon Elsa's was so obvious, even to this royal monarch who often lived in his own sheltered little world for so long, that Agdar is immediately put on his paternal guard.

Although courteous manners and stately decorum required the Norwegian King to be at least gracious with his words, if not his pale icy blue eyes going a definite shade of pale green with jealousy in their stead, to glare at the foreign prince who was stealing the limelight for the affections of his little girl.

"Your courage and valor in the Princess'…_ehem_…the Queen's… rescue is commendable, Kommander Westergaard." King Agdar, after coming to grips with reality's present coronated monarch, shares an affirmative nodding glance with his relieved wife, who was in total agreement of admiration for this youngest Westergaard.

The Queen Mother dashes like a young gazelle across the berms with Olaf waddling at her side from the Snow Queen's icy carriage to her retrieved child's side.

"She's breathing normally. Dear God, be praised." Queen Idun adds her quiet thanksgiving to the Creator as she leans her head down to listen to Elsa's calm breathing from where her daughter was carried in the comely prince's arms.

_"__Thank you, sir."_

It's all that an overwhelmed Idun verbally can utter in a smiled whisper, although her voluminous indigo blue eyes expressed so much more motherly love to please a starved for love Hans to no end. The older woman pats her now merely exhausted daughter's cheek after a thorough rub down check over all of Elsa's vital parts to gratefully find them quite sound, thanks to the handsome young gentleman cradling her in his proficient, capable arms.

Even down to the once erratic beating heart that her older daughter possessed all through her difficult growing years that never was this steady or strong or constant, nor in perfect contentment than to be encapsulated in this prince's secure embrace.

"There is no need for that, your Majesty. It has been my duty—no—my **_delight_****,** to see Queen Elsa brought safe back to you." Prince Hans answers in modest tenor tones to the frail royal 'Queen mother' with a gentle smile to match.

"Ooh! Ooh! Does this mean JustHans gets to be '_Vise Admiral'_ now like you promised before if he saved Elsa from that bad monster, Elsa and Anna's Papa?" The swaying back and forth, bright-eyed snowman questions excitedly the remembered prize offered for his new friend whom trusting, simple Olaf already considered good enough to be his 'Admiral'.

"Yes… Well… Perhaps, I may have…intimated that…" His words dangle as he watches a laughing-eyed-back-at-her-haughty-love-being-caught-with-his-proverbial-pants-down Idun who follows Rapunzel's lead away towards Eugene and the injured Job. King Agdar only vaguely recalls the desperate proffered pledge for Hans to jump several naval ranks should the young man pull off such an amazing feat for his daughter Elsa's sake.

Which said Prince Hans accomplished with flying colors.

But it was now just dawning on the royal ruler how this 'favor' commission may not sit well at all with many of the more stuffed-shirt types among the High Counsel back home in Arendelle.

_Namely, Kai… Good old reliable Head Council member Kai…Hmm…What would he think of this young upstart so full of flash and valor and gallantry?_

_Would my timid little girl, so afraid of the outside world, truly fall for an adventuresome yet tidily coiffed risk-taker with neatly trimmed sideburns such as this? More to the point – does this redheaded rapscallion deserve the attentions of the royal Queen?_

King Agdar gazes from Hans' caring look down to his daughter's gently moaning features as she was resting, pressed against his chest. Trained upon her lavender lips was that rare trusting smile that was nothing short of a joy for her loving parent to see after all those years of her brow being creased in her self troubles passed down from his icy bloodline.

_Elsa? Do you care for this boy enough to trust him with your Navy? Trust him with your heart?_

Finally, his edgy, nervous Elsa seemed to have found some degree of peace in this _Prince Hans'_ safe embrace, as King Agdar concedes the young Dane at least that.

…_Perhaps I'm not giving my girl enough credit for discernment..._

It was natural for a father, never mind a King, to be a little envious of any usurper for a beloved child's affections, but Agdar prided himself on being a man of his word.

And a King's promise was a promise in gold to be kept.

Now, King Agdar, the renowned naval man that Hans had admired for most all his young life and not only for the monarch's seaworthy heroics, but also for his all-important family life, was staring at him with a look of consternation in his pale blue eyes.

The quiet stoic King's stare right now was far more frightening to Hans than even facing his own stern father's disapproving gaze. But Hans was intelligent enough to recognize that his snowflower Elsa's paternal parent held the keys to all his future happiness.

A forbidden bliss that Hans' own guilt wouldn't allow himself to turn the doorknob open to. And if there was any opposition from the king as well...Anna's well deserved dislike was enough already to ward the chary Prince off from his heart's true desire.

An honorary title meant so little to Hans now as Agdar, in his most regal tone commands:

"Your sword and the name of the vessel you command, Sir?" The King was fully prepared to commission the Prince, who had well proven his mettle already, to the rank just under his as Supreme Admiral of his beloved Sjoforsvaret.

For beyond the optics, the thoughtful intellectual strategist had a great task to ask of the responsible young naval officer to take on in this desperate situation where time was of the essence and it was weighing heavily on Agdar's heart.

There was no opportunity to stand on time-consuming ceremony or Naval seniority protocol.

"The newly commissioned, fine naval craft, HmNoS Gler, your Majesty." Though feeling simultaneously puffed up and baffled inside by the insanity of it all, a for once confused Hans does as instructed. Leaning Elsa's still fainted, lissome body against the crook of his neck with one sinewy thin arm, Hans produces with the other deft hand the sword she had granted him when he was elevated to the rank of ship's Kommander.

"Kommander Westergaard of the Sjoforsvaret, under the active service commission of her Royal Majesty's proud vessel, the HmNos Gler, please kneel." Agdar expertly unsheathes the bowled over red-head's relinquished naval sword and holds it over the astounded man who was balancing his daughter on one knee against his respectfully genuflecting chest.

"As Royal Sovereign of this land, I hereby promote you to the rank of Vise Admiral above all other officers, with all the responsibility of duty over the vast number of sailors of the Norwegian Navy to protect and serve Norway, under direct order from the supreme Sjoforsvaret Admiralty henceforth." King Agdar applies a quick version of the naval promotion ceremony code that he had presided over many times in his lifelong tour of service as sovereign head of the country's maritime Defense forces.

Although, Vise Admiral was a special honorary title that had been out of service for many years since the last rank holder's untimely death. Agdar never felt any other officer deserving of replacement to that admirable position of the aged man who taught him everything the young King knew about the service they both loved held for so many years.

_Until now. _

Agdar closes his eyes to steady his recently reinstated left arm as he raises the well honed military sword from its scabbard over the navy officer who had risked life and limb so valiantly to rescue his daughter, the fair Queen Elsa.

The struck speechless young man was still stunned by the swiftness of everything he ever wanted, yet would never deserve, all falling into place. The tender beauty of Queen Elsa was still wrapped in his arms to top it all off, as Hans bows in deference to the King, in complete awe of the moment.

But that warm and fuzzy feeling of trusted camaraderie between the two seamen in Naval service was about to hit the fans.

"Vise Admiral?! I wouldn't let that guy be Arendelle dogcatcher, that no good dirty doublecrosser!" Princess Anna's shrill voice breaks through her father's purposely stifled cumulative skepticism with tenfold more doubt to add.

Slitting his eerily azure blue eyes as his trusting mood rapidly morphs, King Agdar looks at Hans coldly when Anna cries out accusations from aloft Svala, shaking her fist down at her sworn enemy as she hovers her reindeer over the shore close by.

"Anna, Kommander Westergaard deserves our deepest respect and gratitude for his great courage, despite harrowing danger to himself, in saving your sister in such heroic fashion." Agdar scolds his younger girl mildly. He was raised a bit too stuffy, stiff and proper himself not to address others – especially visiting royalty – with anything but decorum.

"But, Papa! You weren't there! He's the same coldhearted loser who tried to kill Elsa two years ago when her powers came out! And nearly me, too! He was the big bad villain who wanted to take over Arendelle by marriage or murder, he didn't care which of us he had to use to get our kingdom's crown! You can't trust him like this, even if he tries to pretend he's all nice and gallant and chivalrous, now. A leopard doesn't change its spots! And a spade is still just a spade no matter what shining armor it puts on." Anna mixes her metaphors as she venomously spits this all in one heated breath at record rate.

The unforgiving spunky girl glares over her father and Elsa's heads down at the mischievous malevolent miscreant whilst air loft upon Svala's hovering back.

_You're in for it now, Red! Don't you mess with my Papa, now that he knows the facts about you!_

Unconsciously, with an alarmed startled frown, King Agdar throws down the sword to the sands as he then, with all haste, gathers his pale-skinned daughter's delicate thin frame in his own limber arms away from Hans rather possessively.

After he had watched his usually detached nervous little girl actually linger a longing smile in her delirium towards the kneeling Danish Prince, whose velvety voice and come hither eyes had been soaking up the semi-conscious young woman with his suave charm and dashing demeanor. Amidst the young man's purported courageous naval heroics, sealed with a kiss, the protective father had a lot of newly revealed, unsavory information of the man now as Elsa's concerned Papa confiscates her from him to digest in balance.

"Is this true?!" Looking to his Idun, though she was too involved in performing her healing touch over the badly eviscerated Job up on the beach embankment to do much more than give her husband a weak smile, Agdar's debonair face goes from a pale pensive, to a purplish perplexed, to a perturbed icy bluish angry shade in a matter of moments.

After Anna raised these heavy allegations in connection with Prince Hans of the Southern Isles and his now questionable motives, especially towards his elder daughter's emotional well-being, Agdar was quite livid.

"Anna! This requires further explanation!" Seething ice from every pore of his body in his best attempt to maintain control, King Agdar demands of his youngest child.

But vivacious Anna trusted her father would take care of _that Westergaard_ and was already zinging across the sky trying to catch up to her racing across the sea partner. The orangey Princess makes good time on smaller, slimmer, soaring Svala, for her years of experience with Ragi as flight partner was more well-versed at air travel than an off-balance with a broken antler Sven.

"Your defense for these accusations of your disingenuous dealings with my family, Kommander?" Withholding his icy fury with all the great control he had trained himself to master all his life, King Agdar was freezing cold breaths down at a still genuflected Hans with an intimidating blue-white light every now and then flickering ablaze behind his pale eyes. With each threatening word the King pulls Elsa's slumbering form behind his icy back as if to keep the very sight of her purity away from the accused criminal's pleading eyes.

"Beyond a young fool's belief in convincing himself that it was the only way to save Arendelle's innocent citizens and gain an elevated place of his own among those good people, I have none, your Majesty." Hans honestly belittles himself in the second person with reverent eyes that do not count himself worthy enough to even look up to meet his adjudicator's angry incensed ones.

After a terrifying cold silence persists, the young Prince continues his apology.

"I have already confessed myself before Almighty God in an attempt to begin to make right the many wrongs to your kingdom my fallen soul had accomplished in your absence, by whatever means necessary. This unworthy man has vowed assistance to any lengths to help rid your great nation of this vile threat menacing your wondrous, peaceful shores. Even if it takes my worthless life." The distinguished Prince practically prostrates himself before King Agdar, hanging his head sharply down and lowering his eyes where he was knelt on the ground upon bended knee in all humility before the fuming older man.

As for King Agdar, he was doing his very best to keep his cool.

Or rather, _not_ get too cool, past the point of no return, though the flush of resentment was proving harder to contain than the cold ice normally checked as it trickled through his veins.

"It is with deep gratitude that I am able to personally offer my most sincere penitent confession to the one man I have respected more than any in my entire life. It is you whom I vainly tried and failed to assimilate my childhood fantasies of what a good family should be to one another, to be part of your idyllic dream, Admiral Bernadotte." Hans shows how versed he actually was with the Norwegian royal family by addressing the King by his rarely used surname.

"I have thanked God each morning since this extraordinary journey began that He, in his mercy, allowed me to meet up again with your splendid daughters. He, in His vast wisdom and grace has given His servant a second chance to make amends for my many sins. I have rendered my humble service to you and your house. I have served as an officer to Queen Elsa, whom I've pledged the rest of my undeserving life to care for and protect without thought of reward nor wanting recompense for my actions in obedient duty to your crown." Hans bows his red head, auburn-ed in the waning, wind-less midnight sun, in deep shamed regret and utter respect.

Though he knew he had destroyed his mortally small and insignificant life, the truth from Above gave this penitent soul the blessed assurance that even he was still precious in the sight of God.

And for that merciful knowledge, Hans Westergaard was as grateful to his Maker as he was ready to meet Him in justified atonement for his wicked past transgressions.

"Your sword, Sir." King Agdar's low deep voice intones solemnly as he instructs a surprised gulping Hans to comply. Nonetheless, facing his punishment like a man should, with calm grace and a gentleman's refinement, the disowned Danish Prince adeptly reaches a long fingered hand out to seize and lift the discarded broadsword by its cold steel blade from the beachfront's shifting sands he was knelt upon to offer its hilt up to the crown ruler of this land, whom there could be no better to serve as judge, jury and (_gulp)_ executioner.

"Though I fully realize no apology could ever exonerate my iniquitous offenses in moral turpitude that led to my complete and utter lack of basic human morality in order to achieve my own goals." With a choke to his voice and a genuine tear in his repentant eye, Hans adds with sincere regret:" I want you to know how excessively and inexpressibly sorry I am to have ever hurt either of your children." With this forthright confession, Hans looks squarely into the ice blue cold eyes of the man who had every right to stand judging above him in every capacity, if the King of this land on the battlefield saw fit.

And, if nothing else, this battlefield that stretched urgently before good King Agdar was full of unforeseen emotional landmines.

_I have not the luxury of time, nor the virtue of infinite patience, never mind the distressed desire to deal with this dubious man's perplexing character issues. So I must take up my role as sovereign of this nation again and make a decision, no matter how painful or harsh it may be…_

"I am fully prepared to willingly accept the punishment you ultimately assign, your Majesty. Without complaint, I ask not for leniency for my treasonous crimes that have weighed heavily over my heart these past two years. But I only have hoped for just one word of forgiveness from the pure woman I wronged most of all, though I understand your time is short and my swift punishment must be carried out so you can resume your pressing mission to stop that fiend."

With one more realized final regret to never gaze upon her beautiful crystalline sapphire eyes again with his contrition, Hans gazes longingly with a sad melancholy upon Elsa's slender rustling to life form leaning against her Father's shoulder as she starts to come to consciousness.

_Perhaps she will grace me with her unsurpassable dazzling smile one, last time…_

…_Snowflake, please forgive me for my selfishness... From that first second we didn't meet on that fateful Coronation Day when I intended to sweep you off your feet, and every moment thereafter, when I was swept off mine by a growing avalanche of wanton desire to rule what didn't belong to me and prove myself worthy to deserve it all…_

_And especially for the audacity to even dream I deserved to love you…_

Agdar, while still cradling Elsa's thin body and she stirs on his one arm, as if she were sensing something momentous taking place, uses his icy powers as a proverbial third appendage to hold his daughter up. He strengthens his reinstated left arm to expertly wield the sword's silvery blade to raise it up to the Midnight Sun's multi-hued iridescence.

And the long blade glistens with cascades of ice crystals dripping over onto Hans Westergaard's susceptible, vulnerable, bowed neck, as he patiently awaits judgment…

After several moments of pause spent scrutinizing the recriminating aspersions Anna raised, the older man in his judgment glares down in anger at the bowed redhead before him. Fair King Agdar's chilled brow knits in profound consternation.

The ice verglas emanating from the Ice King's sub-zero temperature smoking mouth and flared nostrils frosted his ginger mustache to match the rest of his now ice-coated pale blond hair that all made the usually dashing figure of a Norwegian monarch look quite severe.

Swallowing back his reservations and fear with resigned conviction, Hans doesn't flinch, though he does not even dare to look up from his knelt position before the frostbiting King who was on the verge of executing final corporal punishment upon the self-confessed, duplicitous criminal accused of treason and attempted murder charges against both of Agdar's precious children…

_May truth and justice be served at last to a worthless wretch like me…I only pray this land and its pure Queen will be protected to see Your face shine upon its pristine, untouched beauty again, dear Lord…My Elsa must be free to live her life in peace…_

* * *

Móðir -(pronounced _Mu_-or)- Mother in Icelandic

_Pabbi - _Dad in Icelandic

* * *

_So sorry for the long wait for this momentous chapter, folks, keeping you hanging! As a seamstress/ author on the side, Halloween has been crunch-time around here! So I didn't get a chance to write until now when I could pull all my scribbled notes-to-self by the sewing machine over these past few weeks together! Hope it came out cohesively and you enjoyed the revealed truth drama!_

_We'll see if Hans survives the King's summary execution next week! I'll be writing double time now I've got some days off, so the next chapty will be up by the end of October hopefully tout suite!_

_Reviews of this chapter's 'Father __judges royal Suitor with a sword' are always appreciated! ^_^_

_God bless, Frozen friends!_

_HarukaKou_


	48. Chapter 47 - The Chain of Command

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act III**

**Chapter 47**

**"The Chain of Command"**

_On the dream's side of reality…_

"'And you shall know the truth, the truth will make you free.' A reading from the holy Gospel of John 8:32."

As Elsa groggily begins to awaken, she hears one of her favorite verses of the New Testament ring true through her head. In her Papa's fine strong baritone, the blessed Scripture he would stand at the lectern and give liturgical reading of in times of Arendelle's private chapel devotional services for just his small family replays in the young woman's fuzzy psyche.

_"'We will not fear, for God hath willed his truth to triumph through us'" _

Soon, her Mama's glorious soprano voice in Martin Luther's 'A Mighty Fortress Is Our God' hymnal song echoing throughout the church, punctuates her father's well spoken words.

But something was different about this particular Sunday mass. Something Elsa couldn't quite put her finger on.

Yes, she was sitting in the church's second pew row of the otherwise empty holy sanctuary, just where she always preferred to sit in. Proper, prim, and Princess-like, her stylish mother had painstakingly taken hours to do up Elsa's pale locks of feathery blonde hair, as she did every Sunday, in that neat rolled bun of the modern era befitting an elegant young lady of Elsa's maturing teenaged years.

Yes, young Princess Elsa was still attentively listening to her parents observe the Sabbath in their praise and devotion, taking part in it as much as she dared without losing control of the ice powers roiling inside of her.

_…Hmmm…Huh? Shame on you, Elsa, for falling asleep in church of all places!_

As she begins to slip in and out of weary consciousness again, Elsa scolds herself. She repositions her slumping body bolt upright and straightens the purple empire-jacket over her blue royal Princess frock. Her mother had paid thorough, particular attention in care for this special child of hers who primped and fussed at being meticulously tidy and at her prettiest in rare times spent in public.

For Sunday early morning church service was the one time of the week Princess Elsa would leave the refuge of her room. The timid girl would spend all the morning with her humming mother's calm dressing of her daughter, to steady her nerves just to walk out the bedroom door and down the stairs to the quiet solitude of the chapel inside the castle. And they would repeat this process every week, just the same way. So, building her control in small ways, Elsa had learned to handle it.

_Then, why is my heart pounding so this time? It's as if I'm terrified that something is going to happen to someone I love dearly, but I am powerless to do a thing about it…_

"Dear Lord, in the Psalmist's words:_ 'Look upon my affliction and my pain, and forgive my sins.' _Amen."

The final prayer of the mass being delivered, Elsa closes her eyes and prepares herself to walk through the castle where she may or may not bump into some of the limited staff or her mother's ladies maid, or maybe she would see Anna today—_Oh, no, I'm not ready for Anna, not today_. Folding her hands nervously, wringing her skirt as she tugs her aqua blue gloves on over her long catlike fingernails snugly, Elsa feels the overwhelming urge to fall to her knees on the chapel pew's footrest.

Then, all at once, a gentle hand from behind tenderly touches her shoulder.

Another human being's presence, with a warm breath on the back of her neck, startles Elsa to silently squeak like a frightened little mouse.

It was like some outside force had a pair of invisible arms that suddenly wrap around her shivering form and was keeping her safe and warm, even from the ice emanating inside the gifted young girl's terrified-to-be-touched heart.

For one quiet second in between Kai's loudly stirring pipe organ roaring to life, and Gerda adding her boisterous, homey refrain to Elsa's mother's solo verse, the exotic-eyed Norwegian Princess freezes in place.

Then, all at once, as she stares at the royal orb and scepter displayed near the front altar where the Saviors' kind likeness looked on, Elsa realizes that the cold chill that normally accompanied her uncertain fear was all but nonexistent.

It was as if it were contained, like the mysterious glow of the aurora borealis that streamed through the stained-glass windows upon the religious scenes and holy symbols were stunningly illuminated by the natural backlight thereof.

And the choir music of her Mama's lovely soprano, Gerda's lilting alto, and even her little sister Anna – who wasn't usually present in the same church service as Elsa – whose sweet voice in prayerful song joined hers for the first time in a long time, causes Elsa to smile.

The placidly smiling, contented young woman turns her head to sneak a glance at the last newest voice adding his beautiful tenor to her Papa's strong baritone in the centuries old hymn's final verse.

_"Let goods and kindred go,  
this mortal life also;  
the body they may kill;  
God's truth abideth still;  
His kingdom is forever.'" _

Elsa shares a tender trusting smile over her shoulder at the titian haired handsome young man her age whose perfect melodic voice and gorgeous viridescent eyes were full of such palpable warmth and longing to be loved and give love that he boldly disregards self fear and solemn propriety to wrap his firm arms from behind around her slender body.

The quiet, thoughtful Prince holds his Princess close within his pervasive scent, so very subtle, spicy, and stirring, concomitantly.

And Elsa never wanted this stranger to let her go...

* * *

_On reality's flipside of the dream…_

With his fainted beloved daughter leaning against the back of his icy left shoulder, King Agdar raises his naval sword with his right arm under the dusky midnight sun entrenched skies. He extends its unforgiving ice-cold blade over the neck of the slippery young cur of a charlatan officer knelt submissively before the older man's unchecked arctic cold outrage building inside.

_How easily you manipulated my ignorance and moment of need into trusting you so readily, sir! Unfortunately for my pure angelic daughters, they were never taught to ward against deceitful scoundrels, who pretend to be gentleman, of your sordid nature. I tried very much to keep them safe and innocent from the outside world's corruption you represent._

Indeed, the watchful father and lifelong protector of his two little girls was incensed by this confessed attempted murderer, avaricious philanderer and kingdom usurper who moved in wicked ways in the King's absence, perhaps enough for this kind, noble man to perform an impromptu quick summary execution.

And the obedient way this traitorous Dane was practically begging for a swift, just end made executing capital punishment all the easier for this righteous Ice King. His fully embraced, unrestricted cryogenic prowess was slowly coating his human heart with enough quick-to-hand-out-judgment, object detachment and cold hard logic that Norway's sovereign saw little other option for this treasonous foreigner at this desperate hour for his nation when he needed only people he could trust implicitly around him.

Though the King didn't understand much of this Danish Sovernaet officer's motive in his accused seduction and attempted assassination of this nation's naive royal Queen, King Agdar's natural alpha male's stance to defend his daughter to the death was all he could comprehend. Amidst his awakened ice powers taking their frozen toll on his confused frosted-over mind and driven-to-jealousy cold heart, there wasn't much room or precious time to waste on deliberation –

And so, with a heavy heart under the glaring gleam of the ebbing rays of the midnight sun at sunset time, the executioner's sharp icy sword begins its subzero downward descent…

"…Hmm…hmmn… Hans…" It was thereabouts that Elsa's slipping in and out of consciousness condition, somehow sensing this was her moment, finally comes to a head.

When her sapphire eyes struggle to open from the blissful dream, they are greeted by most frightening sight she had seen since…_since_…Anna had been frozen solid by her own ice magic…

"Papa! Don't do it!" But instead of draping herself over her icy sister's cold, still, solid statue, Queen Elsa of Arendelle throws herself bodily in between the punishing sword her father wielded, in stark reverse with the young man who would now be the icy steel's victim rather than its hailing victor against Elsa herself, a frozen heart's lifetime ago…

**_SZ-ZTTTT! == TSS-CCHNKK!_**

Agdar's icy fury was directed through his naval sword aimed precisely at Hans' neck's main artery to humanely inflict as little pain and trauma as possible in severing the Prince's head, with swift overwhelming power and numbing ice.

But the shocked King's incoming downward swing is stunned backwards by Elsa's own icy magnitude of mirrored cryogenic powers that release, in her panic, a surge of bitter frost that counters her father's frozen weapon before it hits its intended mark.

The repelled blade is flung from the blown back King's surprised grip towards the beach at such a phenomenal explosion of magnetically opposing like forces, it zings across the air at great speed, in the direction of where a desperate triage for a gutted Job was still frantically taking place.

**_K-CLANGG!_**

"I've been sworded!" The snowman cries out almost proudly as he looks down at his own punctured chest, nonchalantly more excited than wounded.

The dense snow creature fortunately served in the ice accelerated diverted sword's path as an obstructive barrier for the defenseless humans huddled on the berms together right behind him.

Although, at the moment of impact, something inside the snowman's supposedly 'empty' head and middle 'torso' body section made a striking metal '_clanging'_ sound that sends the blade ricocheting back towards our unlucky number thirteen boy and clatters to the sands of the crashing shore mere inches from slicing off the tip of his sharp nose.

"Please! I trust him now with my life!" With hot tears running down her cold face to cause a lovely pink flush to rose her pale cheeks, Elsa whimpers up at her father as she pulls Hans' vulnerable head protectively to her heaving chest. Her wild weeping eyes did not care of anything but to see this man stay alive, no matter whom the girl who longed for freedom's independence had to defy.

"Elsa, please don't. I deserve this! I am expendable!" Hans whispers from where he was knelt, his face pressed and squeezed deliciously between Elsa's heavily breathing arms. The cool touch of her frosted hands running through his red hair with unrestrained compassion was driving him mad. The pound of her thumping heart beating in his ears only made him love his merciful angel all the more.

"Not to me." Through her distress and tearful fear gripping her heart as she rebels in a fashion against her admired leader and beloved father for the first time, Elsa focuses on maintaining her body temperature ratio as it fluctuates with her raging emotions, but she was on the losing end of that battle.

Yet when the Ice Queen feels the strength of Hans' warmth in his tensely heated breath pressed against her chest straight through her clothing, Elsa finally finds the ability to stabilize.

"Elsa! You are still under much too much duress after your ordeal with that monster to know your own mind! Have you forgotten what this man had tried to do to you, to your nation–to your sister? Stand back, child!" Taken aback by her unbidden, rare tears and ice magic willfully directed against him, King Agdar regains his off-balance footing and sustained loss of breath from the resulted clash.

Their conflicted battling ice waves were so equal a match, the impact had traveled through his icy sword to reverberate up and down the King's entire shaken spinal frame.

Just the realization of his little snow angel Elsa's heretofore untapped, uncontrollable amount of power causes the concerned father to involuntarily shudder. And in the next moment of consideration, be impressed by her progress and maturity.

"Papa! You can't do this! Please don't harm him!" Elsa pleads up to her gasping for air parent. The once thought heartless and cold Ice Queen passionately pours her heart out to her father in defense of the boy whose head she now was cradling in her arms as she kneels beside him. Elsa continues to shield Hans from the older royal ruler's further sub-zero punishment.

For this Ice Queen, who now understood whom she inherited her powers—and temperament—from, also understood firsthand that no physical sword was required for the Ice King to continue to serve his cold retribution upon poor Hans.

"Elsa, you've studied our history enough to know that the sentence for treason in the Navy is a swift death. A traitor is a traitor. And a murderer – attempted or otherwise – is even worse. Man is born into sin." Ice puffs emanate from his breath with each serious allegations' damning word. The King questions his once uncertain and afraid daughter whom Agdar deemed perhaps too close to the situation to have proper judgment on the matter.

"Prince Hans has changed. He's different now. You have to let him go!"

Agdar was completely shocked by his once quietly reserved child's vehement fervor and emotion for this convicted criminal who attempted to wed and then murder herself and her sister, if Anna was to be believed.

And his baby girl Anna was the soul of honesty.

"How can you be so sure of him, Elsa? This man has already confessed the extent of the serious charges lodged against him." The King's livid anger from earlier was trying to calm down, a bit abated by his, for once, more levelheaded daughter's cooling down ice affect.

Agdar looks at his child for what preponderance of evidence she had to present that would let this accused criminal off the hook as she wished.

"Because, Papa, weren't you the one teach us from the Word: _'Judge not, lest we be judged. Condemn not, lest we be condemned, forgive, and ye shall be forgiven.'_ There are no words to express how his sincere regret has unlocked my frozen heart to so many new possibilities, Papa. I believe in him, because he believes in me, I trust him with all my heart now because he and I are so much alike. I understand him, as he does me. We've both made mistakes we know there's no redemption for, except through Him." The devout young woman quotes from the Gospel of Luke to her father, then explains how the true words apply to her personal walk with faith and experience with unselfish love.

As Elsa and her Papa exchange an enlightened look, both tortured souls with ice running through their veins rationalize their own past inequities that required the forgiveness of others they had wronged along their journey of self discovery. But more importantly, the ultimate forgiveness of the Creator was vital for any forgiveness to be granted.

And for the next few seconds spent in silence, father and daughter both consider that realized fact.

_'Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.'_ King Agdar remembers praying this part of the Lord's precious prayer especially with his old nanny Johanne nearly every time the vexed exasperated young nurse had to reprimand her youthful '_Gingerbread_ _Prince'_—as she affectionately called '_Agdy'_— for being naughty.

Which was quite often, indeed, as the man honestly recalls his solitary childhood days.

Agdar feels his tensed arm muscles loosen, as the ice that had been formulating already at the tips of his fingers, begin to relax. The frost coating around his outer skin as a shell slows its rapid flash freeze that occurred during his out-of-control emotions.

The Ice King takes a cautious step back from the knelt down pair coupled before him. He tries to normalize both his raging temper and frozen cold body's fierce reaction to the sudden jolt of anger, jealousy, and fear that gripped his heart for his confused little girl's sake. But his Elsa was a grown up Queen now. He must trust in her judgment, even if it killed him.

Queen Idun, after doing all she could for Job, dashes her weak legs over to the intense scene at the shore's edge. Idun was so pleased to find her upright and moral husband's greater judgment had won out in the end, rather than his oft unquenched and uncensored temper run amuck without her calming presence close by.

"I could not be prouder of you, my love. You managed to stay calm, all on your own. This is a big step for you." Idun whispers, rubbing his chilled hands and blowing warmth into his frozen palms, sensing the tortured roller coaster of outrage, resentment and anger he surmounted. Even without her gentle calm to ease this tense situation of worried overprotective father versus unworthy royal suitor.

"'The LORD _is_ my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in him, and I am helped: therefore my heart _greatly_ _rejoiceth_.'" (Psalm 28:7) The dashing and debonair eloquent King quotes Scripture with a smirking trace of the old humor she fell in love with all those years ago at the close. But his eyes were still warily tracking young Westergaard as he adds the deadpan serious sentence:

"Besides I could feel your big beautiful eyes boring a hole into the back of my neck, berating me to hold my temper or else face your wrath, my Angel of compassion." Agdar displays his still romantic nature by nuzzling at the Queen's warm neck with a cool nose in a cuddle while he steels himself for what is to come next.

* * *

"But your father… Elsa, why? Why would you do all this for me when I should be nothing to you?!" All the rest of the world melting away, Hans whispers in disbelief to what extent his beautiful Queen of the kingdom he wronged so terribly could still be so pure and generous in her forgiveness, even to stand against her own flesh and blood in the defense of him.

"Perhaps… But I know one thing. I have glimpsed your soul on this journey. I've seen your true heart. And you have become my everything…" The timid with her emotions young Queen's purple eyeshadow and mascara runs down her watery eyes as she whispers this self-realization down at the man whose head she was hugging to her chest, fearlessly unashamed.

_Someone cries tears for me? Someone so precious and good considers me important in the world?_ Hans' awed thoughts seep into a consciousness that was taught as a factual mindset since his early childhood days that he, as the last to stand in a long line of brothers grasping for power and position— this unlucky and unwelcome thirteenth son—would never aspire to more than a pretty boy party favor that no sensible woman of any royal standing would ever truly wish to entertain as anything more than a bit of flirtatious fun.

But the intelligent, well read, deep thinker of a young man wanted for much more than that. The driven Prince desired a place to belong more than anything to do with titles of honor or majestic power he was led to believe came with that sentiment. And though growing up motherless in a lonely world that was as cruel and uninviting as the Egeskov Castle could be, where he was going to spend the rest of his days out in, alone and redundant, Hans Westergaard was different from all his other dozen brothers.

And that was because, what he longed for most was to be filled with that unattainable mystery of a devoted relationship called 'true love.'

Right now, though he was deservedly certain that he had utterly destroyed any chance of fulfilling that dream by using the cold ways he'd been brought up with back at home, rather than the warmth of genuine Christian love that he'd been instructed under at the holy sister's convent Academy where he'd been shipped off to as a small boy.

But right now the alluring, mesmeric eyes of the exquisite Arendelle Queen made both dreams seem not so far away, after all.

With a soft smile, Elsa's glistening clear pools of blue rain a gentle hailstorm of wetness onto Hans' upturned face. Her tears melting on his hot cheeks made her love all the more valued and desirable a treasure worth fighting for to his heretofore defeated psyche.

Despite her pain-filled distress and unkempt discomposure, Hans never thought she looked more stunningly beguiling than in this moment of heart's revelation.

"Elsa of Arendelle…Thank you for your trust. I will strive from now on never to fail your belief in me." With real pride in his soft silky voice, Hans swallows back his own grateful tears as he shifts his body weight to stand, bringing her slender frame up along with him.

"Whoa-oh. I've got you." When Elsa stumbles on the slippery sand, her equilibrium not quite up to par yet, she clings to Hans' chest gratefully. He smiles and steadies her still weak, trembling form, their eyes locking with one another in a forever eternal moment.

While watching the pair of young lovers with secret motherly joy, a weak yet smiling Queen Idun embraces her own dearest love, warming her King in that affectionate tender way she reserved only for him and him alone.

But then Idun senses Agdar's muscles stiffen beneath her embrace that always signified to her that the contemplative man had made a decision. She tears her interested gaze away from Elsa and her new beau's intimate first moments to look upon her husband's firmly set jaw.

"You are not going to like it, Idun. But I must insist you follow my order to the letter." The King's low baritone rumbles quietly in the drained Queen's brown hair bun, his cool breath frosting her temples.

As he whispers in her ear, Idun stifles a gasp as she pulls her head back to look into her debonair love's steely pale blue eyes.

"Prince Consort Eugene!" King Agdar suddenly projects his voice so it was loud enough to be carried across the beach front's berms and up the sand dunes where Rapunzel and her thief of a husband were struggling to get a healed, but still passed out Job into the waiting Brougham carriage they arrived in.

"Has this big boy been eating his Wheaties or wha—Huh? Who me? Did someone just utter my oh-so-esoteric moniker?" The roguish charmer with the stubble and droll voice emerges his stretched neck head back from the carriage interior. There, he and the spunky little brunette had been industriously top loading the big brawny Caribbean's dead weight into the Snow Queen's vehicle in preparation for the trip ahead.

"Prince Consort Fitzherbert! Attend, immediately!" Lordly, Agdar barks out the demanding command so very urgently that a bug-eyed Flynn Rider drops his end of Job's heavy legs he was dragging and stuffing inside the carriage coach to doubletime it across the beach.

"Ooch! Eugene! Watch out for Lamby!" Rapunzel berates her reckless guy as one of Job's unconscious legs plops down onto the bleating lamb that was still huddled on the seat of the carriage's safety. The other big heavy appendage lands onto a thinking-he-could-take-up the-slack in Eugene's abandoned place helpful Olaf's resulted kicked-in carrot nose that causes the snowman to scream out: "Brain Freeze!"

"Sorry, Blondie! Duty calls! Wow! That's quite a sui generis title if I ever heard one—" Eugene apologizes back and smirks forward in tandem as he dashes down the rolling sand dunes at breakneck speed to the royal ruler's urgent beckon.

"You rang, your Kingliness?" The smoothtalker rudely addresses the King as, on the other side of his hand, he murmurs over to Hans with a wink in Elsa's direction.

"Glad to see you still got a good head on your shoulders, Handsome. And a cool new accessory to dangle on your arm, to boot." Out the side of his mouth, Hans' crass older brother doesn't hold back the tease of the icy girl dangling on Hans' arm.

Eugene had noticed the tensed dramatic confrontation before, but didn't feel it was a convicted thief's place to stand in as character witness for his treasonous and murder accused cute little bro.

_It all worked out in the end with good old Queenie throwing her long, **long**-legged sexy blonde bombshell body over my kid brother without my help anyway. Some guys get all the luck._

Eugene offers a sly shrug to a more somber serious Hans who raises his brow back at him.

But unamused King Agdar was not in the mood, nor on the ice verged temperament to put up with much more of Flynn Rider's flippant attitude right now.

"I am about to entrust both of you with the most pressing, essential mission I ever have given to any man under my command." King Agdar speaks with all the class and regal demeanor his status demanded.

Eugene looks to Hans with a wide-eyed gulp.

"That's quite a starter. Ye-ess? This is sounding pre-tty involved, Lillebror. I don't know about you, but I'm not much on open-ended commitment." The dark brown haired man's genial smirk on his jaded face was about be wiped off in a second more.

"You will take my wife and daughter back to the safety of the vessel you arrived in, the HmNos Gler and return to Arendelle without further delay. Once you arrive there, you will warn Minister Kai of the High Council the dire circumstances here in Lofoten and have him ready the fleet. Inform him that his rediscovered and quite alive King has, by then, either vanquished this Draugen monster threatening this land or has died in the attempt to stop the creature." Agdar passes a deeply troubled, pliant Idun over to a flummoxed Eugene's care with a firm yet loving prod.

"Papa, no! We're coming with you!" Elsa cries out in shrill protest against Hans chest as her mother's distraught frail hand flies up to her mouth in horror.

"Elsa, my snow Angel, you must listen to your Papa." The King turns to face his pallid overwrought daughter, with a voice firm yet soft just as she remembered all through her troubled youth as he tried to teach her control and restraint of her growing powers.

"Please understand. While I yet breathe, this is my sworn duty. To defend my country—my people—from this evil threat moving towards landfall, must still be my foremost responsibility, more than my own self security. And the protection of both of my little girls is every father's top priority even above that. Anna is out there chasing that monster. I will bring her home to you both, I promise." King Agdar places an icy hand each on first his wife's, then his daughter's panicking cheeks.

With an intrigued brow, the man notes how young Westergaard was still amazingly able to hold onto Elsa's ice-imbued form staunchly to his chest, even as the weak-legged beauty full of frigid energy was struggling against Hans to run after her departing Papa and stop him from leaving the beach front shore without the rest of them.

"Papa, don't go!" In her forlorn high strains, Elsa pleads one last time to her Papa, emotional ice threatening to explode from her frantic digits as she watches him now stride away from her towards the shore.

"I am trusting implicitly in your judgment concerning this officer's worth, my darling Queen Elsa." He gives a brisk terse nod at Hans. "Now it's your turn to trust mine." King Agdar proudly calls his daughter by her coronated title in his stead, petting her worried brow.

Then in one fluid motion he bends to pick up the naval sword that had ricocheted off Olaf and retrieves it from the shifting sands beach. Its wet blade instantly freezes at his increasingly subzero chilled grip, as he holds it out towards Hans again.

"If you want to prove yourself to me?" The older man asks with an unwavering stare deeply in Hans' nonplussed keen eyes upon his. The Royal monarch points the sword out towards the younger man at the hilt's less punishing end.

"I command you to guide that ship safely back to the mainland and take my daughter home to her kingdom, _Vise Admiral_ Westergaard. Arendelle needs its Queen, whom you will protect the life of at all costs, as you have expressed a repentant desire to do. And if the creature survives me, you will flee to the continent and protect my dearest beloveds in my place by any means." Stoically looking from Elsa back to the young man she so fervently proclaimed to trust, Agdar gives Hans both his sword **and** a second chance at redemption he's been in search of. Then the experienced equestrian Norwegian King turns to easily mount the white mare horse Hans had separated from the team earlier, that had been pawing impatiently at the shoreline.

"Your Majesty, please. You must allow at least one of us men to accompany you on this dangerous mission. Despite his impaired arm, my brother can competently navigate this carriage back the Gler and proceed expeditiously to Arendelle with my able crew at the ready to return."

"I know my Queen's will well enough to preserve her good country's safety. And I also am aware of her heart's love for her family. Thusly, I pledge my sword and services to aid you in defeating that formidable monster even at risk of my own life. I have already been disowned and disinherited, with no obligation to anyone but your family. So it is only in contrite penitence to you, and before God, that I live now to ensure Arendelle's ideal homeland. I owe Queen Elsa and Princess Anna nothing less than my life."

Hans expounds on his willing offer emphatically as he senses and empathizes with the platinum blonde woman hanging on his arm, who was literally trembling as she held back the frightened ice within her body with the dreaded thought that her adored Papa was about to march off into battle alone, now that they just got him back.

"Are you defying an explicit order from your commanding superior officer, Vise Admiral Westergaard?" In a deep, intimidating tone, Agdar states in incredulous no-nonsense terms as Hans sheathes the sharpened sword that came with the command and moves forward quickly to grab hold of the mare's bridle. His eyes respectfully challenge his new leader for Elsa's sake as the Danish Prince stands defiantly tall between Agdar's horse and its flying take-off.

Looking back and forth caught between the awe inspiring stubborn pair of men in a standoff of wills, Elsa's breath catches in her dry throat for this heart-stopping moment as the two men she cared most for in this world were on the precipice of being at odds again.

"No, Your Majesty. It is because I have already sworn on my honor to protect Princess Anna that I am willing to fight for her to ensure she is safe." Still bravely halting the obsequious horse by its muzzle, Hans answers sincerely off-the-cuff with a pounding heart that understood Elsa's sentiment of great love for her family he himself envied that he lacked for his own kin.

"Her precious people mean the world to my Queen. Subsequently, that means they now mean that much to me as well." Hans whispers over the trembling young ruler leaning on his other arm for support in her silent remonstration for her Papa's stubborn singular mission. Hans looks deeply into Elsa's tearful eyes that were appreciative for his support.

"Besides, I am merely following the command of the ruler who owns my heart." Bowing to his one bended knee before her, Prince Hans of the Southern Isles gazes up at the beautiful delicate curve of Queen Elsa of Arendelle's face, tracing each lovely, elegant line with his eyes as he holds her one hand quite deferentially.

"All of my heart." Hans softly reiterates as he lets his true emotion take over. Elsa's glistening eyes beseech him to still her fears and warm the cold threatening to swallow her up in bitter uncertainty again.

Rising to his feet, Hans forgets his place, the intimidating witnesses, and all the rest the world around, save for her vulnerable eyes –and shivering lips that needed his rescue—as he captures her in a soft, yet passionate and lingering kiss that held all the depth of emotion and love within him that was entirely for her.

"Agdar? Are you taking him with you?" Queen Idun, in the crook of leaning against Eugene's one good arm, whispers softly to her wide-eyed husband, in part to redirect his growing discomfort before it gets the better of his temper again.

"I think I had better." A dubious—though now in a different direction—perplexed King Agdar wonders under his frost smoking murmured breath as he watches Hans deftly lift a hypnotized Elsa's melting body in his arms and carries the young queen over the berms and into the open carriage door where Rapunzel and Olaf were awaiting and giggling at the kissing couple.

By the time a flustered Elsa, dizzy and unable to think after being kissed senseless, comes back to her wits, Hans had already delicately deposited her on the plush coach seat and unhitched a second white steed from the carriage team to return to the shore. There, he finds an astounded King Agdar gaping at him down from his horse with a fixed stare.

"Forgive my forwardness with your daughter, your Majesty. But I thought it was the most and efficient and least…disagreeable…method to impede her protests." Hans blushes as he tries to validate his actions to the bowled over King. Agdar was as impressed by the young officer's creative quick thinking, as he was perturbed by its corollary.

"Gotta hand it to you, Handsome. You know how to take care of the ladies." Flynn shares a wicked wink at his younger brother that entertains Idun on his arm, though her mate was unamused by his nephew-in-law's insinuated tawdry comment concerning his royal child.

"Yes—a-hem—I trust we can leave _you_ with our 'ladies' in good hands, I presume, acting Captain Fitzherbert? I give you charge of the HMnoS Gler and her sail course back to Arendelle with my precious cargo." Though a bit less secure with this former thief turned Corona's Prince Consort – mainly due to the risqué after-wedding speech the not so clean-shaven, not so young man delivered at that memorable celebration that started this all off five years ago – King Agdar must somehow eat his haughty pride and commission this continental landcrabbe—this _illegitimate_ Mr. Fitzherbert—as one of his officers, in charge of one of his fine naval ships, albeit temporarily.

"_Captain_ Fitzherbert? Wait until Old Hook-Hand and the boys back home at the Snuggly Duckling get a load of that, Blondie!" Flynn Rider puffs up with false bewildered pride as he calls across the beach to his thumbs up-ping bride over Idun's confounded head.

"They might even salute me now! Or throw knives, don't know which comes first." The good-looking Prussian man adds inanely with a chortle under his breath as he was wont to do.

And with that nod of approval she longed to see again and a suave farewell salute back, Agdar motions to his cherished Idun as he takes off on one of the two white flying horses that Hans quickly leads to the beachfront. Together the two men fly up into dusky sky, tinkles of ice particles spilling over the seascape as the King of this land allows himself to let it go and embrace the majestic speed and power of his ice unleashed magic, with his Vise Admiral fearlessly at his side.

"Don't lose yourself to the cold, min alskare!" Suddenly terrified that she would not be there to calm him down when he arrived to where he was heading to confront that beast, Idun exerts enough love energy to frantically break free of Eugene's surprised grasp to dash to the shore. But the Queen's weak legs could no longer support her—Idun was so gripped with fear for her husband's yet before restrained, now flourished powers of ice that may consume him at last.

"Idun!" Though determined to move swiftly on his mission, an ice-coated Agdar instead directs his flying horse back to scoop up his small woman from the seashore's beginning to swirl waves where she had tripped and fallen.

The King, though his heart was almost completely surrounded by the stifling claustrophobic cold he was implementing to give him great power, he still felt an inexorable need to hold his warm wife in his arms one more time.

"Idun, do not worry for me. I will be fine because I never lose the warmth of your love—wherever I go." He assures her with his warmest smile, in stark contrast with the rest of the frozen verglas etched on his still stunningly handsome facial features.

"Our baby girl is already out there in chase of that fiend. I refuse to abandon my tiny ray of sunshine, nor my fellow countryman when danger is imminent and I have power to stop this unholy chaos from harming anyone else again. For heavy is the crown I was born and raised to uphold for my country. Or at least die trying to defend it." Agdar contemplates thoughtfully as he carries his wife back on his horse to the shore.

"Agdar, my love! You must come back to me." Idun's lovely eyes go wild and crazed at that last statement muttered under his pondering debonair mustache not expressly for her ears to hear.

"My beloved wife. If God, who created Heaven and Earth, in His dominion over all creatures wills it, let His will be done to a man who believes in His sovereignty. I will never walk alone, Idun, even on borrowed time." Agdar fondles her wisps of hair between his icy fingers as he sets her down from the white horse onto the beach.

"Be of good courage. I will bring our baby back to her sweet Mama and loving sister. I swear it on our great love for one another, my Swedish delight." Ever the romantic, even in the most desperate times, Agdar extends a pale icy coated hand's gentle cool touch to brush along Idun's quavering, yet elegant jawline.

"And I promise to return to you. Somehow, someway, for all our some days to come, my wildflower." The frosted over, fine figure of a man leans down from his horse to land of rather passionate kiss on Idun's trembling lips. He was in full command of his ice powers and was able to offer her his love with all the warmth of his heart in that incredible liplock, without harming her.

"God be with you all." King Agdar decrees in his beautiful voice after depositing a breathless Idun back Eugene's accepting arms. With a trademark smirk and a two fingered salute up to the King, Flynn Rider picks the slight Queen who was his responsibility and wordlessly carries her back to the waiting carriage. There, with the click of a tongue, he prepares the remaining two horses to lift off the sand dunes in the opposite direction of the sea northward.

"God go with you, Papa…Prince Hans." From her seat beside Olaf in the Snow Queen's Brougham carriage sleigh, Elsa adds in a whisper her hopeful response as King Agdar follows Hans' lead through the greenish hued skies ahead.

Elsa's eyes watch the ice propelled silvery blue-and-white streaks of frost trail her wonderful, brave Papa's fearless flight into the battle for the love of his homeland, the protection of his children, and the faith in his Rock of Ages…

_"'Trust in the Lord forever, for He is our everlasting rock.'" Isaiah 26:14_

And in Elsa's spinning head that she sticks out through the carriage window, she hears her Papa's Sunday Scripture readings echo in her mind, followed by Prince Hans' gorgeous tenor voice in song of 'A Mighty Fortress is Our God" as she heard him sing in her dream, so strong and clear and true, as she strains her eyes to see the pair of men who commanded her heart fly further and further away into the distance…

_"'…From age to age the same,  
and He must win the battle.'"_

* * *

_As promised, here's the next chapter, hot off the presses, Frozen friends!_

And boy, was it hot between Elsa and her Hans-ome stranger! Kissing a before untouched young Queen senseless in front of her parents (especially the jealous Papa with power and a sword*_*) took a lot of guts, Mr. Westergaard! And making the quick excuse that it was just to distract her was pretty wily for our quick-witted Red Dane, don't you agree?

A lot of drama going on for the Arendelle reunited family with this Southern Isles Prince shaking things up! Looks like he and Papa are teaming up (if only to get the young kissing Casanova away from his daughter) to take on the Draugen!

Let's see what's on the chopping block next week for our Frozen: Again heroes and heroines!

Please review!

Oh! Have a Happy Halloween! Eat lots of sweets! (Just brush your chompers soon thereafter! _^^^_ )

God bless!

HarukaKOu


	49. Chapter 48 - The Crumbling Earth

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act III**

**Chapter 48**

**"The Crumbling Earth"**

As the evening melts into a delirium of green and bluish lights intermingled with reds and violets from time to time, when the sun hits the midnight sun that hits the earth's atmosphere in a spectacular dramatic display, Anna Bjorgman couldn't tell if it was morning, noon or night anymore.

And being on the back of the high flying reindeer at an altitude over 1500 ft high above sea level, Anna frankly didn't care to know.

Forgetting all her worries and fears as she spread her arms out to embrace the Midnight Sun's wide-open sky, this young woman would never grow out of her unadulterated simplicity of childhood wonder for nature all around her.

Ever since she was little, Anna had always yearned for night just like this. When the sky was awake, she had to be awake too, with her big bright eyes open with curiosity to drink in the great big world out there.

How many times in her lonely youth did Princess Anna of Arendelle imagine herself in mid-flight through a Midnight Sun sky that reigned supreme in this far, far Arctic North region of her country?

This was the same little girl who longed to explore the wondrous landscape beyond the castle walls, so much so that tiny sprite Anna could almost feel the awesome sting of electrified winds whipping on her face, almost see the spectacular climax of the multicolored lightshow in her fertile mind, almost taste the sweet fresh magic of ice frosted rainbows play on the Northern Lights' skyline.

And it was all the sweeter now because the boy she was in love with – her best friend _and_ life's chosen partner—Kristoff—was there to share every fantasized experience with her, too.

"Anna, I wish you would, at least, hold onto the reins." For her Snow Prince was way too down-to-earth to have his head lost up here in the high-pressure clouds.

Kristoff glances over to his daredevil little wife whose hands were as free as the breeze on Svala's thankfully steady back while the pair of reindeer traverse the sky side-by-side.

"Did you say something, Kristly? Sorry, I think I was zoning you out there." Anna answers noncommittally. Kristoff merely exchanges a quirky smile with Sven, smart enough to recognize his Anna's flights of fancy that often 'zoned him out' as she stated.

But for the man who was madly in love with her, it was one of his perky Princess' undeniable charms.

Kristoff simply compensates by reaching a long strong arm out to wrap his big hands around her small palm to squeeze around Svala's unmanned reins. Sven instinctively sidles up to the female reindeer with a shy Rangifer smile as the pair of quadrupeds fly close quarters.

Which Svala seemed to enjoy, her doe eyelashes aflutter while she was flying beside a befuddled Sven.

"I hope we catch up to that monster before it makes landfall. We have to stop it before it gets to Å!" Kristoff calmly explains, glad that Anna had, at least, one hand around her reindeer's reins.

She had been gazing at her shirtless guy adoringly since the electric touch of his big humongous hand atop her little tiny one set her off. But her love's mellow voice finally brought the dreamy girl back to windblown reality.

Of course, geography or map reading cartography was never one of the little Princess' strong points growing up. Anna only hears Kristoff's correct pronunciation of the Lofoten southernmost town, said as '_Oh_', and thinks he is expressively enunciating dread. The orangey braided girl looks at Scuttle flying alongside her on the left and both birdbrains share a weirded-out midair shrug.

"Yeah! We got to definitely stop it before 'Oh!' happens. I'm right with you there, my Muscly Man!" Anna agrees with such decisive drive and a spontaneously affectionate nickname that the blond mountaineer can't avoid a blush, despite the dire circumstances facing them ahead.

Anna's high-strung bubbly nature was all the dynamic motivation of an inspirational muse this levelheaded boy needed. Although he was, at first, reluctant to allow his wife–_Ha ha! Allow?! Anna does what Anna wants!—_ to tag along on this dangerous confrontation with that huge deadly Draugen, the boy who was still desperate for healing hugs, was secretly happy to have her effusive glimmer right beside him.

Either way, he had no choice in the matter. But he was used to that, too.

"Okay, Anna. But when we get there, I want you to stay back and don't do anything craz—

Whoa!" During his midsentence _suggested_ warning, Kristoff's head explodes with a multitude of the voices that he had been in steady contact with, in not only in the sky, but from beneath the waves below as well.

"Kristoff?!" Anna cries out in worry. But it was now her good-looking new husband's turn to 'zone her out', so to speak, as the Wind Whisperer listens to the various vocalizations of the disparate ocean creatures calling out to him from under the sea.

The marine mammals and rorquals of all shapes and sizes had been in constant surveillance of the underwater seascape after the spirit of the young Snow Prince reached out to contact them upon his pertinent rescue mission's commencement.

"Homn!" Sven's deep moan and nodding wide eyes reassure Anna that Kristoff was physically fine, only on a different mental plane as he was communicating to other animals unseen.

* * *

{"That horrid behemoth is nearing the Lofoton shore, in two sperm whales' length, dear Snow Prince!"} Unni the friendly seal reports in her high pitched shrill squeak via Kristoff's mental link.

{"We have been tracking the beast for nautical miles! It is unstoppable!"} A perplexed porpoise adds negatively.

{"The sea monster of legend is upon us!"} A heavily accented old baleen whale cries out, raising the level of terror for many of the other ocean dwellers.

{"What do we do, Snow Prince!?"} Many of the dolphins and large fishes that had been brave enough – or curious enough – to join in pursuit of the unearthly Draugen chime in their fright.

{"Slow down, guys! Please, I'm kinda new to this.}_ Ragi never said they would be all talking at once. How did he handle it?_ His eyes closed in total concentration, Kristoff's mellow voice rubs at his overloaded, instantly head-aching temples.

Kristoff was glad that Sven was sagacious enough to keep his own counsel, and totally left it up to his reindeer buddy to continue the physical course of their flight path in the lead, even though his rider was now preoccupied.

{"Pipe down your scare tactics, Fellas! The Snow Prince is trying to strategize!"} The calm and sure and largest of the ocean mammals silences the other panicked frightened fish of the deep and various submerged creatures communications with Kristoff as the giant North white whale's low voice rumbles in speech.

{"Thanks, Jordal."} Kristoff surprises even himself, by not only relaying messages with the creatures in the far deep so easily, even at this far off great height's distance from where the whale was fathoms beneath the waves below him, but also somehow psychically knowing the Arctic mammal's name like it was second nature.

It was part of Ragi's passed on gift as the Wind Whisperer that was running rampantly through his son's awakened spirit of nature consciousness that the 23-year-old was discovering the wonders of as he went along.

And the great responsibility that came with it, too.

{"Okay, Scuttle! Go ahead and gather all the other birds you can and head towards that reef's east! So many of you coming at him from all sides all at once should draw confusion and slow the creature down at least if we can't stop him first!"} Sensitive and sweet Kristoff may not have had the disposition of an Army general when it came to militaristic matters of war, but the protective true heart in him would always rise to any occasion when people he cared for were in trouble.

And if this creature had to be stopped to save Ragi's – his father's – spirit lifeforce from slipping away – then it must be defeated. Kristoff Bjorgman creases his brow with renewed determination as he sees Ragi's weathered old face flash in his multitasking brain.

{"Aye-aye General MyKristly!"} The ditzy bird reacts with a salute and the seagull zooms away at record speed towards the bird laden cliffs ahead.

{"Now, all of you large sturdy walrus and whales and dolphins encircle around the monster to force it towards the surface of that sheltered bay to the coast at the east of the archipelago's trough."} Kristoff hears even more voices from somewhere on the beach carried on the wind signal to him the best position he should usher the creature towards to land.

Just then, Scuttle appears around the corner leading the charge of a slue of local aves, prepared to be called into service.

{"Good job, Scuttle! That was fast! When the Draugen surfaces, you and your team surround and confound it. I'll take point there in that cove."} Kristoff's mind projects out to all the creatures of the sea and the air that were ready to move at his prompting.

"Wow! Look at all those birdies!" Anna, jubilantly calls out, unaware of all of the tactics being played below, above, and all around her at her quiet laid-back Kristoff's command. Before her thrilled eyes, she watches a sudden swarm of rallied puffins, gulls, sea eagles and cormorants leave their colonies built on Lofoten's rugged mountain ridges to join the skies alongside the pair of flying reindeer near the Norwegian fishing archipelago's southernmost shore.

Kristoff didn't have much time to give more than an appreciated snort to his amazed wife. His attention was less on his new army of conglomerated birds making a legion in the sky, and more on the mysteriously dark swirling waters of the sea below.

There, an ominous dark shadow was eerily rising to the ocean surface that, in and of itself, would be terrifying to most beings. But the calm, cool, composed and collected Ice Harvester was more on the line of thinking how to take down the ferocious monster than to stand still and quiver in fear of it.

But he would not begin without one last personal command that Kristoff subtly sends out in the female reindeer's direction.

{"Svala. Once I start the attack, I need you to take Anna, even if she protests, away to safety, no matter what happens to me or Sven. Understood?"} Though Kristoff had never sent nor received a single word from or to old Ragi's partner reindeer, he was absolutely certain she could comprehend every sentiment his loving heart had just conveyed.

{"As you wish, Snow Prince."} Svala's smooth, yet throaty, mature velvety voice speaks for the first time in Kristoff's – and dually, Sven's pricked up – ears. It had a compliant, assuring, almost warming effect on the pair of edgy males.

With that foremost thought to his first responsibility seen to, Kristoff re-focuses his mind.

With a deep breath full of the ocean, Kristoff draws upon the insight of the natural habitat of the creatures of nature unseen about him. Unlike humans who had either the fallen nature of pride or show-off need for selfish accolades, these honest creatures heedlessly offer, without reserve, their deep knowledge of the logistics of the landscape ahead.

Armed with this valuable information, received through his receptive new sixth sense from various otters, shrews and field mice whose curiosity ventured them toward the beachfront, Kristoff's steady and sure mind formulated this scenario. He directs Sven lower as they rapidly approach the stony Lofoton shoreline.

"I see something down there, Kristly!" Whispered with as much trepidation as wired excitement, Anna, aloft Svala, who was slowly allowing Sven to distance between them, found herself once more too captivated in gape-mouthed admiration as she glimpses her gorgeous, in charge husband. She ogles him as Kristoff reaches one powerful arm across his ripped ab chest for the Saami Longbow strapped to the arrow quiver at his muscular back.

With one eye trained on the monster stirring awake beneath the dusky sky and the other upon a destination obscured in the twilight ahead, the Wind Whisperer's perfectly flexed massive bicep and tricep muscles equalled the rest of the youthful peak physical condition as he prepares to launch his three front pincer attack…

"I think it's gotten bigger! And uglier!" With a tremulous voice raised in grossed-out fright as the Draugen emerges, Anna's wide eyes stare down at the algal haptera weeds that had sprouted from its hideous face in place of where its arrow punctured eyes once were situated. At the end of each were ebony black pupils gleaming on more than one of the wriggling extensors.

And all ten of them were looking up at her, as if the pirate's vengeful spirit still sensed that she was near, as the Draugen rises from the Norskehavet.

"Eww! Creepy!" Anna cringes at the hideous sea monster that was full of evil wrath to exact pain and peril particularly on this land in retribution for its despised King's trickery. The creature that was once depraved, grasping Captain Houtebeen blamed Agdar for outsmarting the rancorous old seaman into drinking St. Olaf's holy water that somehow sustained and healed the handicapped King, but not Houtebeen himself.

So, the gargantuan hundred foot tall creature, born of the pure evil of the undead soulless pirate, would never understand divine justice.

"And look! It's arm grew back! Figures! That Westergaard can't get anything right, for all his show-off heroics!" The feisty princess gets in the pointed jab at her redheaded rival, a relieving pressure for her to declare aloud even if the reprobate culprit wasn't present.

Although Anna was, as always, adorably amusing, Kristoff needed his focus to zero in, his every nerve ending tingling with the swirling spirits whispering on the converging winds –

{"Now, Scuttle! Move in, Jordal! Go, Sven!"} Like a grand master of ceremonies behind the grotesque monstrosity's squirming, individually alive mound of algae encrusted head, Kristoff silently gives the triple order on a tri-level psychic plane.

First, he calls for the flurry of birds to disorient the Draugen's multiple eyes, still acclimating to the dimmed early evening light, and now entangled-to-keep-up-with-the-feathered-fury.

Second, the Wind Whisperer gives the order for every sea creature that had corralled the Draugen to this area of the shore, to ram their force, well over a hundred thousand pounds, directly at the monstrosity's legs which were not yet adjusted to stand on land, and were still beneath the ocean waves.

With the tremendous striking force of the collected tens of thousands of baleen, minke, sperm, white whales, in conjunction with the pure pinniped muscle of walrus, porpoises, seals, and mixed dolphins and killer whales, along with every fish in this section of the Norwegian Sea's North ocean that the Wind Whisperer's nature had summoned, the Draugen is successfully halted in its attack.

The murky seaweed abomination's web-footed legs are knocked out from underneath it, sending the Draugen flailing headlong. Its own massive weight thrusts the dark creature forward to crash into a sea cave near the Lofoten island's southernmost tip.

Just where Kristoff had tactically aimed it to plunge.

_**CR-RAA-SSH! SP-PLA-ASS-SSH!**_

"Yeah! Take that, Ugly!" Anna screams out triumphantly proud of her brilliant, brave, brawny bruiser. She watches with a spectator's enthusiasm for Kristoff to go in for the kill.

He and Sven take this disoriented opportunity to zing like lightning into the dark dank cavern where the Draugen had been shoved and lost its battle against the crushing weight of gravity to crash down headfirst.

As his polished, tan hand hewn goat willow bow shines in the greenish swirled twilight, this new Wind Whisperer's every sense tingles alive. It was as if the very wind was speaking him as he moves in, his drawn bone tipped arrow's golden shaft beneath its feathered vane the only thing to have a gleam of its own in the ghostly still cavern where the only thing moving of the menacing beast were a few of its still swishing seaweed haptera tendrils that thrashed about listlessly now that it's main frame was nearly rendered unconscious.

"_The creature has one penetrable spot…It has already been pierced… It has already been pierced…"_ Ragi's prophetic final words echo in his head at this vital moment over and over in the pitch darkness where the Draugen's slithering weeds and caustic vines were palpably quivering with sizzled wild energy.

"Of course!" All sounds cumulate into a deafening silence, and it all suddenly becomes crystal clear to Kristoff what the wise old sage meant in his cryptic mode of speech.

With the final arrow left in its quiver, the Wind Whisperer of Saami legend begins to unravel the realized thought of how to take down the vile beast before it can wreak further damage to disrupt the fine balance of nature that Ragi, his father, was still part of.

And as the awareness resonates in his heart on a thousand wisps of the wind, the troll crystals around his neck glow in affirmed illumination…

But before Kristoff, upon Sven's hovering back, in the dark wetness of the cave can implement his next course of decided action that would be fatal to the monster, the Draugen roars back to life with one feral backlash thrash of its powerful vine and knocks down both winded Kristoff and Sven.

The reindeer is thrown clear from the sea cave's entrance, bruised but thankfully unbroken, along with his friend. Although, when Kristoff was punched back by the prickly vine, his golden Saami longbow skittered to the cavern's stalagmite floor.

"Kristoff! Don't go back in there!" Usually the one reckless, Anna herself could see the impending danger for her not normally fool-hardy guy as she watches him scramble to his feet from the shore he was tossed out on. Kristoff then heads straight back into its blackness to retrieve his special weapon and finish the job before the confused monster comes to.

Her breath caught in her throat, Anna, in horror, could see the Draugen's lower limbs, halfway still in the sea, stirring back to life.

"Svala! Get me down there! Now! I have to warn him!" Anna tugs on the indecisive, torn and unresponsive reindeer's neck as the now scared-to-death Princess watches her beloved Snow Prince disappear into the cavern's foreboding entrance unawares.

"Svala! Please!" At Anna's tearful heartfelt cry, the female reindeer herself longed to see that her master's son and reindeer partner were safe, even if it meant she had to disobey direct orders…

_**ZOOM!**_

The tawny blonde doe shakes her head defiantly and begins to fly as fast and furiously as she could back down to the Lofoten island's beachfront shore where the monster, in its awakened entirety, had slithered into the cavern —

"_**EE-RR-RROOWW!"**_

That terrible awful screech erupts once again from the wicked evil monster's enormous mouth where its double rowed set of yellowed teeth sneer a deafening roar at this puny would be hero the moment before Kristoff can send his arrow flying—

_**CRR-AASS-HH! SM-MA-AASSHH! CR-RUMM-BBLLE!**_

"KRISTOFF!" Anna shrieks in pure agony and she watches her entire world literally crumble about her beloved young man's head. The entire sea cave's craggly ceiling comes crashing down just moments before Anna's racing reindeer doe arrives at the no longer open entrance.

"**KRISTLY-YY-YY!"** The orangey firebrand of a girl several yards up in the air leaps off Svala's back well before the airborne reindeer lands on the shore. Tripping and falling, Anna flies on 'wings' all her own as she races up to the now closed cavern front entry. She pounds on the unforgiving rocks and barnacles until her knuckles were bare and bleeding.

A grave Sven jumps to his hooves and a persistent Svala were immediately at her side, pawing in kicking rocks away futilely, though none of the trio who loved Kristoff so desperately would give up on their useless attempt to save the man trapped with that hundred foot tall mercilessly violent creature inside.

Just then, another deafening scream reverberates somewhere within the sealed cave again with a resounding cacophony of crumbling and banging noise at the other end of the cave. The overhanging rock structure of the already traumatized cave ledge cracks apart and crumbles on this end over the rescue team's vulnerable heads…

"**ANNA!" **

Though Anna hears her dear Papa's deep anxiety-filled voice call her name from somewhere above across the sky, a cool sheet of iridescent ice flashes in blinding white above her head, it was another man's arms that dive in a grab her to roll away in an embrace, her body tight against his.

_Hans. _

_Again. _

_Why didn't Papa get rid of you already?! What's wrong with everyone! He's the BAD guy!_

"Let me go!" A repulsed Anna sourly thinks in disappointment at some despairing level as she violently pushes away and up from _that_ Westergaard. The frazzled girl rushes back to where her Papa was utilizing his ice magic to stabilize the crashed rock overhang above the two reindeers' heads after he and Hans move down with their flying horses.

"Papa! My Kristoff is in there! Papa! Get him out! Get him out now, please!" Pleading for her parent's intervention, Anna frantically screams and cries as her bloodied, yet industrious little hands speed up, going back to clawing and scraping at the collapsed pile of rocks that were still blocking this end of the dilapidated the cavern entrance.

"Anna… My baby… I cannot assuredly pinpoint…" Wringing his frozen hands as pale blue eyes scan the sealed stones and many layers of fallen rubble blocked entrance, wildly imagining what his ice could do to undo this mess, ice cold King Agdar was beside himself to comfort the devastated young girl.

Anna was so distraught that she first was physically pounding her fists on the craggly rock face entrance, and then on poor Papa's vigorously abused icy coated chest.

"No! Papa! No! My Kristoff!" Anna turns to give another punishing pound to the cavern's unforgiving unmovable wall.

"It's **not** fair! We just got **married**! This is **my ****guy **who **I** **am** going to spend my life **forever** with!" A spasmodic Anna hysterically shouts in defiance to reality itself.

"I wanted you to so meet him! You will **love** my Kristly, Papa! Everybody has to! Because… because he's the best! I need him, you know?! Help me get him back, Papa! I love him so much!" The tears spilling over from Anna's expressive eyes as she refused to say 'die' were breaking her Papa's still beating warm heart beneath his ice frosted exterior.

Although he knew he should be chasing after that deadly monster for the sake of his countrymen, Agdar would not abandon his little girl when she was begging for his help.

"Stand back." Though uncertain of its outcome, Agdar was just about to unleash his full energy ice blast in hopes of dislodging the rockslide's thick layers of blockage, with the prayer he would not crush the life of this boy his girl so adored in the process.

"_Please, Lord, give your servant sight beyond sight."_ On silent lips, the ice King's frozen hand rises up and, summoning cryogenic power, prepares to shoot pure raw subzero ice at the stone cold entrance.

"Your Majesty! I have found an opening up here!" But just in time – for a knocked out Kristoff _**was**_ mere inches from the cavern entrance and would have been entirely crushed lifeless by the blind forced entry– Hans' well projected loud voice rings over the quiet coastline from somewhere around the bridge and above the berms.

Exchanging a hopeful glance, the father and daughter pair, followed by the two reindeer and two horses, rush around in pursuit of Vise Admiral Westergaard's beckon.

There, the perspicacious young man had located a small entranceway wall that he had been doggedly dislodging the obstruction carefully so as not to cause the cave beneath, where the Draugen had escaped by blowing out the back of the cave directly below, further collapse.

Since this sea cave had been formed by wave action in the bedrock along the coastline, the chamber inside had an opening to the surface of the rear topside as well that Hans had located and wedged his naval sword in between to leverage a small opened crevice.

"Good! I can get in there easy as pie! Without this!" Anna shamelessly begins to strip off her puffy aqua blue sunflower skirt, along with those pesky multiple petticoats in one quick tug.

"Anna! No! Stop that! I won't allow it! It's too dangerous down there! That ceiling may come down at any given moment. **I** will go to locate your Kristoff." Covering one hand over Hans' already diverted eyes, with his other frosted palm, King Agdar halts his now down-to-her-bloomers child – _who was no longer a mere child_ _to display herself so crudely–_ from disrobing in public before himself and this young man any further, and prepares to once again enter an enclosed, dark, sunless cave similar to one he had been held captive in the past five years…

But the good father would do anything in place of his girl, and Agdar was already assessing how his wide-framed shoulders could squeeze through without dislodging more crumbling rock into the small crevice opening at their feet.

"Princess Anna. Your Majesty. Either of you are infinitely more valuable than I. Please allow me." And without further word, Hans unclasps his sword sheath attached to his belt and offers it along with a small smile to a shocked Anna.

"But Papa! **I** have to be the one to help my Kristly!" Antsy Anna protests, struggling against her strong father's cool grip still on her shoulder.

"No, Anna. I must put my foot down here. If I let you go instead of Prince Hans, could you honestly, realistically, say you could lift and carry on your small back your – _God forbid_ – injured husband? And return through the crumbling cavern with the larger and taller man to safety with any alacrity? I think not, my enthusiastic little girl." Unable to hug away his little ray of sunshine's fears, Agdar was trying to at least be understanding, caring, though stern, all at once, all while withholding his frozen ice from overwhelming him entirely.

"Then, I'm going too!" She announces defiantly, trying to pull away from Agdar's icy hold in vain.

"Anna! Sending the two of you down there would certainly cause the already strained cavern's remaining integral structure to give way. It's already a great risk for one to travel through its weakened subsystem." The King gives another attempt to quell his raging daughter's overwrought agitation with the task of delegating duties to others willing to serve, that royalty understood well.

The next moment, the somewhat still emaciated, too thin Danish Prince heroically climbs and crawls down his rather agile limber body easily in through the hole as if he'd been finding a way in and out of tight corners he'd been thrown into all his life.

After all, with twelve vindictive and cruel older brothers all wanting the chance to lock him into airless closed up rooms, spider-webby old attics, rusty trunks in barns, etc, the youngest unwelcome boy, Prince Hans, had become a master escape artist through insurmountable odds at the ripe old age of seven years old.

So why not employ the lock picking, exit and entrance, closet passageway, secret priest-hole curtailing skills for more advantageous use?

"You'd better try **real hard** to find my Kristoff good, fancy man! Or I'll… I'll…" Breaking free of her Papa's grasp to scramble to her knees and peer down the opening, Anna struggles for a proper enough threat to motivate her archenemy. But in her hysterics to find her love safe and alive, words failed her.

"—Send me back, disgraced, to my resentful and hostile, unforgiving family back home again? I can't surmise a fate worse." Speaking upward and behind his back now that he was down in the darkened cavern, Hans personably tries to make light of the heavy situation as his eyes adjust to the nonexistent light.

"Or rather, I _can_ think of something that you have every right to take away from me that would be far more painful…" More seriously, Hans murmurs under his breath, thinking of his forbidden love for her sister, Elsa. And though Anna was either too frazzled or became hard of hearing when hearing things she didn't want to hear, her father decidedly was not.

King Agdar was growing to be more intuitive nowadays, especially concerning this puzzling young Prince and his complicated and baffling relationship with Arendelle's fragile eldest daughter.

Agdar joins Anna in peering down through the small hole that was being wedged open by his naval sword as the young Dane's silhouette disappears into the darkness.

"If you don't bring my Kristly back to me in one piece, I'll never forgive you!" Anna's directed verbal attack projected through the small cave opening above causes a slue of dirt and debris to rain on Hans, as her threatening voice echoes throughout the murky dank and crumbling chamber.

"_I'll never forgive you!"_

…"_I'll never forgive you!"_

"You still haven't forgiven the last offense, dear Princess, so any further castigation would be moot." To himself in the darkness, Hans' dry humor smirks on his face until he feels the sediment she causes to fall on his head and shoulders from above as he moves further into the claustrophobic deep dark, deep dark cavern, his smile curled down into a frown…

* * *

Mr. Bjorgman? Can you hear me? Mr. Bjorgman?" Hans softly, slinky cat whispers like a dove not to cause any tremor landslide that was threatening overhead as he walks through the stuffy and smoky with the hint of death, enclosed cave shaft.

When no viable answer returns, Hans maneuvers as stealthily as a red fox through the amassed rubble and rock scree strewn decimated cavern. He continues to carefully, yet swiftly as possible, trek—if Kristoff were injured, every precious minute could mean life or death that mustn't be wasted on any faint heart.

_Faint heart never won fair lady…_ In the words of Cervantes' Don Quixote, Hans chides himself for his mind wandering away from the present situation to a certain platinum beauty of light amidst the darkness he was immersed within.

"Mr. Bjorgman? Please answer. Princess Anna is beside herself with worry for you." Hans cautiously disassembles and traverses a high wall of rocks that were blocking his way en route to the front cave entrance that he was three-quarters of the way towards.

_Cough, cough._

Hans hurriedly covers his mouth with a handkerchief to both muffle his throat's expelled hacking force that may cause brittle walls to come down even more, and avoid breathing in the vast amount of dusty smoke in the stifling atmosphere that would impair his functions.

"Mr. Bjorgman! Where are you? I beg you to be alive! Your Anna is an extraordinary, wonderful young lady, who I myself, as an imprudent cad, treated far too shabbily, for her not to have her much-deserved happy ending with you."

Hans spills his heart out as his despair grows with each step deeper into the cave near the front entrance left open to him. He turns the final corridor directly in front of the cave opening with a prayer.

But upon first scan of the compound debris descending from the cavern's crumbling ceiling breakdown, Hans detects nothing

Just about to turn back, second-guessing that he must have missed one or another turn and twist in the elongated sea cave, the redhead's keen eyes spy a large fingered hand jutting out from a pile of rocks right near the blocked entrance.

"Kristoff!" Hans rushes to the rock pile and starts to frantically grab off, push and shove sharp rocks and pointed stones away. He did not heed that his pristine white silk gloves were being ripped and shredded with dirty stains as the spoiled prince of long ago forgoes any thought of self important narcissism.

Hans was panting and coughing from the exertion and gaining dust in his wake, but he didn't care. The man he was frenetically in search of, found trapped beneath the rocky cairn, was still alive.

"Mr. Bjorgman!" With all of his collected muscle to move a pair of massive boulders that had crushed the lower leg of the downed man, Hans unburies Kristoff's lower body.

The Danish Prince was then grateful to find the mountain man's fragile head, neck and bare upper torso region had been protectively covered by –

_... Bats?_

A flurry of self-sacrificing flying Epiesicus Nilssonil – the common Northern bat – had swarmed their dark brown with gold tipped furry coated bodies and outstretched black wings in some kind of intelligent formation that served as a living widespread net of sorts to shield the Wind Whisperer's head region from incoming crushing rock doom.

To Hans' bewilderment, most of the legion of protective bats fly away, and though many of the furry Vespertilionidae had serious injuries or worse to their patagia—the hairless membranes their wings were constructed of— they had sacrificed themselves in the knowledge that this man was the blessed Christ bearer of legend, who had been foretold, through all of nature, to be the one to rid the lands of the depraved malignant beast threatening to tarnish their peaceful habitat upon innocent shores.

So, in a way, these small northern bats could count themselves as heroes in the grand scheme of things. For half a second of being dizzied by the soundless deluge flood of the bats' high frequency echolocation, Hans gazes above in wonder at the only mammals that were designed to naturally fly and their silent motive to help this man survive the cave-in.

Although the blond Ice Harvester was still breathing, (_Thank God_!) his eyes were still tightly sealed shut. Kristoff's natural self-preservation mode had kicked in when the Draugen let out that dreadful and deadly sonic screech in such a close contained echo chamber as this cavern. It would have rendered the young man's auditory functions stone cold deaf defunct or simply have imploded his brain synapses and kill him dead.

But neither occurred when the Wind Whisperer's alerted senses automatically switched Kristoff's physical sense of hearing totally off, while turning his mental 'listening' circuit on full throttle instead.

That made him so in tune with nature, everything he had to do to stop the dreaded evil '_Bielgomai'_ also became crystal clear in his cataleptic head.

If only there was someone to wake him up to fulfill his destiny.

Fortunately, Hans Westergaard was as decisive and quick thinking as he was unafraid of fast-moving action.

In other words, a born leader.

Plus, he had a wicked backhand slap, with or without taking off the gloves as a proper gentleman should.

_**SLAPPP!**_

"Mr. Bjorgman, do pardon me." Hans Westergaard apologizes with all the grace and style befitting someone of his class and status as the Danish Prince whacks the Norwegian mountain man's face with all the dignity of a gentleman.

_**Cough, cough.**_

_**Choke, choke.**_

_**Cough, cough.**_

"He-eyy! You try that again and I'll knock your sorry scrawny butt into a month of Sundays!" After hacking up coughing as his lungs greedily suck in the dusty air, Kristoff Bjorgman responds with all the bluster and raw power that suited his class as he instantly – as Hans predicted, and prayed – awakens, flexing his huge fists' up at Hans as he sits straight up.

And even though the man glowering up at him was mad as Hell, Hans was thoroughly relieved to Heaven that he had the ability to be.

"Thank God, you're alive. Forgive me, sir. But you were unresponsive and I saw no other swift method to awaken you, considering our immediate problem of the collapsing cave that still impedes our pursuit of the escaped creature on the loose." Hans explains in clipped, yet restrained quiet tones, gesturing to the debris falling from the fragile ceiling above with each raised word they spoke.

"Right. Sure you did." Kristoff snidely answers. With his rock scored and bloodied palms, the big man rubs his sore cheekbone that Hans had sucker punched. Kristoff blows air through his pained lips, but looking around at the decimated cavern that had fallen on his head, he knew he was lucky to be able to still feel anything.

_Oh, yeah! At the last second, there were those bats all over me…_

Kristoff then glances around at the injured fallen unspoken heroes – his rescuing soldiers on the battlefield – as their memory would remain now with all their kind for a long time to come in the new legend of the Wind Whisperer.

{"I'll never forget what you've done for me. Thank you all."} Kristoff gazes over the many hundreds of the courageous northern bats that were scattered all about the disintegrating cave.

Their glistening pupils simultaneously blink back in a flapped unison with a throaty whisper:

{"God go with you, Snow Prince."} The kind blessing now thoroughly made the oft maligned into some form of unearthly evil bloodsucking spirit of the darkness little furry creatures with wings that fly by night, transformed in Kristoff's grateful mind on how he'd look upon bats again.

Now, as for this perpetually impervious, devastatingly handsome, irresistible to the ladies, high-class, debonair human gentleman who more resembled the classic vampire in Gothic storybooks than these helpful and cute little furry creatures… Kristoff wasn't so sure…

"Come on, let's go." Was Kristoff's soft-spoken way of saying '_thanks' _to the assiduous Dane whose quick tireless hands were just finishing unburying Kristoff's last, somewhat crushed, leg from the remainder of the rubble as the slim, wiry Prince of the Southern Isles helps the large, muscular Snow Prince rise to his feet.

Hans, hair askew and face dirt streaked and disheveled for once in his orderly, tidy life, glances up to meet Kristoff's obliged eyes with that undeniably astute nimble mind that had decided when, where and how to find the missing man before the rest of the cavern crumbled down.

In doing so, he saved Kristoff Bjorgman's life, even at the risk of his own.

_Maybe Elsa's right about him… That people can change…with the right Inspiration…_

Kristoff, with a slight limp to his walk that he tries to cover up, considers this when Hans wordlessly adds his bony, yet sinewy, shoulder in support to aid the injured mountain man's speedy retreat from this godforsaken cave.

_No, not Godforsaken._ Kristoff had gained far too much of the wisdom of thousands of nature's voices to not acknowledge the Grand Designer and Creator of all who made his new friends— the bats, the whales, the seals, the porpoises, and even the wind and the sea as well.

Not to mention, one Hans Westergaard.

And the freely given blessing of grace and redemption each human requires, if they're willing to accept it.

Kristoff looks over his shoulder at Hans in a new light of awareness that his wary, frustrated, and closed mind before was not willing to go the distance to before.

"And you're right about Anna. She deserves a happy ending that _**I'll**___give her, you cad." Kristoff barbs the other like-aged male. "And you'd better not treat anyone _else_ shabbily, this time around, or I **_will_ **give you that knuckle sandwich I promised before." Making a fist, part of Kristoff's consciousness, even beneath the rubble, had picked up the man's confessed sincere words from before, causing an astounded Hans to smile at the friendly threat.

As dust, debris, and large chunks of cracked rocks continue to rain down over the two handsome young men as they make their way, as swiftly as possible, despite Kristoff's ignored badly cut and bone crushed leg wound to wind around the cave's maze. The blond mountain man had to trust the redhead's sense of direction if they were ever to escape the precipitously crumbling cavern and see the light of day ever again.

Despite the danger of the entire ceiling that could collapse over both their heads, and kill them both instantly, former enemies, Hans Westergaard and Kristoff Bjorgman each realize that they had, along this journey, formed a lasting alliance to support one another through the tough times with that all-important element of trust coming into play.

With a shared chuckle at the unbelievable link forged between them, the pair of young men so connected to the princesses of Arendelle silently pledge to fight the good fight, side-by-side, in this endless struggle to save their womens' endangered nation from impending doom.

That sentiment was in both their minds when they thankfully see the light at the end of the tunnel…

* * *

_Norskehavet_ \- Norwegian Sea in Norwegian ^-*

* * *

After Halloween greetings, Frozen friends!

Here was my festive 'salute' (as I wrote this chapter on the spooky day) to Halloween night's famed vampire with all the bats roaming around in caves with Kristoff and Hans! BOO!

What do you think of Kristoff's developing psychic powers with the animals? Sure comes in handy when rocks are falling on your head to have some friendly vespers on your side! ^_^

Just a quick Author's note! Thanks for reading! And review, review!

HarukaKou


	50. Chapter 49 - The Glass Ceiling

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act III**

**Chapter 49**

**"The Glass Ceiling"**

_Aboveground, to the cavern surface_…

"What is taking him so long down there?! If it was me instead of _**that**_ _**Hans**_, I would have already found my Kristoff by now! That jerk might've snuck out the other side of the cave, for all we know, in a doublecross like he did before! My baby's hurt bad… I can feel it…" Clutching her faintly glowing troll necklace to her chest, a frustrated, scrunched nose Anna trails off in total frustrated worry after venting a bit at her favorite target.

Anna then sticks her throbbing head down into the crevice hole that she had been kneeling beside for the few minutes that already seemed like hours to her.

"Anna, please stay calm. Your rash movement and rather loudly spoken voice will only prove to destabilize the cave-in's structural integrity further. Please, try to refrain." Fatherly King Agdar warns as his peevishly perky child suddenly hops to her feet and begins to pace above the cavern foreshore dune mound where they had found the small entry earlier.

The perspicacious forward-thinking ruler had been studying the opening at his feet in an attempt to expand its configuration to accommodate the larger, broader shoulder blond's exit once he had been covered by the Danish Prince.

That is, _**if**_ the lad had survived the initial cave in for young Westergaard to retrieve him from in the first place.

"I am certain that Prince Hans is adequately striving to locate the boy –" The Ice King's logical frosted smoking breaths begins to say in his best cool attempt to calm the hotheaded girl down. Although he himself still had his own reservations on the young man that Anna's doubt and accusations now rekindle.

"You say it like you trust that guy! Papa, what happened?! You were going to punish him for what he did to us before when you weren't there back home! Instead you promote him?! I thought at least I could count on _**you**_ to not fall for that conniver's supposed charms!"

Her arms and hands swaying about with much animation, Anna vents her pent-up angst and venomous anger at her sworn enemy to the one man in shining armor who had always purported himself to be strict and moral and just and righteous a noble ruler whom she believed she could rely on to dole out proper justice to deceitful mercenary criminals.

_Papa's getting soft in his old age! I thought I could leave taking out the trash to him…_

"Anna. I am still your father _and_ the King of this land." King Agdar's cool clipped voice was even toned, yet quietly severe to his younger child. The overwhelming cold logic that gripped Agdar's normally warm soul made his reprimand come out rather rigidly as he stands over his small daughter who was questioning his decision and authority.

Anna looks down to the ground, feeling like a chastened little girl all over again.

"Anna. Please understand. Your sister's plea for this young man's life was quite ardent." His stern harsh blue-white tinted face down at her softens a bit into a more paternal smile.

"Besides, my poor Elsa's hard-won trust, judgment of character, and belief in another human being's contrition is enough for me – for the time being." The indeed just and upright older man solemnly conveys his gaining kingly reliance on his older daughter's judgment and wisdom as he joins his disturbed little baby Anna to kneel at the crevice hole's edge.

Agdar cautiously places one hand on the orangey forehead to pet away both of their inner recriminations of this remarkable young Dane who brought with him such an array of emotions in both his daughters that it left Agdar's head virtually spinning.

"Wait! SHE DID WHAT?! That jerk's a first-class Svengali to have tricked Elsa so bad that she would beg you for—" Just as Anna was about to rebut, her own heart troubled by his telling of her dear older sister's standing up against their Papa for that princely philanderer, sounds from down below abruptly interrupt their intense conversation.

"Kristoff?!" Scrambling in on all fours over the opening, Anna quietly whispers out after peering in expectantly through the dark hole. Her big teal aqua eyes squint through the ebony as her widening pupils begin to adjust to the dim absence of light.

That's when a flurry of escaping batwings suddenly surround her shocked head when Kristoff's subsonic rescuers emerge from the cave in between the naval sword's levered entry that more startled Anna than scared her.

But the result of her scurried clumsy kickback at the wedged sword's hold was still just as damning to the fragile shaky cavern walls.

_**CR-REEA-KK! CR-RASSH! RR-UMMBBLE!**_

{"_Anna! Get away from the edge_!"} When the cave roof begins to collapse beneath her little booted feet, Kristoff's protectively terrified voice somewhere still unseen beneath mentally vocalizes what her quietly powering up father was dually thinking.

Agdar's instantly iced up hand yanks the eager Princess from the crumbling sea cave back by her braid. Anna's hair was now white and nearly frozen solid, but she was otherwise unharmed by the Ice King's unleashed manifestation of cryokinetic energy. Her protective father sends her skittering back to the grassy knoll by the only non-detrimental means he had of touching her in his frozen state.

The young woman shakes her head that tinkles with ice crystals all adorning her frosty hair as she rushes back to the opening as fast as her feet can carry her.

"Oh no! Kristoff!" Anna recklessly reaches her arm desperately through her Papa's ice expanded aperture to the cave below. Her royal parent was focusing all of his frozen energies to sustain the collapsing cavern ceiling as it continues to disintegrate along the otherwise sealed up sea cave.

Or he could let the two undeserving young men, who were either newly married (un-vetted) or currently involved in chasing (unwarranted) his precious little girls with their either questionable lineage or rather sordid background relationship, be buried alive and out of the way through no fault of his own, in one felled swoop.

"Hmm…" Despite the ice cold hard logic attempting to proverbially pervade his senses, noble, steadfast King Agdar of Arendelle, despite his overprotective fatherly nature, would never lower his high moral standard before God, even if advantageous or easy, and not give his all to save his daughters' suitors – dubious or otherwise.

He would stay true to himself—_and_ be worthy of being a King.

"The gates are open, just as you wished them to be, Idun, my love." Agdar murmurs on a different thoughtful plane as he recalls the intimate conversation with his own life's partner just before that fateful night that changed their world around.

_I'll just have to keep an eye on those boys to assess how worthy they are for my girls. Especially that puzzling enigma in a redheaded Dane…_

_**SZZSZZTT!**_

Without a second thought to himself, the King of this land bravely lies flat on the ground beside where Anna was kneeling to extend his regal head and neck through the crevice hole. With the press of his masterful hands up and into to the interior's crumbling ceiling, the ice endowed King expertly coats the rock cracking, pelting down stone debris, fragile cavern ceiling with a glassy thin verglas of ice.

The 'glass' layer of subzero frost covers the falling apart cave roof above Kristoff and Hans' heads, just as the pair of men were making their way together into this rear end of the dangerously disintegrating cavern.

"Argh!" Kristoff grunts as, upon glimpsing his little sunshine at the end of the tunnel, the mountain man moved with pure energy and tried to climb the craggly rocks like second nature once he and Hans arrived directly below.

The bigger man now doubles over, clutching at his profusely bleeding, bone-crushed appendage that he had been dragging along their entire trek with the other man's firm aid.

But the difficult task of climbing the stark wall was not proving an easy task for either man now that the handhold ledges agile Hans had descended upon before had cracked off after the subsequent tremors of the still settling crashed sea cavern, a few minutes back.

"Kristly! He **is** hurt! I knew it! Papa, we have to get him up here!" Anna cries out in a panic for her fella when she sees him uncharacteristically panting in debilitating pain at the cavern base, unable to climb it.

Her wild eyes and crazed hands yank around and dig madly into the satchel on her back when her silent Papa doesn't respond, his focus too necessary on the ceiling to afford his daughter any solicitudes.

"Here! Kristoff! Catch!" With a professional mountain climber as a lover, on-the-job quick learner Anna had grown rather adept at using a rope and grappling hook. The '_born ready'_ girl rapidly slings it around the one and only nearby boulder on the sea dune she was upon and quickly tosses the secured remainder of the rope down the shaft like a pro.

Although, mathematical theoretic was never her strong point.

_**WHZZ! SWSSH! STT-O-PP!**_

The thick corded rope the young woman quite adroitly aimed down towards her hubby's waiting hands just comes short of being in his six foot five height's reach.

"_Sz-zl_!" Kristoff hisses through clenched teeth as he instinctively stretches up high to try to grab it. He sizzles with the intense pain of his badly broken limb and crushed ankle as the blonde man attempts to stand to his tallest height, but to no avail.

"It's no use, Anna. I can't reach it." His mellow voice says in that soft comforting voice that she fell in love with, as tears form in her eyes.

Kristoff then turns to the man beside him as he goes back to leaning on the shoulder thereof.

"You go on without me, Hans, before the whole darn cave falls down on your head, too. With your long-legged elasticity, you can make it outta here on that rope easy. Just…keep Anna and her sister safe from that monster, for me." With the decent, practical, selfless sentiment that defined who the down-to-earth man was, Kristoff Bjorgman bends over, his big hands uselessly pushed to his knees as his heavily exhausted breath gives out at last in dolorous resignation. The pain was too much for any man, as he slumps against the cave floor, losing consciousness from the great loss of blood he suffered before Hans found him and stanched the wound.

"Kristly!" But feisty Anna's alarmed cry only adds further disintegration of the brittle cavern walls, she covering her mouth as the only method to stop herself from screaming in protest.

"There is **NO WAY** I'm leaving without you!" Anna's passionate, defiant yell down only served to bring the shivering walls a-crumbling even more. " Papa! Hurry! Make an ice ramp or something!" Anna feverishly orders her father, tugging on his tunic. But his already strained pale brow was so furrowed that his ice blue eyes could barely be seen but for the eerie glow from deep behind them.

"Anna. I am sorry. But it's all I can do to keep the ceiling up! Can your rope not be lengthened?" Agdar was certain that the moment either of his focused ice wielding hands left the cavern ceiling, it would undoubtedly collapse—he sensed how weak the cracking structure had become.

And not only would that utterly kill the two men within the cavern below, but the grassy knoll dune beneath himself and Anna would certainly cave-in to cause their demise up top as well.

Then who would be left to stop that fearsome Draugen on its rampage through this innocent country?

"The rope?" Anna scurries over to the boulder and loosens the sturdy climber's knot Kristoff had taught her at its thick hemp cord until she gained a few sparse more inches.

"Kristly! Does that help?!" Anna dashes back to hover over the small cave entrance and peer down. But her jaw drops when she sees that Westergaard had abandoned her disabled husband and was crawling up the disintegrating sidewall making his own handhold like some sort of gracefully long–legged spider.

"I figured you would show your true colors sooner or later, Red, and save your own rotten skin, you dirty, no good bas—" As Hans ascends quickly closer, red in the face Princess Anna viciously spits out her fury at how this spineless cad would stoop so low as to leave her injured Kristoff behind like that in the lurch.

"Under my explicit behest, Anna." His low baritone firm, King Agdar's pale icy blue visual cortexes had noted what his little girl did not see in her venomous rants at her sworn enemy.

"As my greatest advisor—your wise Mama-always instructed me– '_Open your eyes before your mouth,'_ my fellow ginger firecracker."

At her father's gentle words, Anna looks to where his gaze was motioning downwards.

There, Anna sees how the end of the rope she had lengthened was somehow already tied and secured under Kristoff's armpits and around the pecs of his strong chest.

"But how?" Anna murmurs to herself as she watches with renewed interest Hans' limber body approaching. The young Prince deftly maneuvers his way up the rope through the ice encrusted cavern entry his levered sword had fashioned and wordlessly emerges to roll over onto the grassy surface right beside Anna.

He exchanges a polite nod with his dumbfounded accuser whilst going right to work.

Hans utilizes the wire corded brass hilt of his left behind naval sword as a grooved stabilizer pulley of sorts to reduce the force needed as he hoists the downed blond man's heavy dead weight with all speed.

As the entire cavern's structural integrity begins to give way, despite her steadfast Papa's most dedicated attempt to keep every one of the collapsing cave's cracked and broken walls intact enough to allow the pair of young men to escape, Anna adds her own arm's meager muscle to Hans' efforts.

It was Anna's turn to shock him as the girl forgoes her hostility and antipathy towards him to wrap her arms around the redheaded Prince's lean frame, adding her collaborative support. The dynamic, high-spirited, yet very fit and well exercised young girl indeed helps Hans relieve gravity's pressure of the rope's hefty load.

_Heave Ho! Heave Ho! Heave Ho!_

With a careful rhythm not to jerk the nearly passed out man and not smash him against any jutting out rock stalactite and cause either further cavern collapse or injury to the practically comatose mountain man, Anna and Hans surprise each other at how well they worked in conjunctive tandem.

As King Agdar endures his iced maintaining of the sea cave's spacious structure, together Prince Hans and Princess Anna's cooperative rope pulling efforts pay off as a rescued Kristoff nears the surface.

"Vice Admiral! Quickly!" The King's energy reserves about at their limit, he could feel his ice vaulted cave ceiling start to melt in the warm summer weather, and consequently the deteriorating walls which grow wildly unstable again.

Hearing his leader's call, Hans uses all of his muscles' might to harness the rope around his own torso now for ballast and lean his slender frame into the collapsing cavern to pull Kristoff's dead weight up! Up! Up and out of the disintegrating cavern into the Midnight Sun light of day mere seconds before the entire cave structure begins to quake and creak and crackle with an audible groan. Papa's formed layer of ice begins to drip under the immense frozen moisture's melting extreme weight.

_PLOP!_

Kristoff's heavy, pure muscular body wins the battle with gravity as Hans strains to physically lift into an armful embrace Kristoff's upper torso before he pivots the bigger man's descending body onto the grassy dune.

"Yes! We did it!" In her utter excitement and relief, in honest appreciation, euphoric Anna loses her thrilled mind entirely, forgetting herself as she hops up to rashly ecstatically throw her arms around his neck and plant an elated grateful kiss on Hans' stunned cheek.

A shared startled moment is spent staring at one another when Scuttle and the other birdies zoom past, and both the Danish Prince and the Norwegian Princess turn deep shades of red in embarrassment.

After a few wide-eyed seconds, Anna purposefully wipes her forearm across her disgusted lips and shakes herself awake to hug her reclaimed passed out blonde boy instead joyously.

"You three leave immediately and return to Arendelle! Warn Minister Kai!" King Agdar's urgent voice yells out loudly above the din of crashing and plummeting debris and rocks of the falling interior ceiling as he begins to slacken his icy verglas hold over the cavern's destroyed subsidence.

"But, Papa! You have to come with us! We just got you back! I'm not leaving you—" Anna begins to protest her courageous, sacrificing father's command.

"This is not a subject for debate, Anna! GO!" Terse and commanding, King Agdar must shout above the icy drums pounding his head as he keeps up the massive interior ice shell a few moments more. With an exchanged nod to his dutifully obedient second in command, Agdar watches Hans lift a dazed Kristoff onto an incoming Sven's back.

The wiry Danish Prince then takes the liberty of scooping up Anna by her little waist, then plopping her on the reindeer's saddle behind her husband.

"I believe it may be the wiser course not to question the King's authority, Princess. I'll ensure things here at this end. You just keep Kristoff on Sven's back!" Hans presses both of Anna's hands to Sven's reins around Kristoff's gut before he slaps the reindeer's posterior to get the startled beast to stop staring at his pale, drawn and ashen faced bloody-bodied best friend and simply take off.

"That's Mr. Bjorgman to you, pretty boy! Don't think that I've forgiven you or anything just because you helped Kristoff down there! Only…count yourself lucky to still have your head, courtesy of my kind-hearted Papa!" Through all of her vicious tirade, Anna was secretly glad to have had Hans here, but she would never admit it as she threatens the red-headed man on principle.

"And don't you dare let my Papa down or –or–or—" Anna warns with a fierce glare at her former jilted fiancé. Her frazzled mind bounces from subject to subject as she searches for a suitable threat to back up her sourpuss at him.

"—or there'll be hell to pay?" The wily young man still retained that slightly churlish touch of charming roguish sarcasm that Anna brought out in him, despite his best efforts to reel in the supplied tease. Touching his still shocked cheek, Hans was smiling inside, just glad to have the girl he wronged give him encouragement in some small degree of forgiveness OR clemency thereof, whether she truly meant it or not.

"Wow. Yeah! Just like that! I couldn't have said it better myself, Red. Okay, Sven, fly! Follow us, Svala! Be safe, Papa! Here we go!" Anna, at first taken aback by the rather base language which she hardly expected from the high-faluting royal, gets into the spirit of the moment.

With a quirky smirk down and dismissive stuck-out tongue at Hans from atop Sven's back, Anna signals for the flying reindeer entourage to take to the sky.

"Your Majesty! I've brought our horses!" Hans then immediately races down in swift leaps and bounds around the cave's entrance at the foreshore where he secures the Snow Queen's pair of white horses and brings them now around the rise.

"Is Anna safely away?" His precious family's safety his foremost thought, King Agdar's deep frigid voice booms across the cavern hilltop as his icy head raises from inside the dark hole where his powerful hands were still maintaining the ice inside.

"Yes, sire! But I do humbly advise you to mount your steed so we too can depart in all haste!" Prince Hans, with all the respect and decorum he normally wielded, addresses Elsa's father as he urges the yet prone on the ground, hands-on ruler of this nation.

"Get ready, then, young man. The cave will collapse in a matter of seconds once I dispense with my hold over it." And with that ominous statement, the Norwegian King releases his ice surging hands from their purposeful reach on the underbelly of the cliff cave ceiling.

The still quite athletic older man utilizes a frosted handstand to spring to his feet and leap upon his white horse Hans had waiting for him, in a single bound just as the King did in more youthful days gone by of showing off to his new bride.

And the mere seconds that the brave King predicted before total cavern collapse were even more imminent, as his dizzy head from leaning upside down for too long finally takes a toll on his equilibrium…

"Whoa, there, your Majesty!" Always keenly keeping one step ahead, quick thinking and acting Prince Hans stretches his own body almost too far across his halted flying white mare towards the off-balance Ice King.

Hans fearlessly grabs icy Agdar's flailing arm, ignoring what could result in extreme frostbite as he pulls in the King's frozen over appendage to be able to catch hold of his own horse's elusive rein above the dissolving landmass beneath, just in the nick of time.

For just a few meters below the pair of in-flight magic steeds, who struggle to defy the force vacuum's pull of the sinking sea cave, the cavern utterly collapses into the beachfront's infralittoral zone.

The tumultuous waves crash as the dune disappears into the connecting reef of sea the cove was attached to in thrashing swirls of icy blue about the ice verglas coated crumbled rocks …

* * *

"So… You three lovely ladies have been uncommonly quiet on this trip thus far in that coach below." Flynn Rider, at the helm of the Snow Queen's carriage on its front driver's bench, calls back to the hushed trio of women who had not uttered more than a sentence between them since the voyage began several minutes ago.

"Is it my driving? Because I'm still brushing up on this newfangled flying horsedrawn carriage maneuvering thing." The smirking man tries to lighten the heavy mood with dry humor. But the handsome devil of a comedian only garners a wane smile from his usual backseat driver.

She, for one, was much accustomed to his swerving and swaying on the road, also known as his wife Rapunzel, who looks up from busily patching with threaded needle a resting Job's ripped up shirt.

As the morbid silence continues, despite his best efforts, Eugene, with Pascal on his shoulder, exchange a raised brow skeptical look with one another.

"What about you? What do you have to say, snowman?" His dark hair blowing in a wavy mass in the high-altitude winds, Eugene goes out on a limb here with the query, if just to fill in the despicable silent void, with the full well knowledge that at least Olaf couldn't hold his frosty tongue for long.

"Well, Flynn-er-Eugene, now that you ask…Ohh-oh no!" Olaf had been obliviously whistling in the wind in tune with Queen Idun's hummed healing lullaby before he literally sticks his nose out the coach's open backside window to answer Eugene's question.

But when Olaf almost loses his prized carrot possession in his eager enthusiasm, a just coming into control of her senses Elsa whips up a wintry gust to retrieve the orangey root of the problem from the capricious winds.

"Thanks, Elsa! You're really the kindest, nicest, warmest person, aren't you?" A panicked Olaf's bug eyed face sighs in a relieved smile as his twig fingers caress the returned precious nose between his crossed eyes. They gaze back at the pale blonde beauty adoringly while her shaky cryokinetic powers levitate him back to sit on the bench beside Rapunzel again.

"Well… I wouldn't say all that." Blinking her luscious eyes to focus awake, Elsa modestly blushes at the flagrantly tossed compliment, the insecure girl doubting her frozen creature's generous veracity.

"And JustHans is a better flying-horse carriage driver than you, Flynn-er Eugene. He sings to his horses and they do what he wants flawlessly. It works like a charm! You should ask him for some tips when we all get back together again." The brutally honest snowman finally gets around to answering the stubbled man in the front seat's rhetorical sarcasm about his driving skills.

"Hey, Snowball. I don't sing for no horses. Even if my little bror is apt to serenade a pretty young filly every now and then." Calling down from above at his station on the front driver's bench, Eugene's eyebrows conspiratorially insinuate things that go right over Olaf's naïve head.

Although, Queen Idun got the gist of the man's meaning right off as her gaze lands upon her fluttering dreamy eyed daughter.

"His serenade…" At the mention of Hans Westergaard's name in reference to his beautiful memorable song, Elsa's fuzzy, whirring mind, still enveloped in his lasting kiss, is pulled back from the fond recent warm memories to the harsh cold reality of the present separated situation.

_My dear Papa, who had just been rediscovered, Anna and Kristoff…and Prince Hans, too…They aren't coming back to the safety of far off Arendelle with us, are they?_

No, they all had bravely gone on a perilous mission to stop and defeat that terrible menacing monster that had kidnapped, terrorized and mystically attempted to rape her of her ice energies to feed off in its own voracious thirst for power.

_Anna and Kristoff, Papa and Hans had flown on reindeer and horseback across the sea to the north._

Elsa's groggy mind vaguely recalls the indistinct words she heard her Mother softly utter to Rapunzel somewhere along this in flight journey.

The others had gone into danger in chase of that evil behemoth before it went on a rampage to destroy this country.

Without her.

The one young woman who was, as crowned Queen, the highest caretaker of her nation and the sovereign of the land, sworn to keep her people safe with every ounce of breath in her.

Just as her heroic Papa had ruled on the throne before her.

His life was selflessly pledged to serve Norway to his utmost, as Naval Admiral, head of the Church of Norway, and the nation's sovereign King. So, when Elsa inherited the crown, those weighty roles all fell to her.

And she would not fail her duty before God, nor country for some fear in her heart ever again.

_No more hiding behind closed doors, Elsa. No more running._ The once frightened young woman ceases the wringing of her nervous long fingered hands and looks to the woman who had been humming her child's drained weariness away with a hummed song since she awakened and asked what had happened.

"'_I fear no foe, with Thee at hand to bless; Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness. Where is death's sting? Where, grave, thy victory? I triumph still if Thou abide with me.'"_

As the church hymn's verse ends, Elsa looks her mother in the eye with a determined gaze that Idun had rarely seen in her shy little girl before.

"Elsa, did you say something?" Rapunzel looks up from her quick stitching up of Job's perforated shirt and shredded pant leg upon hearing her blonde cousin's high-pitched light voice across from her in the carriage coach.

"Yes. I did." Queen Elsa of Arendelle takes a deep breath as she stands upon her delicate high heeled feet and races across Snow Queen's carriage coach. An ice ramp elevates her as she gracefully and effortlessly transforms into her icy blue leg-hugging dress, slit high, with filmy cape flaring out behind her, as she rises through the upper top exit of the coach until her shapely form is swiftly emerged through.

"Cousin Eugene!" Against the whipping wind of the dusky sky, in her shimmering quickly formed Ice Queen slinky dress where her true powers were manifest, Elsa's shrill voice breaks through to penetrate the clouds to the startled thief in the driver's seat.

"Whoa! Where'd you pop-up from, lovely lady? Now, there's an idea for a birthday cake topper if ever I saw one—" Eugene smirks in his smarmy, smirking way to the shaking head chameleon at his side.

"TURN THIS CARRIAGE AROUND, AT ONCE! Bring me back to the battle! I can make a difference in stopping that fiend for my people!" Elsa suddenly yells out to the flabbergasted man.

"But your Pops said –" As an orphan and a renegade, Flynn didn't have much respect for authority himself. However, when it came to a father protecting his daughter…

"EUGENE FITZHERBERT! You wish for me to flash freeze you again?! I am giving you a direct **order**, as sovereign **Queen** of this nation! Are you questioning _**my**_ authority over you?!" Elsa's icy fury nearly blows a headgasket as her subzero prowess begins to exude the threat from her long nailed fingers to her fiercely glowing blue-white pupils.

"Hell, no. Since you put it that way, sister. Frostbite is not all fun and games as it may sound. I've already got one bum arm out of commission!" Proffering the reins held in his frostbitten, bullet-ridden right limb, Eugene shrinks back in fear of her eerily glowing eyes and frosted hands pointed directly at him that were yet unwavering with the vexed Ice Queen's angered threat.

"Okay! Okay! I'll drive! I'm turning this bucket around, so chill, Queenie! Or rather, un-chill, or whatever it is you do to let off steam, oh, Leggie-one. _Gotta warn my Lillebror never to get up on the wrong side of your ice-breathing bed, Gorgeous._ By the way, that tight dress and loose braid look really works for you." After being taken aback by the usually elegant and serene, calm female's authoritative ferocity, Eugene winks in his partly unheard, under breath murmur, flirting as he concedes to the sexy pale woman's greater power quite willingly.

"Thank you." Elsa manages the niceties, recalling her trained etiquette, good manners, and Olaf's words just moments ago, as her white–cold temper cools down, her eyes normalizing. Appeased, she watches as the former cat burglar urges the pair of flying horses to pivot around.

Refraining from further frostbite-tantalizing backtalk, Flynn Rider sets the flying carriage on a reverse course. Over the Mosken island they had just traversed and back towards the northern coast's Norwegian sea and the Lofoton archipelago in pursuit of those who had already gone ahead.

Skating back down to the coach elegantly along her effortlessly dissolving ice ramp, Ice Queen Elsa glances from a respectfully nodding Job, to a wide eyed Rapunzel who blinks back at her transformed stately cousin in awe; a pleasantly waving Olaf, and then, lastly, to her unreadable mother.

Elsa bites her lip as she looks down, suddenly self-conscious of her rather revealing style of dress in anxious wonder of her mother's approval as the Queen just continues to stare at her tense daughter with her sweet mouth hanging open.

The next second, Queen Idun jumps to her own feet and grabs Elsa's two defrosting hands with a big bright impressed smile adorning her own drawn eyed features.

"Good! I am truly glad to see my big girl has developed not only control, but a backbone as well! And a beautiful, quite unique sense of eyecatching, trendsetting style while she was at it. Though I do wonder what your stuffy father will say about this…" With a giggle, Elsa's open-minded petite framed mother squeezes her tall beauty's trembling hands with motherly pride as she looks up at her child's chrysalis-like transformation into a full blown butterfly in their absence.

"Your father is, undoubtedly, extremely noble, capable and brave. And he sincerely means the best for us all –" Idun pauses as she maternally leads her freethinking independent-minded elder daughter to sit on the bench beside her to have that mother-daughter chat she intended to have with Elsa for a long time.

"But sometimes that pompous man can be a royal pain in the –" Idun trails off her humored sentiment of her beloved snobbish husband's overprotective decision to order her and Elsa away from the frontline battle, in his old-fashioned domineering way.

"I knew I liked your Mama, Queenie! Whew! Watch out for the ladies of Norway! The Queen of Clovers and the Queen of Diamonds!" Unconventional Flynn Rider chortles loudly as his keen pricked up ears had been eavesdropping on the discussion below for any hints of the ever-bendable female mind changing after feedback from the peanut gallery below.

Unlike most males of his time era, Flynn didn't mind one bit that a member of the more tender sex was wielding her authority over him. Or under him for that matter, Eugene smirks a toothy grin that Pascal, turned a shade of suspicious deep green, eyes him warily before sticking a sobering tongue in the squealing man's ear.

"Stop that, Frog!" But Eugene secretly was glad the weighty decision, and much of the responsibility was off his shoulders as he lets the women be in charge for a change, content with all their feminine wiles to beguile him.

"I may just have an ace up my sleeve that Papa may soon need…" Elsa enigmatically responds in the wanna-be card sharp's terms as she eyes the pleasantly swaying back and forth snow mound creation named Olaf with keen interest. He was gazing out the window on the seat bench in childlike innocence as the carriage once again moves towards the Northern coastal shore...

'_Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes;_

_Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies;_

_Heaven's morning breaks and Earth's vain shadows flee;_

_In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me…_

* * *

_Frozen cold tidings, Fanfiction friends!_

_I know its been a while, but with my big Sister's birthday and all the present making, family parties and fun festivities , November's been a whirlwind for your humble authoress!_

_Here's the next chapter of our thrilling Frozen fairytale! I hope you enjoy! (Review...Review...please! I've been starved for fanfiction fellowship these past busy weeks! ^_^)_

_I have some days off now for the Thanksgiving holiday and will hopefully be writing madly another chapter (or maybe even two! If I'm ambitious! So watch for it soon!) After all, this story was, at first, a present for my Sis and she still loves it, as my greatest fan, almost one year into the adventure/romance tale!_

_God bless you and yours this festive season where we remember to give our thanks for every one of the Lord's blessings in our lives! (And eat turkey and pumpkin pie in celebration! :) pumpkin pie...yummyummyummy...gobblegobble..._

_Your hungry for turkey stuffing &amp; mashed potatoes Frozen friend,_

_HarukaKou_


	51. Chapter 50 - Mother Knows Best

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act III**

**Chapter 50**

** "****Mother Knows Best"**

"Hold on, hold on… I might be picking up something." Squinting his charcoal black eyes out the side carriage window, Olaf quite comically waddles across the hushed coach. He climbs first onto the seat, then hops up over big silent Job's bewildered yet sturdy shoulder, until the snowman squishes his nearly 3 foot tall snowy body in three separating parts through the frontal communication portal.

_**S-P-PLA-TT!**_

The frigid ice cold magical creation's three parts each rhythmically smack into the back of Eugene's unpleasantly surprised tight rear end.

"Yee-sh! Cold, cold, DAMN COLD in my southern hemisphere!" Flynn Rider certainly wasn't shy to be vocal of his complaint as he leaps off the seat of his chilled pants, fortunately not falling off, since the airborne drop was hundreds of feet down at this high altitude.

Eugene instinctively reaches for the sudden ice cold and sleet wet small of his back where Olaf had tumbled up on the driver's bench into.

"What the hell are you up to, Frosty?! Boy, am I gonna have one bad case of lumbago tomorrow!" Eugene yanks out Olaf's mostly reassembled head and torso to plop them with his one free arm onto the driver's bench beside him all whilst he the bellyaches of his now wet and decidedly chilled rear end.

"Accident." Olaf's smooshed to the hard surface mouth mutters on his face as his body scrambles to get himself back together like Humpty-Dumpty. Eugene puts a hand to his behind with an audible sigh at the melted moisture that that fool's persistent personal snow flurry ensured.

_Not that kind of accident! Damn, it's gonna look like I wet my pants in front of all those lovely ladies! Just peachy for a man's fake reputation…_

"Sorry, Flynn-er-Eugene! But I wanted to get a better look at something coming towards us!" Unfazed Olaf explains as he distastefully shocks a bug eyed Eugene by plunging one of his branch arms deep into his snowball chest region.

"Yecch!" Flynn and Pascal simultaneously stick their tongues in grossed out astonishment.

Olaf digs about a bit with his mouth murmuring all the while: "It's getting cluttered in here…Gotta do something about that…Maybe Spring cleaning… Oh, how I love the sound of **Spring,** right next to the sound of SUMMER!…"

"A-ha! Here it is!" The pleasantly talking-to-himself snowman disturbingly produces a small metal telescope from somewhere hiding within his center snowball. Olaf expertly handles the new naval magnification gadget that JustHans had patiently taught him to use aboard ship and starts scanning with one black eye squinting through its rounded glass.

"A spyglass? What else do you have rolling around in there, my fine frosted friend?" A soft spot for collecting small shiny things still, Eugene asks drolly with a poke at Olaf's rounded form after he exchanges an interested look with a pure snowy white Pascal. The chameleon hugs his protective lizard arms around his own hopefully nonporous tummy that was quite turned at the thought of such invasive self-inspection.

"Wait! At one…No…Let's see…Two, Thirty-seven?! No… Three! Definitely three and forty-five o'clock!" His branch arms point around wildly after verbally calculating the military style of conveying degree location of an incoming bogey as Kommander Westergaard had instructed him proper usage of.

"I see Sven and Kristoff! But he doesn't look so good. I don't think he should fly with his eyes closed like that. And without a seat belt. It's not safe." Olaf comments in his simple, disconnected way. At first excited, then down in the mouth, his snow cheeks pucker in protest when Flynn's quick hands grab the snow creature's telescopic device and the man peers through with some trepidation.

"Gimme that thing." The master thief's swift hands and high intelligence quotient soon figures out how to use the telescope's zoom in capability to focus on what his snowy bench mate had already spotted in the distance

"Not bad for a snowman using the check six clock system of a shipboard envelope scan." An impressed Eugene murmurs, silently congratulating his brother's aptitude as an instructor, even on this the dumbest of dumb 'species.'

"But you're right. The poor guy's injured. This is bad. Hiyah, my pretty fillies!" Nominally tossing back the handheld telescope that Olaf's slippery branchy hands almost lose grip of, Eugene takes firm command of the reins. In all seriousness, he directs the pair of the Snow Queen's mares to race even faster in a direct path to overtake the sighted reindeer team.

"What's happening?" Ice Queen Elsa appears by her ice levitation through the top of the carriage again at his back with the pertinent query at this sudden spike in agitated speed.

"Reindeer ahead coming towards us." Eugene answers, even toned. He did not wish to alarm the frozen maiden who was already hazardously on edge.

"With Anna and Papa?" Elsa's first thought was for her little sister and father, and her concerned tongue just catches in her throat for mentioning a certain handsome young Dane by name, too.

"Don't know. Take a gander through Olaf's spyglass." Eugene's serious face as he leans forward to urge the flying horses on even more startles Elsa. She icily uses her cryokinetics to purloin Olaf's new toy and gaze through it with one wildly hopeful eye wide-open.

"Kristoff's unconscious and his left leg appears bloody and contorted! I don't see Papa or… anyone else…on the other reindeer. Wait! Are those Anna's boots and hands around Kristoff's chest? I can't make it out clearly. Here Olaf, you look!" Elsa removes the telescope that Hans had taught her to use and shoves the instrument back over Olaf's one eye not glued shut. Then she wipes at her own eyes that were dewy wet with tears of her strained sudden fright.

"Ahh! How cruel! The monster left only Anna's boots and hands! That's not good!" Stupidly Olaf gasps in horror when his snowpea-brain couldn't pull much more in than that. The rest of Anna couldn't be seen behind her broad shouldered and big muscled husband.

"Olaf! Anna is sitting behind Kristoff, holding him onto Sven. Can't you see?!" Elsa clarifies in her own high-pitched building panic for her dear one's safety as she grabs the telescope back from the freaking-out dumb snowman to double-check.

"Oh, yeah. That makes more sense. Hee hee." Olaf chortles at himself as the slipping and sliding snowman holds on tight to the bench beside Eugene's uncultivated, not so smooth driving technique that was bouncing them all about the front.

"Mama! Anna's bringing Kristoff! He looks hurt!" Elsa, at first terrified, then switches into her trained leadership mode as Royal Queen. "Prepare room on one side for the injured to board!" She orders in regal tones, keeping her cool together.

"I'll be ready, dear! Anna..." Queen Idun hustles with Rapunzel to clear the rear bench, Job even pitching in to ready a makeshift bed with the obedient lamb to serve as a fluffy pillow for the wounded patient.

As they near one another, Eugene does rather well as he maneuvers his flying carriage at close quarters just to hover around the side of Sven's slowing travel.

"Mama! Quick! You have to sing to Kristly!" Anna cries out against the rushing winds as she pops up from behind her injured boy. The small framed orangey ginger girl starts to try to pick Kristoff's dead weight up to usher him into the side door that daring Rapunzel flings open and hangs out upon, her hand extended to her cousin with Queen Idun and Job forming a chain.

"Anna! Hold on tight! I'm coming!" Elsa backs down into the carriage and uses her ice magic to draw Kristoff and Anna hugged to his torso's back, across the coach's threshold and onto the seat where Job was helpfully poised to carry the big bodied young man in the rest of the way.

"It's his leg! I think some bones must have been crushed, poor boy." Gently feeling around at Kristoff's ripped and peeling back trouser leg, Rapunzel was delicate around the open and bloodied multiple wounds. Nurse Rapunzel assesses the damage from where she was knelt at his feet that she supportively props up on her shoulder from dangling off the short bench.

"The monster got away… There was a cave-in. Papa put up an ice shield….Hans went down to get Kristly…'cause he couldn't climb out himself in time." Anna's breathless retelling comes out in dribs and drabs all colored with great anxiety and worry for her love as she falls to her knees by his passed-out face.

"The boy's lost a lot of blood." As Queen Idun takes her place at Kristoff's lower body and examines the wide-open wound's dirt-filled, encrusted blood entry she murmurs her evaluation in soft tones to Rapunzel, who nods in agreement.

By now though, her clumsy little girl's step-and-fetchit antics required her caring Mama to become quite a healing nurse all through Anna's active childhood. And after Agdar's terrible traumatic accident that shaved off both his limbs, the tough stomached little Swedish woman had gleaned more than her share of medical experience with deep cut injuries and bloodied lacerations to last her a lifetime.

"Oh, Mama!" Her pricked-up ears overhearing, Anna panics, clutching at her parent's dress hem, her other hand wrapping around Kristoff's feverishly pulsating big fist.

"It's all right, my baby. We can fix this boo-boo. Don't you worry." Speaking tenderly and petting her child's tears away just as she did when Anna was so little, Idun swallows back her own exhaustion and fear and begins to sing.

"_Not the labor of my hands, can fulfill Thy law's demands;_

_Could my zeal no respite know? Could my tears forever flow?_

_All for sin could not atone, Thou must save and Thou alone."_

Idun calls upon the healing powers of her 'Rock of Ages' that had been blessed upon her for these trials that He knew she would one day face.

As her Queen mother's lilting soprano works her golden flower imbued healing powers over Kristoff's leg, his broken bones begin to twist and turn as they knit back together.

Anna's hands-on constant rubbing and caressing of his legs, both of them – _all the way up, mind you _– certainly helps the virile young man's blood start flowing again.

Kristoff stirs awake with a slight moan at the burning hot golden glow of Idun's curative song that sets the crushed and broken bones of his defunct leg back into place.

"Anna. You could stop massaging the leg now." Embarrassed, Kristoff's mellow voice speaks to his loving new wife's rather rousing touches of his bared ankle to thigh.

"But you have such nice legs." Honest Anna doesn't blush as she presses her Kristoff's reinstated firm muscular lower leg to her cheek warmly, showering it up and down the whole way with kisses.

That action culminates in Kristoff beckoning her with one big wagged finger, to which Anna scoots across the floor on her knees in response. The relieved girl then consequently receives a massive powerful kiss, both recipients needing that physical bit of love's recharge to keep going.

Rapunzel smiles in full understanding as she too gives Kristoff's bare lower appendage a patted caress as the nurse in her stands away, and the seamstress in her returns to quick stitch up Kristoff's ripped pant leg as a tired Idun looks approvingly on.

"Anna? What happened to Papa?… And…Hans?" Elsa, the only unwed female in the carriage, averts her eyes from the newlyweds' passionate osculation and changes the subject.

"Hmm? Oh! Right!" Anna has to drag her unwilling lips and fuzzy mind back to reality as Kristoff sits up and pulls her onto his lap, examining his working, no longer deformed leg with his eyes and a smile.

"Papa ordered us to go back to Arendelle, you know, in that annoying oh–so-heroic '_I'm your father. You must listen to me!'_ big man stern voice—" The sound of which Anna emulates in a lowered range absurdly—" then that Hans just picked me up and loaded Kristoff like a bag of potatoes onto Sven before the cave collapsed totally. He said he'd stay with Papa. As if I'm not good enough?! Men!" Throwing her hands expressively in the air, Anna rolls her eyes at the bossy think-they-know-better gender as a whole—her Kristly the only wonderful exception to that rule.

Although, all of her thoughts of young Mr. Westergaard were not entirely unfavorable, though she would certainly deny it if anyone asked.

"When I heard the cave collapse I looked back and saw Papa and Hans flying off in the opposite direction, gallivanting after that evil monster all by themselves, without waiting for us. Now, how are we supposed to track those silly guys down, if we're going to save them, Elsa?!" Anna spits that all out in practically one breath. The gutsy girl appeared more frustrated than worried that her dear Papa, with **that** Hans at his side, went to confront that deadly Draugen monster without her.

_**ZOING. ZOING. ZOING.**_

Before anyone has a chance to answer Anna, the fired up ginger feels an uncanny palpitation pressed against her skin from where she was sitting on her husband's lap.

"Huh? Oh!" Anna tugs out from her limited cleavage the hexagonal fancy mirror that she had found earlier afloat near the shore. It was glowing in a ghostly shade of bluish white.

"Little Princess… Little Princess can you hear me?" The magic mirror in Anna's hands flashes in lights of the aurora borealis until it displays the ethereal alabaster face of the beautiful great Northern Snow Queen.

"You did well to bring my Snow Prince to safety." And the legendary mistress of the snow was looking directly up at the amazed girl who was seated on Kristoff's wide-eyed lap.

"It was my Papa who saved him!" Proud of her heroic parent, Anna fights the urge to take credit as she gives her absent father his impressive ice powered due.

"Yes, my Windchime boy is heading into grave danger, but there is little I can do myself to help him." The striking pale skinned pristine beauty of an age-old woman speaks in ominous deep echo-y tones from her far off frozen palace of the North.

"Pardon, me, Your Majesty. Please, can you at least lead us to Papa? I know I can help defeat this wicked beast. He shouldn't have to do it alone." After a respectful half-curtsy, Elsa's wringing hands folded on her lap immediately spring to life as she intrepidly takes the mirror from Anna until she was face to face with the Snow Queen of legend.

"So you are the precious tiny shining diamond my Windchime boy so proudly spoke of to me when your powers were first developing. His little _'Snow Angel'_ with the tremendous untapped potential whom he loved so dearly he'd '_do anything to protect._' We meet at last." The Snow Queen reaches towards the iridescent mirror from the inside with her cold icy hands as if she longed to touch Elsa's pale cheek.

"Papa was proud of me? He never said." Elsa murmurs, feeling like that small and insignificant child again. She considers her uncertain youth growing up when she felt so inferior and unworthy of being the King's daughter that he had to keep her secluded from the rest of the outside world. Elsa never realized until now that her noble and strong father had endured the same unwanted growing pains in his hesitant icy childhood as she, and only wished to spare her from facing it for long as possible. She could see now that he only implemented the cutoff solitude, just as his parents before thought best for him, when her exhibited powers began to go out of control.

The young Queen feels her mother's hand squeeze hers with a soft compassionate smile, Idun sensing acutely how her daughter felt in the knowledge that whatever mistakes she and her husband had made in raising their oldest child, it was out of love in wanting a good life for her that she could hopefully learn to cope with someday.

"We rarely say what we mean the most." The Snow Queen's lyrical voice summarizes with traces of an exotic foreign accent. "Yes, I see your Pappa there in your lovely pure crystalline eyes, child, now that your powers have flourished finally with the control he mastered and prayed for in you. I have been watching your progress with a vested interest from afar." The platinum blonde woman's long dangling diamond crystal earrings tinkle against her frosted high white lace collar as her pale blue eyes and Elsa's cerulean ones connect through the magic looking glass.

"But you are more correct than he in your awareness at such a youthful age, that God did not create a single one of us to be alone. It took me far too long to realize that myself, sensible young Elsa of Arendelle." The ancient wise spirit of the snow graces Elsa with one of her rare elegant smiles, fully revealing her true frozen beauty few were ever allowed to glimpse.

"I believe you are ready to embrace your full potential at last. So I will guide you to your good and honorable father because he does need you, Ice Queen, in his righteous quest to rid his country of this foul polluted creature. In so doing, we must bring all of nature back to order for the sake of the one I love, as well." In her castle in the arctic north, the Snow Queen turns her icy head to glance to the unconscious man half phasing in and out a physical form seated in the soundlessly silent Snow Palace throne beside her.

Ragi was in an insensate comatose state, yet his fighting soul, was still restless in scattered pieces as he tries to hold onto his reality, as seen on every subtle measure of his hard worn, yet kind, facial features.

"Thank you, your Majesty." Queen Elsa of Arendelle bows her head reverently to the great benefactress of the snowy North, whom all her ancestors had enjoyed a mutual peace with for timeless eras before the current ruler of Norway's royal house was ever born.

For the cold ice and snow would always be the true monarch of this land.

"My son?" Stately icy blonde woman with regal elegance dripping from every cool pore of her being then turns to project herself in a crystal clear flawless high C voice to address a shocked Kristoff Bjorgman seated beside Elsa.

"Umm…uh…Me? Does she seriously mean me?" The modest mountain man was still too humble and down to earth enough to be in disbelief that this legendary Mistress of the elements of snow was his real mother who gave actual birth to him, just a regular bloke with an uncanny passion for ice and snow...

"My _mother_ is the mystical Snow Queen of the far North we've grown up hearing stories about?" Almost afraid of the frightening truth, Kristoff whispers his anxiety in Anna's ear. The vibrant girl nods, maybe more eager and willing to believe in fairytales than her prosaic young man.

"Kristoff." The Snow Queen smiles a radiant lustrous smile as she revels in articulating the inspired name she had given her one and only, greatest miracle.

"Y-yes? Snow Queen… I mean…Your Majesty… That is…" The simple ice harvester nervously trips over his own words as he responds to the elegant woman in the mirror with the piercing blue eyes that seemed to be looking straight through him.

"As the new Wind Whisperer you will be able to hear in your heart your Móðir's elemental voice whispered on the icy wind if you so choose. I will lead you to defeat that abomination that you were chosen to vanquish as passed down from generation to generation long ago in stories of old. Please, fulfill that destiny, before your father fades away from me. I have complete faith in you." The tears behind the Snow Queen's eyes were not the false glassy incarnation of some feminine mythological being. They were the genuine tears of a woman—the mother he didn't have.

And she was giving him the encouragement and a tenderness the Snow Queen's cold heart before love never knew possible.

The utterly good heart in Kristoff Bjorgman was moved enough to accept what his sensitive soul was assuring him, via his close link with all of nature now.

"Pakka per, Móðir." (_Thank you, Mother_.) Kristoff's mellow voice speaks aloud in a foreign language he never before owned. But everything about this being the new spirit connected Wind Whisperer was an unraveling mystery to him. Luckily Kristoff had learned long ago 'just to roll with it,' or he might go mad with all the fresh shifting tides in his mind.

{"I promise, I won't let either of you down."} The blonde man calmly mentally projects his confidence across the hundreds of frosted miles between himself and the Snow Queen where she was in her palace high atop the Arctic Circle.

And through her bond with nature's snow and her soulmate Ragi's channeling, the woman perceives her child's communication perfectly clear and he comforts her in turn.

"I will pray for you all." The sophisticated figure of the unearthly ethereal being behind the other side of the mirror closes her snowflake glimmering eyes to signal her farewell as the face of the icy looking glass fades to normal reflection again.

* * *

"Is everything all right down there, gang? 'Cause it's gone awfully quiet— Hey! Good to see you up and at it again, Muscles. You had us worried there." Flynn Rider affords Kristoff a wink as he leans his long curious neck down to converse with those inside the coach who were disturbingly as hushed as if they were attending a wake.

_And funerals never were my thing, even if black is a good color for me. Too deathly quiet…_

"Why are you all staring at me? Why are they all staring at me?" Eugene turns to his sidekick Pascal who shrugs back to his normal green shade. "Did I miss something? Or did some stray dumb bird poop on my head out here?"

Whether he was trying to be the comic relief or not, Eugene lightens the heavy mood inside the coach for them to all catch their collective breath now that the Northern Snow spirit had departed her presence, and consider their next action.

Queen Elsa's eyes connect with Kristoff's and the healed blond young man gives her a nod. The two like, responsible minds did not even have to speak to understand one another's meaning.

Kristoff stands as tall as his six foot five tall height could be hunched over in the short roof carriage. He leans down to give Anna a big, open mouthed, lasting kiss before stepping over to the speeding carriage's door.

In quick motions, Kristoff opens and walks out of the carriage as if he were sure something solid would be waiting out there to catch his next thousand plus foot high altitude step.

And of course, some_one_ was. The loyal best friend of a reindeer had been silently incommunicado with the young Wind Whisperer and was ready for Kristoff to board his reindeer ride's back, albeit at a death-defying dangerous height hundreds of meters up in the air like a daredevil stunt man, without a net.

But with nature itself on his side, the brave young man instinctively knew that he had the wind at his back and the clouds at his command from henceforth as the chilled breeze told him he was never going to do this alone.

Feeling Kristoff's newfound surge of assurance through their bond too, even Sven swirls with a new confident swank around the front of the carriage and takes the lead of the Snow Queen's horse team, much to Flynn's gape-mouthed surprise.

"So, any course corrections for me to follow, Your Majesty? Just click your heels three times and repeat aloud 'I wish I was back in Arendelle,' and you'll be there in two shakes of a reindeer's tail, like your scary icy Pops instructed me to do. Or is anyone else gonna jump out of my flying carriage because they don't like the way I drive? Because I thought I was starting to get a knack for this baby." Over talkative when he was excited, Flynn's sarcastic voice didn't really need to ask for what his gut already told him.

_But a self-preservational man can dare to hope, can't he?_

"Acting Captain Fitzherbert," Queen Elsa begins with the condescending honorary title her father bestowed on cousin Eugene that told the man she meant business, "Follow that man and his reindeer to the ends of the earth, if need be. They're leading our way to Papa and the greatest struggle our country has ever faced. We **will** be counted among the strong who made a stance in history to preserve our beloved nation, do you understand?" With her Papa and Hans' inspiring influence of full patriotic zeal running in her royal veins—along with Agdar's inherited ice— Elsa's exotic flaring eyes stare down Flynn Rider with unyielding fervent command that she had never dared imagine she could wield so expertly before.

"Yes, ma'am! I never argue with a beautiful blonde in authority as a rule! Especially not when she has ice powers that can turn me into a lick'em popsicle stick before you can say—Okay okay! I'm going already! Sheesh, why's everyone always in a rush around here? Must be the high-altitude… Hyah!" And with a few final quips, Eugene finally does as icy Elsa and her fiery little sister Anna, who had climbed up her big sis' ice ramp to be standing at her side, were ordering him with hands on hips and both pairs of their glaring, glowering, determined eyes.

"Like I said before: 'Don't mess with the hot women in the cold far North." Flynn asides to Olaf and Pascal on the front bench beside him as Queen Elsa and Princess Anna of Arendelle, arm in arm standing against the fierce wind of the racing sky carriage, were fully prepared to march into battle to protect their country and save the brave father they both loved dearly, as their cousin and little mother look on with pride.

* * *

_Móðir_ – Icelandic for 'Mother' pronounced _moou-thir_, with the _th_ sound being soft.

_Pakka per- '_Thank you' in Icelandic

* * *

Happy Thanksgiving, Frozen friends! Hope you had a blessed wonderful and tasty time with your family, as we did here!

As promised, here's the next chapter, hot off the presses! Kind of a look at how this end of the team is doing, patching up Kristoff, chatting with the Snow Queen, and figuring out where we're going. (plus Flynn-er Eigene being a riot the whole time! I adore that man's sarcastic loose lips!)

Now, with Queen Idun and Kristoff's mum the Snow Queen playing such vital starring roles today, I couldn't help but throw in that contagious Tangled song title. The 'Bad Guy' or no, Mother Gothel had a set of lungs on her! The ditty was so fun, you have to keep singing it! (Just try! I dare you not to start humming that catchy Disney villain broadway style tune!) Hence our nicer Mothers get the nod of a chapter title here. (a special thanks to all Moms out there who made this Thanksgiving holiday warm and tasty

What do you think? Please review! ^_^ I love your always wonderful input!

God bless as we move into this blessed season to celebrate the birth of our Lord!

HarukaKou

P.S. I just noticed, there's 99 reviews for our humble little story as we hit the chapter 50 mark!

I wonder who will be first to make the 100th Review entry on "Frozen Again: But the Greatest of These is Love..."!?

Just a bit of an extra Frozen fun challenge, my friendly comment-ers! ^_^

***100! UPDATE! MY WONDERFUL FRIENDLY FROZEN GUEST HAS PUT OUR COMMENTS OVER 100! whoo-whee!

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU MUCH! YOU GUYS ROCK!

And yes, the excitement and thrills are just building in our adventure from here!

There' a lot of Thanksgiving for our friendship and kindness to your fellow human being/sillyauthor I wish to express!

Thanks to all of my Fanfiction friends who have supported and helped me over this past year of frenzied writing this action/ adventure/ romance tale starring our favorite Frozen and Rapunzel heroes and heroines!

I can't believe that it's been exactly one year since I began spinning this web of intrigue and adventure for my beloved big sister's special birthday present that she wanted to share with you!

Wow! 50 chapters and 320,000+ words later, the imagination God gave us has no limits for this fairytale full of song and great Disney characters and old familiar guests (even a few Kingly and Queenly ones brought back from the bottom of the sea! :) I love Agdar &amp; Idun's role in this now! I think they add a lot to the story of Hans &amp; Elsa's developing relationship! What do you think?

I'm madly scribbling out the next chapter as we speak and hope to have it up by Sunday night! Super birthday week writing extravaganza big finish! Our Arendelle, Corona and Southern Isles' friends are marching into battle with a vicious sea monster now!

So Stay tuned!

Same Olaf time, same Olaf station! ^_*

God bless! Have a great weekend! :)


	52. Chapter 51 - An Officer and a Gentleman

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act III**

**Chapter 51**

**"An Officer and a Gentleman"**

The fishing villages that dotted the rugged coastal regions of the scenic Lofoten archipelago island of Moskensoya appeared from the air lofted distance both peaceful and quiet to the casual observer. But the nearer King Agdar and Prince Hans, astride their pair of flying mares, approached, the less tranquil the misleading scenery looked against the imposing mountain backdrop of this sub-arctic region.

"Thank God fishing season has ended." From where the pair had been scouring the horizon for any signs of the wicked Draugen's whereabouts, Hans' keen ears hear King Agdar mumble the bittersweet sentiment under his breath across the air stream way.

The royal ruler who tried to keep himself abreast of every area of activity concerning his people, apparently knew his kingdom and the local workings of it well. It was breaking his heart, as both he and Hans begin to survey the disarrayed path of destruction, that the foul monster had left terror in its rampaged wake northward.

The startled red-haired Prince dutifully follows the Norwegian Admiral's lead horse down to the Moskenes area where the two mares land on the sandy beach of the small unpopulated village of Å (pronounced _Uh_) at the archipelago's southernmost tip.

Down into the low elevation valley of only 10 meters at its highest, the lovely village of Å was thankfully sparsely inhabited, especially when the spring's busy fishing season had concluded The fisherman would seek out their catch to harvest in other more northern coastal locations, following their swimming underwater livelihood upstream.

The red fisherman cabins on stilts called 'rorbu,' were well-built to weather the many sea storms and remain sturdy and lasting for the seasonally frequented workstations of the fishers near the shore.

But looking upon them now, the broken down and smashed to smithereens painted red traditional rorbu were anything but _sturdy_.

The strong birchwood hewn cabins and sheds near the coast meant for hanging the _skrei_ \- the codfish catch that were preserved and salted to make stockfish for the rest of the year- had been torn apart and disassembled stick by stick and crushed roof shingle by shingle when something far worse and far more malignant than any passing sea storm arrived in Å.

"Are there any injured?" Horrified, Prince Hans leaps his agile long legs from his white steed to rush towards the devastated row of red cabins. There, King Agdar was delicately using his ice magic to sift through the pile of rubble where many proud fishing cabins once stood.

"Only the few beyond our help, now."

In his young life, Hans had seen some severe shipboard accidents and heard of foul weather, catastrophe related damage back home in the Southern Isles that had caused much injury and tragic suffering before. But none as thoroughly devastating so close up and personal as this savage attack.

The young man swallows back hard as he watches the knit-brow King bow a reverent head and murmur a soft prayer over the unresponsive form of an old fisherman who was either too stubborn or too slow to even try to leave his sea edge post when the massive sea monster reared it ugly head close by his cabin.

The old fisherman's worn and beaten down bloodsoaked body displayed a cracked open skull that had been crushed by the huge weight of the Draugen's plunging webbed feet, as the careless beast stepped on the shore, crunching whatever lay within its fearful path.

"Oh, no! Your Majesty, there's more!" Surveying the macabre scene, Hans' eyes trace the large lizard-like clawed footprint cast where the sea monster had dug into the shore's mud from the poor fisherman's demolished hut down its continuing razed trail. Soon thereafter, it must've been challenged by a pair of brave middle-aged men who were just docking their overturned fishing boats near the shore when the awful monster struck.

Their strangled, mangled and seaweed eviscerated forms were lying in pools of blood mingled with the mud and sediment the innocent men had been smashed down into. It appeared they had been torn asunder and then squashed under the evil sea creature's gargantuan feet, as if the courageous souls were no more than infinitesimal insignificant insects to be crushed under the Draugen's cruel, heartless foot.

Hans leans over the mashed corpses to check for any pulses or signs of life, although his mind screamed they were lost already. And graciously so, in their dismembered, compressed and pulverized states, he thinks as the Prince kneels, aghast at how terribly gory and horrific their deaths had been at that wicked insane pirate turned malignant sea demon's grisly domination.

"All of these innocent people… We were too late…" Hans' lyrical voice genuinely was moved to emotion behind the lump in his throat at the gruesome scene and many more like it surrounding the Draugen's vicious charge run amok.

By the time Hans looks up from the brutal barbaric scene to scan the Midnight Sun skyline for the perpetrator, Agdar, in far more livid tones, was already icing up.

The Ice King's pale eyes glow with that unearthly blue-white light, his very sub-zero breath smoking from his flared nostrils and frosted mouth as he speaks.

"No more." The Ice King breathes the two simple words as his indignant anger begins to overwhelm his vast mental frozen control. Ice spike formations suddenly jut out along his wide stately shoulders and arms and travel all the way down his incensed back to pierce through his Navy blue royal tunic.

"So help me God, I swear that this foul-stenched vile creature will be eradicated from this earth!" Irate Agdar's low baritone announces his seething wrath upon the murderous Draugen for cutting short so viciously the lives of any of his precious citizens, no matter how elderly or unknown, each life was important in his eyes.

"Sir! I believe I have spotted the monster on that distant mountain range up there!" Just then, Hans' proficient keen gaze notices the preternatural being slithering up the distant mountain.

"It appears to be making its way north along the coastline, as if it requires not to be away from the ocean for more than a short stint of time." Hans intelligently extrapolates from his swift assessment of the Draugen's monstrous footprints that were becoming gradually more clumsy as the saltwater creature moves further away from the shore.

Indeed, the further it moved from the sea, the grasping creature had lost its dizzied bearings as it stumbled up the mountain. In fury and rage set upon this bright country that had wronged him, the black-hearted, vengeful old pirate rampaged obliteration techniques before its bodily functions made it desperate to search for an entry inlet back into the seawater down the other side of the mountain. There, it could recharge before going on its vengeful aggressive attack again.

"Then it will not be allowed to see the ocean again, just as these good seamen never again will." Enraged, the frost breathing King leaves a trail of ice behind his incensed, anger-unleashed path as he strides purposefully across the land.

Frightening, spike-backed Ice King Agdar mounts his flying steed as he digs his sharp as ice boot heels in to urge the Snow Queen's borrowed mare to quickly surge forward.

Ice particles spill down in his chilled subzero wake as Agdar wordlessly heeds his second-in-command's directional indication.

Hans swiftly follows suit on his own flying horse, keeping as close to his Norwegian leader while managing to stay a few lengths to the side continually and maneuver just out of range of the King's deadly sharp intractable ice streaks unloosed to scatter across the open air.

* * *

Wisely choosing his moment when the ice exuding from his flying companion had somewhat calmed, Hans calls out after several minutes of high-speed high flying through the empty skies in a direct course toward the quickly nearing peak.

"Your Majesty! I feel compelled to forewarn you that Queen Elsa's ice powers were apparently impotent against that malignant creature before." Feeling the need to voice this chary circumspect to the Admiral bearing his icy wrath for all to see, Hans was already thinking of the battle campaign ahead, once they had commandeered the sea monster.

After all, devising masterful plans on his feet was one of the erudite Prince's greatest strengths.

And, if the King's ice magic blast failed to defeat this contemptible menace of a merciless enemy, Hans Westergaard would have to pool all of his cognitive intellect and innovative resources to lend his support to the struggle.

"My daughter, sir, is but a child. And certainly not a naval man, as you and I. We have been trained to be prepared to improvise in fierce battle." Agdar did not intend to sound so condescending, pompous, or patronizing, but being from the old-school, where serving as an officer _and_ a gentleman meant a great deal to a man's psyche, the cool detached demeanor his ice manifestation brought about in him often chose his frosted words.

As for Hans, he quite astutely decides to merely nod, though he himself did not consider Queen Elsa of Arendelle either a _child_ or anything less than his intellectual equal.

And when it came to her vast ice powers, Elsa certainly was far his superior in creativity and capability more than any officer he had ever served under before, and Prince Hans was savvy enough to recognize it.

But, for now, Prince Hans wisely keeps his own counsel, as his horse soars beside Elsa's traditionally conservative father's ice tail blazing one.

* * *

After airborne miles of travel by way of the dusky clouds, Agdar and Hans side-by-side, look up towards the intensely scanned scenery ahead. They frantically try to track the deep ilky green monster as it blends in with the tall trees of the dark forest, before it reached the next, more populated town on the other side of the mountain's high peak.

The pair of the Snow Queen's mares soar towards the distant mountain range named Reinebringen several kilometers to the northeast on the southernmost Lofoton island of Moskensoya where the King and Prince were in hot pursuit of the villainous fiend.

"I hope we can locate that polluted monster soon. We're moving into an area that is ideal for a precision offensive strike-point, if we can lure it here. Mt. Reinebringen is uninhabited at this high level." As King Agdar's flying horse hovers past the valley's small fishing village of Reine and moves towards its connected high-altitude misty mountain, he could clearly see the path of devastation that the massive, over 120 foot tall by now Draugen monstrosity had wreaked upon the peaceful landscape.

Agdar had always wanted to visit this beautiful, widely untouched scenic area ever since his youth, when dutiful young Crown Prince Agdar made it his business to know about each and every inch of his country intimately.

_But now look at it…_

Agdar despondently shakes his frozen cold head, finding his only solace in the fact that the wreckage here had no casualties, the elders of the town having evacuated in time.

Just then, the alerted King glimpses the creature's wriggling seaweed appendages just disappearing around the over 3000 foot tall mountain bend. He knew instinctively he must move with all haste.

"I will ask you not to accompany me, young man. Please stay here and assure there are no evacuation stragglers. And please attend to any wounded victims that may be in the village until I return." The King orders quickly as he readies his steed for flight.

"But, sir –" Hans starts to protest.

"My ice deluge will be, no doubt, overwhelming once I confront the beast. I cannot be responsible for your well-being during my intense frozen onslaught incursion." With that expressed order, the King loftily directs his rearing horse straight upwards to the sheer rock face side of the mountain peak at such a sudden rapid speed any normal human would be dizzied with vertigo by the sudden rise upward.

But Agdar Bernadotte of Arendelle had discovered long ago, that he himself was far beyond normal.

No, he was gifted with powers beyond his imagination, if he only learned to control and wield them to use for good when called upon in hours distress, in defense of this country.

Such as this.

The naval Admiral who was accustomed to doling out orders without any impertinent backtalk does not wait for any as Agdar prompts his magic flying horse over the still freshwater lake partway up the base of the Reinebringen mountain to scale the windward side of the over 3000 foot tall mountain peak, leaving Hans in his proverbial 'snowdust.'

The King and his horse continue to climb at such an increasing breakneck speed that a normal human head, not depressurized with a thickly layered ice encasement that instinctively formed around Agdar's skull, would be traumatized by the sudden, abruptly ear-popping change in altitude.

But the Ice King had discovered in his self testing youth, years ago, that through a great deal of learned control, he could withstand much more than any normal man with many clever innovations, such as this, that came along with his developed ice prowess.

Swiftly up the mountain rise, Agdar and his pure white steed climb, racing against time before the abnormality to nature, in its ravenous unquenchable thirst for raw energy and need for depraved revenge on this great nation, escaped this choice location for the naval man's pitched battle against his vile enemy.

And even now his cryokinetic energies had already been spent in saving his younger daughter's husband from that terrible cave-in collapse just a half-hour or so before, King Agdar would never let his people down.

For more than royal King, more than hereditary sovereign, more than nation ruler or naval leader, Agdar was crowned protector of his citizens. With all the ice magic abilities his Creator had placed at his command, King Agdar would give the last breath of his noble body to serve his countrymen well.

"**CAPTAIN CORNELIUS JOL!"** The righteous warrior in Agdar of Arendelle would never stoop so low as to shoot an unarmed foe in combat in the back, unannounced.

Although, the clever King uses that moment of the monster's startled, off-balance movement, to take precise aim at the immense creature's turned, more vulnerable, frontal area.

_**SZZT! SSZZT! SSZZZTT! SSSZZZTTT! **_

A quad-shot volley of fierce ice blasts at the Draugen directly to each of its four writhing algal attached limbs, to its ending appendages until they were frozen still as solid blocks of ice. The Ice King simultaneously releases the flurry of pelting hail to rain suffering down on the Draugen's multiple extensor projected eyeballs so he couldn't see where his attacker was coming from, until it was all over.

_**R-RR-OO-ARR—GG-RR-OW-LL!**_

Knowing his thick verglas engulfed ice blocks would not long survive the vicious creature's wild thrashing and slashing at it with its lacerating multiple haptera cords, Agdar was just biding his time.

Now that he had the sea monster's appendages imprisoned, it could not make a rush towards the vulnerable, populated village within eyesight just at the base of the leeward side of Mt. Reinebringen.

Despite his spent powers that he had not exhibited to any degree even close to this in a dog's age that usually took days to recharge, King Agdar focuses his mind and steadies his hand glowing with ice. It starts to power up with all the monumental amount of frozen cryokinetics at his disposal. Agdar closes his eyes as he prepares to relentlessly coat the entire Draugen with a debilitating ice blast. He would then use all the rest of his energy – every last bit of it – to freeze the despicable enormous aberration of the dark devilish entity into a solid block of ice that would, with any blessed luck, crack and shatter apart in a thousand icy pieces under its own weight.

And finally be rid of from its scourge upon this world, as, no doubt, he, King Agdar, in stretching himself beyond his ice limits until they devour him utterly, too, would be…

But for the sake of his adored nation and the safety of those he loved, Agdar would give it all…

As he moves his flying horse in closer to get a better direct shot that was so supercharged as his never exhibited before, it would certainly deep freeze the malevolent creature, once and for all –

_**GR-RR-OWWLLL!**_

But that's when the Draugen erupts in that terrifying deafening reaching roar that instantly sends the on icy edge Norwegian King, who was too close to its double rowed yellowed teeth mouths, back in an instant earsplitting headache of pure throbbing pain behind his rigid brainwaves and frozen temples until King Agdar's blueblood starts to spill from his hemorrhaging ears.

But as the ice King and his disoriented mare tumble listlessly through the thin air above Mt. Reinebringen, the vicious Draugen, though still pinned to the ground due to the ice at his feet, is still able to use the seaweed tentacles attached to his chest to reach out and grab the man off his horse in a stranglehold.

The Draugen mercilessly squeezes the winded life out of Agdar's brave neck, after the King had come so close to single-handedly defeating the legendary otherworldly demon monster…

* * *

The Ice King's previous ice wracked sorties and unforgiving attacks had left the frozen thin air high above Mt. Reinebringen so thick with utter cold moisture's accumulation that it had to be cut with a knife to proceed through.

Fortunately, there was one ace swordsman whom _the cold never bothered anyway_ who arrives upon his flying steed as if on cue. He obliges with panache and style that belied the bone-chilling freeze that tried, but failed, to dissuade this extraordinary – yes, warm-blooded – mortal young man from fulfilling his duty.

"Your Majesty!" Fearlessly entering the bitter smoking cold battlefield's lower stratosphere's other subzero temperatures, that's when Hans Westergaard's experienced masterful sword, clashing down to the rescue as it cleanly chops off the deadly strangling haptera algae vines that were cutting off the King's circulation with their poisonous energy draining inducement as well.

Hans takes off more than a few of the tender chest wriggling vines for good measure, leaving monster screaming in pain as he moves into the higher altitude to save King Agdar's life.

_**EE-EEEKK!**_

The sea monster squeals in pain as it begins to try to swipe back at the just-out-of-reach rescuer on horseback with its still rendered immobile ice cube coated digits.

_Cough! Cough! Cough!_ Agdar sputters for breath as Hans pulls the spiky-backed frozen King onto his horse to sit behind the rescuing redhead.

The actual bluish blood that had run down from his hemorrhaging ears was stopped when his innate ice thankfully coagulated the blood, but the look in the Ice King's bloodshot blue eyes was anything but complimentary.

"I **thought** I **told** you to **remain** at the mountain **base**, young man. **Did** I **not**?!" The angered vivid blue flashing eyes and raised frigid ice threatening voice would be enough to scare the pants off many a fainter heart.

But clever and witty Prince Hans simply smiled back at his passenger wryly.

"Yes, that is correct. You did instruct the '_young man'_. However, you did not command your _Vice Admiral_ to abandon his commanding officer in his most urgent hour of need." The Danish Prince retorts in a haughty manner of speech as he deftly maneuvers his white steed around the vengeful variety of venomous sleep inducing seaweed vines that were thrashing wildly at them as the creature lashes out in unmitigated pain.

Otherwise, it just stands there in screaming aggravation, yet immobilized by the King's ice.

"Besides, I promised Princess Anna that I would have your back, your Majesty. And a gentleman's pledge to a lady is sacrosanct." Hans Westergaard flaunts his high breeding with a saucy reply as he tosses the droll colloquialism over his shoulder to the very father of the young woman in question.

"Then, I suppose I owe my Anna a debt of gratitude, sir, although, I do not condone any officer who disobeys the direct order of his commander, even if the offender has all the proper terms to defend himself with." Agdar responds, the Ice King warming a bit more to the young rapscallion than he, as jealous Papa, intended. But there was an undeniable appeal to the capable young man that he could see Elsa's point of…

"Now, shall you and I finish this foul beast off?" The King asked with a glint behind his ice blue eyes as his snapped fingers call upon his own white horse to fly over alongside so he could transfer over to ride for himself again, as any self-respecting warrior in combat should.

"I am ready now, under your command, Admiral." The Prince dutifully bows his head in a more respectful way now, and Hans send his razor sharp sword to draw from his sheath, fully prepared to start slicing and dicing seaweed into green laver ahead.

_**R-RR-OO-ARR—!**_

Right at this moment, the vindictive Draugen roars back to life, livid that it vital chest vines had been sliced off to writhe over the edge of the mountainside. It was somehow able to free at least one of its hands as the Ice King's ice cube hold starts to crumble when it smashed against the rocks.

_**GG-RR-OW-LL!**_

Its ferocious scream hits King Agdar again with a blood curdling auditory sound wave that disrupts the rigid brainwaves of the King, momentarily at least. The royal ruler's horse too sinks back down to the mountain's lower elevations, as Hans watches with pressing angst-ridden apprehension.

"Argh!" Agdar cradles his pounding ears and throbbing head in his hands as he settles mindlessly onto his steed's saddle, just about able to hold on and not plummet down the thousands of feet below his airborne equine's ride.

"Your Majesty! Are you all right?" Hans asks in distracted worry, as he watches King Agdar sink down below.

The Dane's racing mind realizes their tactics for a successful victory were limited. Hans had gleaned from his own and Kristoff's last encounter with this Draugen monster, that its magical algae tentacles, not to mention its arms and legs he himself had chopped off as well, grow back.

Its vitally pierced body, that would instantly have killed any other creature in nature's normal scheme, rejected both steel blade and stone tipped arrow. Even its plunged out eyeballs had been re-grown into the far more frightening incarnation and multiplied as the result of Kristoff's plucked out arrow.

As for Ice Queen Elsa's frozen attacks, the energy draining monster even seemed to feed off her very ice's cryokinetics.

_So why would her father's frozen magic react with results any differently_?

There were very few options left open to the quick study tactician as the halted monster starts to pull each of its ice implanted weighed down feet up from the mountaintop's muddy ground sloshing beneath its massive webbing.

And the gigantic ghost of a decrepit old vindictive seaman was about to exact the revenge it now lived for upon the despised King of Arendelle, who was still recovering his sonic scream addled brain to function where he was exposed on the Reinebringen cliff side.

As the creature strains to pull forward and trudge its rapidly melting ice blocked feet closer to the ledge to where poor King Agdar was just coming to his senses, Hans moves in.

The valiant Prince on his fearless flying steed zips around from the starboard side of the Draugen and charges it head-on –

"Vice Admiral?!" Agdar's shaking head clears just in time to glimpse the daredevil stunt that Prince Hans of the Southern Isles madly attempts in an all out frontal assault on the humongous beast over twenty times Hans', in comparison, puny six foot two human male height.

After concise swift swipes of his punishing sword slices up several more of the beastie's algal weeds that were fending off his incoming blade, Hans arrives at the place where his audacious attack plan fashioned in an outrageous stratagem that none but the bold would ever dare.

And if everything else was lost, the disowned, degradated, disinherited Prince of the Southern Isles, Hans Westergaard, still retained his daring boldness.

Just moments before the ferocious sea monster exacts its evil intent of vengeance upon the weakened King on his knees on the mountainside ledge, Hans slashes left and right its attacking algae vines with a sword tossed back and forth between his ambidextrous grip.

Then Hans makes a diving leap from his white horse's in-flight back to roll in between the Draugen's stocky short legs. They were even more gargantuan sized than the last time the swordsman had sliced off its foot pediments.

And for a repeat double encore performance, this time, as, with two long strokes of his broad naval sword, Hans deducts the monster of its two webbed feet entirely. Its frozen and heavy with ice feet were still stuck to the ground without the rest of the now freed Draugen.

"Foolish boy! What have you done?! It's no use to just cut off any of this mystical creature's depraved parts, young Westergaard! They will simply grow back, even more in size and magnification! And now my ice hold has been wasted!" The frustrated King berates Hans like a father to an errant son, as a power exhausted Agdar recalls the legendary tales of old that spoke of this dreaded monster a.k.a. the Bielgomai of Saami folklore that only grew larger and multiplied with every sliced and diced blow.

"You're absolutely correct. Had merely impairing the fiend been my intention, Admiral Bernadotte. Now, if my calculations are correct…" Hans enigmatically answers the exasperated King in both a respectful agreement and self-righteous dismissive manner. The Danish Prince was confident, if not in his, at times, tentative heart, at least in his quick-adjusting, hands-on ability of deduction and projected judgment. He helps Agdar to his feet with a slung arm around the King's shoulders to move the downed man back away from the monster, writhing in pain.

As the screeching Draugen's self-preservation capabilities kick into play, the extra lizard like toes that expand by number upon its newly re-grown feet, explode their ice encasement that King Agdar had slowed it down with earlier.

Consequently, the ice unchained monster rushes forward towards the pair of men whose backs were dangerously close to the edge of the precarious mountain's deep abyss below—

"Pardon me, your Majesty." After carefully removing himself from propping up the battle weary, exhausted King, Hans suddenly strong-arm shoves a shocked Agdar harshly to the side.

Next, the Danish Prince whips out his weapon of choice in one flowing motion and once again makes a dashing chop of the lower appendages of the monster veering imminently towards him.

"GRRR! HIYAHH! YAHH!"

_**SS-LL-II-CCEE!**_

Hans Westergaard's raised sword is thrust down upon the Draugen's ankles straight through to the heel of its foot at such an accurate downwards 45° angle that the monstrous creature pitches forward. Its speeding forward killing momentum sends the top heavy, shaved off, foot caved-in creature to plunge headfirst over the cliff's sheer, craggly rock edge.

Screaming and careening out of control, the monster's black weedy body lands in the heretofore still pristine lake below in a tremendous foaming splash and resulting tumultuous wave.

Hans had dashed over to the steep ledge to look down over his handiwork where he witnesses the upside down wriggling underwater sea monster thrashing about, still disoriented by plummeting from that great height onto its rounded dome head.

"Now, Sire, if you are able… Can you, perhaps—?" Hans' gaze then turns to where he had rudely shoved Arendelle's monarch to the side of the cliff's edge.

But King Agdar was already on the case, silently appearing directly at Hans' left side with cold streams of ice exuding from every building pore of his being –

And without a word, the powerful sovereign of this great country directs his collected frozen power blast to deep freeze the entire mountain lake where the knocked down sea monster was pawing and struggling to the surface, just as Hans' scheme envisioned.

_**ZZSSTTT!**_

The Draugen's deep green tentacle wriggling hand reaches out in one final spurt of energy before it is all frosted in a crust of blue-white ice, right down to its frozen monstrous fingertip. That is all that's left to be seen of the vicious monster beneath the opaque frosted white lake as even its ear-shattering scream is interrupted beneath the fresh water now frozen solid to ice.

_Huff Huff _"Yes, indeed!" _Huff Huff_ "You and I work well in conjunction" _Huff Huff_ "with one another, young man." _Huff Huff_

King Agdar admits to Hans in between breaths as the slender, elegant, regal pair of fatigued, royal men gasp for deep breath, doubled over and bent to their knees together in this exhilarated triumphant moment of rest.

"Thank you," _Huff Huff_ "Your Majesty. I believe we do." Hans respectfully adds with a grateful smile and pleased sigh as he surveys what the cooperative might of their skill and powers, and cleverness, accomplished.

"Especially considering that you are a Dane." Agdar smirks as he lets off some tension in a tease at this most remarkable young Prince who hailed from the neighboring country that the Norwegian King had always considered as lordly and uppity conquerors more than civil friendly allies.

Nonetheless, there was much about this redheaded knave that King Agdar was just starting to learn about, as the warily impressed older man gazes upon the scene that the combined brains and talent of sons of the oft contentious nations had wrought together, working sword hand in icy glove.

And as the two royals catch their breath, silently trying to conjecture what the other man was thinking, beneath the frozen lake, five pairs of ebony black eyes begin to dilate back to bloodcurdling life…


	53. Chapter 52 - Beware the Frozen Heart

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act III**

**Chapter 52**

**"Beware the Frozen Heart"**

Dread. Complete and utter dread.

Elsa clutches her mother's thin palm in her own ice cold trembling ones. As they both gaze through the coach window to the archipelago below, both women can't help but be gripped by some foreboding unseen force named Fear.

As Eugene directs the Snow Queen's flying carriage towards the Lofoten peninsula to land on the shore, the two Queens of Arendelle warily exchange a look of uncertainty and trepidation.

The trail of haunting devastation, death and destruction at their first glimpse of the fishing village of Å surveyed told of the fierce struggle that had taken place here. Lining the coastline were numerous broken bodies amidst the structural debris of smashed red cabins that were splattered with innocent blood.

And the melting frozen ice intermingled with the crimson stains strikes fear in the aghast eyes of those who arrive on the terrorized scene.

"Papa?!" Impulsive Anna was, as usual, the first to verbally react. With worry for her missing Papa obvious on her anxious features, the young girl dashes out from the carriage just as it touches ground.

Tripping over first Rapunzel's, then her own feet as she rushes out recklessly, Anna nearly falls flat on her face had Kristoff's strong arm not caught hold of the back bustle of her skirt from where he was behind her in the coach.

The reinvigorated mountain man, thanks to Queen Idun's healing skills, now silently uses his massive arm muscles to easily straighten his clumsy wife up. He then, like her faithful dog, follows Anna's mad dash towards the crushed and bloodied melee where she prayed her beloved father was not lying as victim among.

"Rapunzel! Don't look." A serious stare overtakes his normally jovial features as Flynn leaps from his front driver's seat post to shield the view of the devastating scene from his queasy wife, whom the smallest amount of blood nowadays caused her to compulsively heave.

And this was no small amount of blood.

But it was too late. Rapunzel's big wide eyed stare had already taken in the unsightly gore. Although the Princess of Corona considered herself a pretty tough cookie, she still was compassionate enough to have tears immediately fill her eyes as she clutches her upset stomach.

"Oh, Eugene, these poor people. This is terrible." The cropped short brown haired girl whispers and weeps into his stubbly neck as her husband holds his tender flower with the tightly closed eyes close.

Fortunately, Kristoff's long strides beat Anna there by few steps, and he covers her eyes with one large hand. He himself was so disgusted by the disembodiment of several bodies strewn on the beachfront path that big man Kristoff had a hard time looking.

However, Princess Anna was a ginger, and a tomboyish one at that. Yanking herself away from his guarded palm, Anna runs right into the gory bloodsoaked scene and rifles through the wreckage in search of survivors like a crazed wild child.

For the sight of innocent people's blood and guts and gore after they had been slaughtered didn't make this young girl want to shy away or weep.

No, it made her want to scream out a war cry.

Although, it appeared that her demure, ladylike, reserved elder sister was about to outdo her one in this department, if the scary look on Elsa of Arendelle's face peering through the carriage window was of any indication.

"Aww. This poor guy was trying to save his little birdy." Olaf had stumbled out to where that elderly fisherman in the first demolished rorbu cabin near the shore had stubbornly held his position.

And paid the ultimate price.

The snowman, who often viewed the world's most simple unnoticed things with childlike innocence, saw how the wrinkled old man had sentimentally sacrificed his own aged form to free his only companion in the world, his pet puffin. Its birdcage had obviously been knocked down in the small cabin behind the bed when the Draugen's weighty form reverberated and shook the once peaceful shores.

The bird's mangled cage door was still clutched in the brave old man's deceased hand that was yet reaching out to get the trapped puffin to safety through the cracked open window. Even as the old mariner was smashed dead himself beneath the roof, he proved his love for his pet friend was greater than self.

"Keep it together, Elsa. You have to keep it together…" Leaving her exhausted mother with Rapunzel in the carriage, Elsa mumbles under her increasingly growing uncontrolled frosty breath upon witnessing this traumatic havoc close up.

Elsa begins to shiver violently as she forces her wild eyes to silently follow the traces of her Papa's cryokinetic pathway course that had frosted the summer weather's ground with the unseasonal ice crystals she recognized all too well.

Tracking the ice path to Olaf's waving call, Queen Elsa looks up from her purposely focused pursuit of melted ice shards and frozen chunks strewn over the beach. She, all at once, is forced to examine Lofoten's devastated fishing village valley, and fear grips her chilled heart.

Elsa's guarded eyes begin to quiver with extreme alarm at the grotesquely disfigured bodies of men, especially when she realizes that the trail of ice her Papa obviously emitted earlier, perhaps in some struggle, came to a disturbing full halt here, though there was no living being in sight now.

_Papa?_ Elsa's shivering gaze alights upon the pair of dismembered and impaled middle-aged men who had been crushed in the road. There was a certain pale blue handkerchief covered humanely over one of the eviscerated men's eyes, as if mercifully placed there over the one eye that had been cruelly gashed out by the vindictive monster's pointed sharp seaweed vines.

It was the same pale blue handkerchief she herself had obtained as part of Kommander Westergaard's naval uniform ensemble just days ago.

_Papa… Prince Hans… Where are you?!_ _Have you been killed by this monster, too? Not when we just got you back! …Not when we've only just begun…_

Her mind races with ungovernable passions as Elsa watches with horrified eyes her little sister's knelt down fervent hunt through the dirty and bloodied rubble. Anna had, just then, turned over a cracked beam of wood where a familiar white naval issue glove that only would belong to a high-ranking Norwegian officer such as her Papa lay, wet and cold and ripped and snagged on a splintered crossbeam with blood all over it.

Shaking back tears as she meets Elsa's eyes wildly and clutches the glove tight, Anna then fiercely continues to dig with her hands through the demolished debris.

_Dread. Uncertainty. Fear._

And just like before, these unkempt refractory emotions begin to pervade the Ice Queen's senses as Elsa starts to lose her battle with the subzero cold emanating from inside her emotionally drained body.

At the massive pile of rubble where Papa's ice trail ended by the string of red cabins lying in ruins along the coast, Kristoff arrives to help Anna lift the bigger beams. Together the newlyweds sift through the chaos for hope of finding survivors.

But they were going too slowly for the impatient Ice Queen.

Overwhelmed, Elsa raises her hands, her ice frosting over the landscape with an eerie bluish light.

Piece by shattered piece, stick by cracked and broken stick, the decimated buildings begin to be lifted by Elsa's cryokinetic powers. She hurls the debris into the sea with such venom and verve that a watchful Kristoff has to physically pluck Anna away from the spectacle lest she be caught up in her sister's unintended frenzied ice turbulence.

"Elsa! Stop! Don't lose it now!" Pressed to the warmth of Kristoff's protective bare chest, Anna cries out to her best friend. Although, through the furiously flurried ice storm that was overriding all sounds of the beachfront, it was hard to hear her little sister's high musical strains.

"Please listen, my little princess!" Against the sudden ice storm, Queen Idun too calls out to her elder daughter to heed their calming. The small framed little woman tries to leave the carriage with Eugene's quick aid when Elsa doesn't seem to hear them.

For Idun, more than anyone, was very much aware of how Elsa's hard fought for control was dwindling in the chaos of the dread and anxiety her mother too shared for her Papa and fellow countrymen.

"But Papa! Hans! Where are they?!" The unstable, fearful young woman, physically trembling, gazes around the scene of utter devastation in search of some stability. And she secures some in Anna's suddenly big bright toothy smile.

"Elsa! Look up there!" Jubilantly reassuring her beloved sister, as Scuttle salutes while he zooms past her head to reaffirm, Anna sings out loudly above the din of the blizzard, after Kristoff had passed onto her whispered ear what the poor old fisherman's indeed rescued puffin birdy friend mentally told him of. The adorably plump black and white, orange beaked seabird now hovering near the blond Ice Harvester had managed to fly into the bitter cold whipping winds to inform the Wind Whisperer of the Ice King's epic battle with that awful Bielgomai just over the summit of the 3000 foot high peaked mountainside.

High upon Mt. Reinebringen's high-altitude mists, Elsa squints her shielded eyes in the dusky midnight sun's departing rays to glimpse the silhouettes of two tall slender men, who wore the Norwegian naval uniform well. They appeared to be standing with triumphant looks on their faces as they reviewed their defeated enemy trapped in the ice of the mountain lake below.

And all at once, her icy fury swirling around the uncertain fear that was gripping Elsa's heart is contained and her panic driven ice verglas coating the entire beachfront suddenly ceases.

"Agdar." Idun lets out a relieved pent-up sigh as her acting bodyguard/human crutch Flynn Rider lets out a victorious whoop.

"Whoo-wee! Look at them boys showing off up there! Let's get this show on the road before those two well coiffed gents get all the glory, eh, Muscles?" The blustery thief scoops up Queen Idun's petite frame and winks over her dark brown head to the other young would-be hero of this adventurous tale they've all been unwittingly thrust into.

_And whose fault was that, exactly?_ Eugene's mind was even talkative to himself as he carries the Queen's frail form back to the carriage for him to play conductor of again.

_Guilty as charged._ Meeting his wife's ever forgiving eyes, Eugene lets that minute amount of self culpability creep in.

_But we wouldn't have been graced with this lovely Lady's presence had I not momentarily delved back to my thieving ways – albeit for the best reasons – in a roundabout way, would we?_

As the older woman gives a tender appreciative smile up at her very self-satisfied, with an exaggerated sense of self-worth, nephew, who was in actuality just a few years her junior, Eugene smoothly places Queen Idun back into the coach with Job's gentle aid.

Although woozy Rapunzel, being fanned by Pascal with a rolled up map had become rather ill at the sight of all the mayhem of blood outside her carriage door, indeed, she and her aunt share a hopeful relieved hug at spotting her uncle and new brother still in one piece after their struggle with that hundred foot plus tall monster.

As Kristoff ushers Anna onto Svala's eager back alongside Sven beside the Snow Queen's vehicle to join her victorious father atop the mountain, Elsa doesn't need to wait for a ride.

The young ruler was elated to see that her dear Papa, whom she feared lost, was again standing tall and strong. On her own ice projected slick, the nearly frozen over Ice Queen glides upward at incredible speed to meet up with her brave and beloved father.

Not to mention that significant other who was dutifully serving as the King's supportive right hand man as Hans Westergaard pledged to her he would.

Behind Elsa's throbbing eyes pounded the nagging thought that _he_ too could have been killed. The idea of never seeing Prince Hans of the Southern Isles again, never hearing his velvety voice lilt her name or smile those absinthe eyes on his unbelievably beautiful face was too hard to bear in ways Elsa never thought herself capable of before…

Elsa swiftly gains altitude on her ice powered slide towards where Papa and Hans were waiting for her. As they start to make their way on their own flying white horses over the frozen lake to meet the impatient young woman welcoming them halfway, King Agdar eyes his little princess' bold new icy attire guardedly, almost wishing to cover young Westergaard's eyes again at now this daughter's low-cut, showing-too-much-skin display.

"Papa! I've brought something you'll need!" Unaware of her proper father's stuffy discomfort as he sees her Ice Queen vixen dress for the first time, Elsa sings out, glad that her parent and her…_Vise Admiral_…had vanquished the terrifying beast whose evil black eyes still haunted her psyche…

And as the unawares trio soars through the dusky August sky nearer to one another above the frozen mountain lake, something beneath the waters begins to stir…

**_CCR-RAAC-CCKK!_**

Through the eighteen inch thick hoarfrost coat that Ice King Agdar had entombed the Draugen within, the monstrosity's jutting out frozen clawed hand audibly cracks and breaks a hole through to reach its depravity into the high-altitude stillness.

The intense fear and doubt and uncertainty of dread poor Elsa had felt before when she believed her father and lover lost, had already revitalized the symbiotic creature enough for it to be fueled by her fear still linked to its hungry greed, and awaken to life.

Her petrified terror maximizing before Elsa had the chance to register what was about to happen all about her, a pair of the Draugen's long dark green wicked haptera tentacle vines, unexpectedly and rapidly splurt out of the frozen mountain lake.

They zero in on the platinum blonde who is frozen in place like a deer in the headlights as the beast starts to feast on her fear again…

**_GRR-RROOWWLL!_** The deafening scream of the old sea ghost monster paralyzes Elsa in place as it moves in to capture her again.

"Elsa! Get back!" King Agdar orders his grown-up little girl as he sends a sub-zero direct blast at the creature's head. Although mighty, the King's attack falls uselessly upon the dark ilky green mass that seems to just draw on his cryokinetic powers.

The massive monster's other ilky tentacle continues to reach straight up for a screaming in panic Elsa. One evil vine shatters through her ice formed ramp slide, sending the Ice Queen plummeting down in chaotic spirals through the thin mountain air.

Tasting its conquest, the rest of the humongous creature starts to emerge from its frozen entrapment below, hungry to feed on the current young Queen's ready fears that were linked to her vast energies again.

The yet half frozen and immobilized Draugen anxiously awaits gravity below to catch Elsa in its regrown appendage and never let go again until she was drunk dry…

"My Snow Angel!" Protective father Agdar's incessant fierce attacking ice shots only seem to dissipate into the absorbing Draugen's scaly skin, just as young Prince Hans had warned him before, as the shrewd older Naval man moves in, undaunted.

"Stay away from my daughter, Jol!" So, heroic, self-sacrificing Agdar boldly rushes towards the Draugen in the only way he could. After building a precipitous snow cloud pillow beneath Elsa to ensure a soft landing that drifts her away, Agdar takes his daughter's place midair just moments before she was to be seized in the wicked creature's grasping hand.

The algal seaweed, instead of being rewarded by Elsa's weak fears in its clutching energy-draining claws, it is repelled by Agdar's confident strength. The dissatisfied sea monster angrily grabs and thrashes the King as it smacks him right off his whinnying horse at such bone-crunching velocity that a traumatized Agdar bangs his head hard against the rocky mountain crags and sinks down its rocky slope lifelessly.

The Ice King's knocked-out-cold, gnashed, and thrown aside senseless body rolls over the Mt. Reinebringen lake ledge and down the hillside back towards the village of Å below.

Fortunately for the distressed, downed King, his capable new Vise Admiral did still have his back, battered though it may be, as Hans Westergaard, upon his own flying steed, makes a daring selfless serpentine dive. He deftly directs his mare to avoid the killer vines mere feet in between the gigantic Draugen's numerous googling out eyes and thick haptera algal weeds to deftly catch a floating-like-an-angel-on-her-soft-snowcloud Elsa in his wiry arms.

As golden enchanted arrows run interference, being lobbed from a certain reliable mountain man somewhere beneath, Hans makes an intrepid getaway with the dizzied blonde on his lap until his galloping mind could fashion a more advantageous plan of action against the awakened beast.

All he understood for certain was that he must somehow keep this pure angel of beauty in his arms safe, as well as protect her father and country that he now proudly swore to protect.

"Hans? But where is Papa?" Glancing around for her missing patriarch across the mountain bend's deep abyss they were flying over as she groggily comes to, Elsa's body suddenly grows stiff and rigid when she spots Agdar's crumpled form over the edge at the precarious base of the mountain ledge. There Anna and Kristoff were trying their best to lift the bloodied and bruised and broken boned King onto Sven's back without harming his pitiable beat-up form further.

"Oh no! Papa!" Elsa cries out in agony, prompting Hans, who was already on his way, to bring her to her father's woefully injured side, to the place where the poor King was tossed aside like a limp ragdoll.

As Hans gentlemanly helps her from the flying horse, Elsa kneels at her father's terribly wounded body, breathing hard and heavy.

When she sees how badly hurt and unresponsive her Papa was, Elsa starts to shake and totally freeze up, her livid anger overruling her fear.

With a few words between men, Hans and Kristoff together decide to lift the Arendelle King onto Sven's back rather than have him exposed out here, should the rapacious sea monster emerge from the remainder of its captivity under the cracking glacial lake before healing help arrived.

Which is exactly what happens.

Somehow the huge creature born of pure darkness and hatred had slunk through the growing Midnight Sun nighttime shadows to not only surface from the cracking up frozen lake, but emerge from the gloom directly above them.

Like a vindictive inky storm cloud, the Draugen's growling shadow looms overhead just a second before either of the two couples below on the rock ledge busy with attending to the injured King, see it.

So when the Draugen's sharp spiky vine stealthily moves in towards Elsa's vulnerable back to either attack or kidnap her away with it again, at least one person does perceive.

"Snow Angel!" When the Draugen's greedy energy sucking sleep-rendering tentacles were mere inches away from claiming defenseless Elsa again, injured King Agdar somehow manages to lift himself up from where Hans, Kristoff, and Anna had been placing the King carefully on Sven's back.

And with a last spout of pure adrenaline energy, Agdar throws his battered body in front of a startled Elsa. In one fluid movement, the courageous King yanks his child roughly behind his defensive back, passing his shocked and flustered little girl to Hans before she is violently grabbed by the seaweed tentacle.

The lionhearted King of Arendelle, the Supreme Admiral of the Sjoforsvaret, the loving devoted Father of Elsa and Anna, stands valiantly tall in in his child's place.

"Jol! Stop this! I swear to give myself up to you if you vow to cease this avarice rapacity for my innocent baby girl's pure vitality! Feed off my more mature energy, not hers, Jol! Let her go and leave my nation in peace!" Ignoring any physical pain and future torment for the sake of the ones he loves, Agdar selflessly takes several steps towards the Draugen's extended poisonous seaweed and opens his arms wide. With his blue grey tunic billowing upon the frosting winds, he freely offers his extensive controlled ice powers for the energy feeding creature to feast upon in his Elsa's place.

"Elsa, I always believed you would be strong like this someday. Your Papa is so proud of you, my Snow Angel. Keep being strong for our country. Keep being strong in your heart." The King pets the crown of his pale blonde daughter's hair lovingly.

"Give your Mama all my love. And know I am so proud of you and Anna both. Please, don't waste a worry on me, my darlings. God will assuredly help me defeat this beast for my country and the people I love, if it be His will." His final conscious whispered words were for his family and his great faith as, seeing no other way, Agdar lets his guard down and opens up his stored energy reserves to allow the quietly growling in consent Draugen to gorge upon the Norwegian Ice King's vast untapped powers clutched in its hand.

The sea monster starts to grow with Agdar's rarely exploited ice energies as its offered new feeding source. The foul green-black slimy sea creature continues to develop until the nefarious ghost monster was towering upon Mt. Reinebringen.

But the soulless pirate had no intention of honoring his end of the deal and cease its gluttonous symbiotic relationship with Elsa either, in its lust for ultimate power.

"PAPA!" Elsa was crying fierce tears of love and pride for her courageous father's self-sacrifice, just for her. So much so that she finally is able to break the Draugen's hold over her fears herself in her raw anger, now that her Papa was keeping it busy.

Little Princess Elsa never realized before how much her strict parent loved her. Papa so loved her that he would readily give up his own life and freedom in exchange for his little girl who had been so problematic growing up that she always believed herself a shameful burden to him.

But no, Papa was proud of her.

And that knowledge, coupled with Prince Hans Westergaard's sure arms around her, not to mention her own angry sense of justice where this vile criminal degenerate was concerned, gave Queen Elsa of Arendelle all the encouragement she needed to be the Ice Queen she was intended to be.

"No! Papa! Don't!" Elsa argues the point as her heroic, in-charge, self-sacrificing father presses his surprised and flustered little girl behind his back with the unspoken command in his stoic eyes to his second in charge to keep his child subdued and safe.

Hans takes a deep breath and nods, placing both hands on Elsa's violently trembling shoulders to both steady and restrain her.

Perplexed to know how to respond to this terrible situation, Anna looks over to Elsa who was too upset herself to afford her scared little sibling a glance. Anna then turns to beseech her Kristoff, biting her lip until it bled in worry for her selfless, altruistic, chivalrous Papa. He, too at a loss, the Ice Harvester shakes his head. Being a protective father was a new and novel thing for the orphan boy he'd have to configure for himself someday.

* * *

**"YOU MONSTER!"**As her father's body, already injured and continuously being drained, falls to his knees limply right in front of the helpless girl, Elsa's blue eyes widen as her pupils start to dilate to an icier shade of white.

Exploding with infuriated anger that exceeds her great fear, Elsa's already daring Ice Queen dress undergoes another transformation. The cerulean and icy blue slinky gown expands into a rather imposing, yet still skintight formfitting design. Wide ice layered spiked shouldered armor is mentally formed on some artistic level along with a feathered and bejeweled ice diamond headdress that mirrored the warrior Vikings who ruled her country nearly 1000 years long ago to crown her head.

Elegant, yet striking, Warrior Ice Queen Elsa's maddened enraged eyes glow with icy hoarfrost as her unleashed powers explode and viciously send ice shards like sharp switchblades flying through the air in every direction.

With fearful, panicked eyes transmuted into irate, angry ones, the unstoppable frozen force that was once calm, decorous Queen Elsa, becomes possessed by her terrified frozen heart. Arrogantly assured, she stomps her even higher heeled, quite fetching thigh-high tight iridescent icy white boots across the mountain lake surface of the water straight towards the Draugen until the massive sea creature was cornered again on the mountain shelf ledge by her pure ice fury.

Elsa's frosted over ears could no longer even hear anything but the pounding of her own frozen heart's echo chamber for the long dangling tinkling bell-like earring cuffs that had delicately shaped around her ears.

"You want a **piece** of me, you vile **contemptible** degenerate?! Here! **TAKE IT!"** Elsa believed her beloved father just granted back to her was being enslaved and painfully exploited until the weakened King on his knees would be killed by this depraved merciless monster.

So, from being _frightened_ to becoming _frightening_, Elsa's cold dispassionate rage takes shape all around her piqued wrath physically.

Frigid spiked adornments of long crystalline ice gems hang from her chaotic blonde hair spreading out in every direction of her messy, loosed braid. Her many layered draping palest blue armored skirt and matching headdress were brilliant with clear diamond and sapphire obelisk jewels that shone like the aurora borealis itself.

Everything about this new Warrior Ice Queen made her almost too blinding to behold. From her five inch high glassy heels to the tip of her extremely large and faceted pointed high marquis stone crystal adorning the center of her headdress crown.

Terrifying in her cold ice rage as the high heeled woman drives the vicious beast away, the unleashed Ice Queen shoots ice blast after unforgiving ice blast at the creature back towards the mountain lake, until its seaweed-y physical hold over her Papa is overwhelmed and King Agdar is freed.

And without her fear to help refuel it, the Draugen begins to shrink back to its original size, no longer able to sustain itself in this freshwater lake environment for much longer.

The Draugen seemed to need the salt of the sea to survive, especially after being persecuted by such unremitting opposition such as this vicious Ice Queen on the warpath.

So the fearsome Draugen hightails it like a yellow bellied chicken back down the mountain it climbed to dive with a splash into the sea, rather than face she who wouldn't be challenged at the crest of the peak.

The entire lake mountain shelf was instantly covered in thick snows as ice exuded from her every pore—and that included Elsa's frost coated heart that was normally moderated, but now was growing chaotic and unregulated. It was turning more glacially cold until the subzero temperature had nearly eaten away any vestige of warmth left within, leaving only the smallest speck of the human heart remaining…

Anna gasps as her orangey head peeks over the mountain ledge to see what was going on up there with Elsa after they had seen the Draugen her sister was attacking take flight to the sea. The temperature all around had dropped like a rock everywhere as sleet and ice poured over the mountain edge, alerting the younger princess that something was amiss.

"Whoa! The weather is getting a little too turbulent up here, Princess! Better take cover!" Scuttle the seagull had made it up the mountain to join Anna, just to be blown back down with his new puffin friend. The birds spin their flapping wings in a flurry of frozen currents like a pair of out of control salt and pepper shakers in a whirlwind of frost.

"Elsa! Don't let the cold snuff out love's sunshine we've found together! Don't let the ice take over the warm person you are! You're stronger than that!" Shaking her determined head, Anna climbs up as she cries out. But she was not too sure if her sister's all-but-vanished pupils of her iced over blue-white eyes even heard her words that were lost on the howling winds Anna doggedly continued to fight against just to gain footing.

Seeing the dire situation above with his quick decision-making precise eyes, Prince Hans leaves the wounded, comatose Agdar to Kristoff and climbs up to rush in front of a storm tossed, yet unrelenting Anna. He selflessly stretches the arms of his Arendelle grey cloak out to shield the feisty spirited loving little sister as brave Anna scrambles up over the mountain ledge to help her adored sibling calm down.

Making a sourpuss face at Hans that plainly screamed:_'I can do this by myself!_' Anna runs straight towards the ice storm blizzard trying to make her way to Elsa, without his rejected shielded aid. But finally the stubborn girl who weighed no more than 43 kilograms, is caught by the gale force wind and pushed by the hailing flurry over the edge, despite Hans' best efforts in trying to catch her from falling.

Those torrential winds blow Anna right off the mountainside until Kristoff's strong arms snag her flailing form from going over the edge entirely, and a grasping out Hans sighs in relief.

He then turns back to face a self-destructive Elsa alone with a new determination.

"Elsa! You have to listen to your sister! Please! That monster will never own you if you don't allow the fear to consume you! Remember:_'There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love_." (1 John 4:18 ) Using all his strength to focus volume to his cracking, strained voice, Hans quotes the New Testament, with all the elocution his projected tenor could carry.

Hans stands up against the roaring whipping wind blizzard conditions that had already covered the mountaintop with over five inches deep of fresh snow powder that emanated from the Ice Queen's incensed, out of control body in sparse minutes of time.

"Leave me alone!" Elsa rebelliously cries out as she tosses her long icy mantle cape over her shoulder at him, dismissive, cold and unfeeling.

"No, I will not." Hans stoically defies the armored up Ice Queen's frozen fury flash freeze as Elsa's cryokinetic bursts randomly are expelled from her untamed emotional body. Hans continues forward nonetheless, ducking and dodging around the sharp spikes of the oncoming ice blast as he keeps his head down. With his arms to his face, he shields his squinted eyes against the raging uncontrolled fear that gripped the young woman's delicate heart in pelting waves of her relentless ice barrage. Hans recognizes her anger, her fear. He himself, as a confused child who felt so alone in the world and abandoned growing up unwanted, once mirrored those sentiments.

**_SZZT! CHKKK!_**

Drawing his shuttered breath intake in rough gasps as her expelling ice felt like it struck right through his gut, Hans, undaunted, keeps on his stalwart trek towards the self exploding Ice Queen nonetheless. Even as the shards exude from every pore Elsa's impressive body, cold smoky puffs breathing from her mouth, he would not give up on her this time. He would never betray her trust again.

"Elsa! Stop! Please don't allow this evil monster to change the woman I know you to be! This isn't you!" Hans raises the level of his voice again to call out against the howling winds coiled in fuming ice. But the subzero armor built around her winged helmet was growing thicker with each passing second. And the ice armor around her shoulders was widening as the thorny-tipped frozen breastplate now formed over her heaving frontal cleavage added to her vehement angry battle-ready mode.

So his pleading words go unheard through that thick helmet of ice around her ears that were so ringing with rage, panic and dismay that it was beyond painful. And Hans, despite his own gnawing discomfort and empty cold twinge that was starting to build from somewhere deep inside, he could plainly read the terrified agony on Elsa's troubled face.

"I fell in love with the tender, compassionate woman you truly are! Don't let this fear consume your true self!" His wide viridescent eyes sparkling at her, Hans startles even himself with this genuine heartfelt confession that his strong tenor cried out in truthful, unashamed admission amidst the Ice Queen's cruel, blowing harsh hailstorms of sleet that her broken heart had been lashing out against him with.

_Love?_

_{Huff huff}_

_You love me?_

A still eerie silence abruptly falls over the raging tempest of snow and ice and sleet on the mountaintop as the just now able to breathe Ice Queen somehow, through her unbelievably cold crazed confusion, is beckoned back by the warm honesty of his human heart opening up to her.

A human heart that, for this one shining moment, dares to dream an impossible dream. One that urges her almost lost heart to dissuade the frozen ice threatening, and smolder back to life. The breastplate armor covering Ice Queen Elsa's heart starts to completely melt away.

Hearing his words yet again amidst the chaos, Elsa feels that tiny spark inside her heart that had been diminished by the Arctic temperatures catch the fire of the sun in the Danish Prince's unyielding caring eyes full of inexplicable warmth for her.

Around the platinum blonde, all those prickly, uninviting ice spikes drop off her mantle, melting away one by one with each passing second until her cape returns to its magically pure sparkling shimmering translucence. As does the ice helmet shielding her mind to him as it falls away, leaving only the demure delicate silver crown that signified her as a true Queen.

After only a few seconds of the pair staring at one another in an eternal glance, Elsa suddenly feels Anna's fervid arms and sunlit smile embrace her no longer stone cold body.

**_'_**_There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear.' _Elsa hears the poignant Bible verse replay in her head as she hugs Anna all the more tightly to her no longer frozen chest.

Allowing emotion to return her to normal warmth, Elsa quietly starts crying on her little sister's shoulder. Anna hugs her big sister's trembling body just as tight, even going as far as to bestow Hans a warm smile over Elsa's weeping head.

"Oh, Anna! Papa! It was my entire fault! That monster hurt Papa, because I was so afraid." Elsa sobs and opens up her deepest secret inner shame to Anna, that being half the battle with her fear won already. With Kristoff's lifting assistance, Anna leads Elsa down over to where King Agdar had fallen.

"No, Elsa. Papa would never blame you. He loves you too much. We all do! Everyone's afraid some time or another; we just can't keep it bottled up inside. And we can't let it take away our joy. God didn't create us to be scared to love." Somehow in her simple way of embracing life Princess Anna had learned the truest lesson of it and now wanted to share that knowledge with her sister in her greatest hour of need.

Elsa's true blue eyes gleam with tears of love for her sister, her eternal best friend.

Just then, the Snow Queen's ice carriage arrives with Eugene who throws open the door for Queen Idun.

Elsa and Anna's mother gives her girls a grateful glance as she rushes to her downed husband. They all had witnessed the violent engagement on the Reinebringen mountaintop side and how the sisters, with Hans' help, had sorted Elsa's fractious cryokinetic control issues. The worried mother garners strength from watching her two little angels embrace one another warmly.

_"'Angels, from the realms of glory,__  
_Wing your flight o'er all the earth;_  
_Ye who sang creation's story,_  
_Now proclaim Messiah's birth:__

_Come and worship, come and worship_  
_Worship Christ, the newborn King._

_Shepherds, in the fields abiding,_  
_Watching o'er your flocks by night,_  
_God with man is now residing,_  
_Yonder shines the infant light:_

_Come and worship, come and worship_  
_Worship Christ, the newborn King._

_Sages, leave your contemplations,_  
_Brighter visions beam afar;_  
_Seek the great Desire of nations,_  
_Ye have seen his natal star:_

_Come and worship, come and worship_  
_Worship Christ, the newborn King._

_Sinners, wrung with true repentance,_  
_Doomed for guilt to endless pains,_  
_Justice now revokes the sentence,_  
_Mercy calls you—break your chains:_

_Come and worship, come and worship_  
_Worship Christ, the newborn King._

_Though an infant now we view him,_  
_He shall fill his Father's throne,_  
_Gather all the nations to him;_  
_Every knee shall then bow down:_

_Come and worship, come and worship_  
_Worship Christ, the newborn King._

_All creation, join in praising_  
_God the Father, Spirit, Son,_  
_Evermore your voices raising,_  
_To th'eternal Three in One:_

_Come and worship, come and worship_  
_Worship Christ, the newborn King!'"_

After lifting her sweet soprano up to God in supplication as the holy song answered played in her warm memory, Idun vocalizes the first special Christmas carol of her first Christmas spent with her first love and the first newborn little girl her Agdar gave her. For baby Elsa was their precious first Christmas present to one another, born on the first day of winter solstice just a few days before the holy day.

From start to close, Idun glows with golden streaks alight in her hair and rosy cheeks from the cold atmospheric surroundings until she finally breaks into a smile. As does Rapunzel, who was harmonizing with the glorious timeless carol as she helped the older woman prop her bruised and bloodied husband up to his wife's healing song.

"Girls! He's breathing! Papa will be fine!" After a few minutes back from her own brokenhearted anxiety when the strains of her song seemed to at first fail, Idun's beautiful laughter rings across the cliff in her warm soprano tones that were filled with tears of joy that all four females share, embracing one another in turns.

"I am relieved for you all." Hans breathes out over the ledge he was leaning over to see, as his entire body trembles for another reason that no one else knew of as he meets Elsa's normalized eyes and nods.

After giving Hans an incandescent glowing smile of gratitude where no words further needed to be expressed, Elsa's true blue eyes fill with joyful tears as she races, arm in arm with Anna to her Mama's gesturing with happiness side. Once there, Rapunzel takes turns squeezing each elated girl tight in relief for her healing up uncle.

Elsa, back to the usual fetching feminine non-warrior Ice Queen garb, hugs her smiling mother as she kneels down to embrace her wonderful brave father who was both proud of her and loved her so much that he would've sacrificed everything for her.

And with that glad knowledge her youthful insecurity and pensive heart had always longed to hear, Elsa Bernadotte was learning to be fearless of God's simple gift of the sense of touch that He gave humanity, as she had not been since the early days of her childhood. Perhaps due to a brazen red-headed Prince who taught her she could dare, Elsa gingerly brings herself to kiss her beloved Papa's cool cheek once again, just as she remembers she could when she was so tiny a little girl who so adored her first sweetheart and protector.

"Thank you, Papa." Free of the Draugen's evil symbiotic curse from overcoming her fears, through past realized love for her parents, the constant sweet love of her best friend of a sister, and maybe even the newly discovered love of a handsome Prince who melted the ice that threatened to coat her heart until it was frozen solid.

"I am so proud to have you for a daughter, my Snow Angel." King Agdar intermittently awakens to breathe out the raspy words. And though his voice was choking and strained, Papa's smile was tender and sincere, with hard fought for warmth for his beloved family.

"Beware, that cold ice could have frozen your heart until it was irretrievable, my little girl." The King pauses to touch his child's cheek, his own fingers a brush too cold but his exhausted injured state left him with little control.

"Believe me when I say that I have felt that same urge…_huff_…from time to time…_cough_…to just let myself go like that. But your good Mama always stopped me in time, before I destroyed myself…That's why I foolishly wanted you to deny your ice altogether…_cough_…for my fear of the fear. Forgive your silly Papa, little Snow Angel…"

And after sharing a squeezed hand and loving smile with his adoring wife, still seeing Elsa as his little girl, though she was now before him in quite a risque womanly form, Agdar drifts off to pass out as his freshly healed wounded body and exhausted icy powers shut down his outward mental consciousness so they could fully knit the injured King's gashed and banged up skull back together in conjunction with his adored family gathering around him.

Eugene, Anna and Rapunzel all help in getting the Norwegian King into the carriage as Elsa and her mother walk behind together, mother's arm around dear baby girl's strong shoulder.

"Good thing this Royal monarch prefers the svelte look rather than the more filled out, typical kingly father type." Flynn Rider comments in his teasing way as he easily hefts King Agdar's far more slender frame compared to good 'ole Fritz's back home, into the waiting carriage.

"Eugene!" Rapunzel reprimands her naughty guy with a hand about to slap her husband's busted arm but remembers to refrain just in the nick of time, although Anna was not as charitable, as she 'accidentally' kicks her cousin's husband, who started this all, squarely in the shins.

"Oops. Sorry." Her apology was none too believable as Anna friction rubs Elsa's cold hands warm, as the sisters watch their exhausted Mama lean her head to Papa's softly resting shoulder in the coach.

* * *

Meanwhile, as this was going on, with all the voices in his head screaming, Kristoff had climbed up and traversed to the far end of the mountain ledge where he could get a better view of the path back to the ocean that the fierce Draugen had taken.

"What do you hear?" Prince Hans, keeping his own calculations as to the evolving battle plan with militarily trained accuracy, was a good enough strategist to recognize where his best resources lie.

"It's heading southeast, down towards the North Sea." The Wind Whisperer taps into his psychic link with many of the underwater mammals and fishes he had already made alliance thereof. Kristoff squints his eyes as he was obviously currently in contact with some of the many creatures beneath the disrupted waves as he offers Hans this curt succinct answer.

"He's heading home to the continent…" Quietly talking under his breath of the Dutch pirate Captain he knew all too well, Hans murmurs. "We cannot allow that vengeful monster to roam the seas freely or make landfall on the innocent people of Scandinavia."

Quietly extrapolating his evaluation of where every creature, human or otherwise, longed to run to in the end, Hans responds in even tones as not to be heard by any of the others.

"Agreed." Kristoff was more a man of action than words as his eyes are still trained on the unkempt tossing sea waves below. Kristoff answers his former rival, who had now become a relied upon ally, with an asserting nod.

Even though his own Anna cast dispersions on Mr. Hans Westergaard at every turn of this journey, the honest mountain man in Kristoff judged the person more for his actions and the warm sentiment the Wind Whisperer sensed the Danish Prince held for Anna's sister.

The two responsible young men stand at the edge of the precipice overlooking the Lofoten beachfront over the seashore for a few moments of heavy deliberation. After a deep breath as if to steady himself to the task, Hans turns to call across the iceberg floating lake to the parties on the other side.

"Storbror!" Hans sweet tenor voice goes into his imperious commanding mode as he takes up the mantle of Admiral in his absent indisposed leader's place.

"Mr. Bjorgman and I are going ahead. Please take the Royal family back to the safety of the mainland. Fly swift and sure in return to Arendelle, due direct east and south from here via the inland fjords. Stay away from the sea at all costs." The peremptory absolute authority in Hans' lowered, yet subdued with cold, tone causes the addressed Eugene to raise his eyebrows over to his wife, who bites her lip. Pascal on Rapunzel's shoulder twists his in an uncertain shade of orange.

"Okay… Sounds like a good plan to me… After you, ladies." Eugene murmurs, feeling less assured than he sounded as he was returning to his driver post after loading the insensate King Agdar into the coach. Eugene whistles low as he watches Anna's vibrant braids and Elsa's blonde mane snap up in Hans' direction.

"…Or not." _Boy, are you asking for it now_. Feeling his little brother's unqualified stepped-in-it pain, Eugene squeaks in a hard swallowed comment after glimpsing the bone chilling look that springs to the young female monarch's eyes. To double the fun, the Ice Queen's cool stare was accompanied by her little sister's irritated peeved one at their contentious domineering counterparts who were just being so pigheadedly male.

_A trait to which I so rarely share claim. I find it's best to be more gender neutral and give the lovelier sex a bit of wiggle room. It saves a lot of woe in the end._

Upon her ice slide that Anna second-naturedly hops on board, Elsa easily glides across the frozen lake to where the pair of young men were standing with Sven near the ledge facing the sea.

"May I remind you, **_Vise _**Admiral Westergaard, that **_I_** am still the **_Queen_** of this land?" Feeling mostly recovered from her ice berserk episode, Elsa pulls rank as she nears her handsome provocateur here on her quickly formed ice slide.

"Yeah! Note the prefix '_Vise'_, pretty boy. **Elsa** is still in charge. **You** don't tell the **Queen** what to do." With a poking finger to Hans' pointy sharp nose, Anna taunts her sworn enemy as she skittishly hops down from her sister's slippery ice ramp just to rap her own guy on the chest for conspiring with this _Red_ miscreant.

"Oof. It was his idea." Going all cute rather than high-handed alpha male, Kristoff smirks his defense as he rubs his whacked bared abdomen while trying to pull on the dark cape Sven proffered. Kristoff couldn't quite explain why, but as he was standing here with Hans, he suddenly felt the temperature drop. But he simply attested it to Elsa's frosted indignation.

The mountain man, for one, never imagined that he could leave his little feisty Princess out of any adventure, even if his royal partner Dane in crime supposed it so.

"I am not questioning that fact, my Queen, and did not intend to cause you umbrage. However, I simply am concerned for you – and your family's welfare, and did not wish to engage any of you in the skirmish—" Prince Hans stands his chivalrous ground as he unconsciously reaches in over to straighten that still pesky curl that fell over Elsa's vexed eyes at him. But cutting him off, she interrupts his speaking and pulls her miffed head away.

"You're sounding like my father, Prince Hans." With a reprimanding raised brow, Elsa places a supercooled halting finger on Hans' bluish lips, which brings a certain pinkish heat back to them.

"I assure you, I – I only meant—" Resisting the urge to shiver in her presence, Hans uncharacteristically stammers under her icy eyed punishing gaze up at him.

"I like it." Feeling liberated fully for the first time in her adult life, Elsa flirtatiously brushes Hans sideburns with her fingertips.

Right in front of her slack-jawed sister too, whom intuitive Kristoff promptly loads onto Svala's back when the reindeer doe joined his resigned silent beckon, as to avoid a new scene.

"Olaf!" Standing regally tall on her own two graceful feet, Elsa abruptly calls out to the snowman as she picks up his waffling form with invisible frozen wind currents in his comical attempts to cross the iceberg chunked lake towards the sparring quartet.

As the chill of the Ice Queen's verglas coated long nailed fingers leaves Hans' frosted stylish titian facial hair, Elsa cryokinetically draws her bouncing snow creation near until Olaf was standing at her feet.

To Anna, Kristoff, and Sven's gasps and Hans' shuttering surprise, Elsa unconcernedly plunges her prim clawlike fingers into the back of Olaf's nonexistent skull as if it were a perfectly natural occurrence.

She pulls out a thirty inch long golden holy scepter that was half the pair of St. Olaf's royal regalia that had been secreted away there since the inception of this incredible voyage.

"What a crick in the neck that was! Ooh! How do you guys stand having spinal columns?" Patting the back of his snow head mound into place like nothing happened, Olaf blinks up at them. He joyously extols his absence of a cervical spine and its resulting stiff pain, glad to be his pliable flexible snowman self again.

"Listen." Elsa waves the long holy relic golden scepter in Hans' face pointedly. "This is my country. These are my people. I must be the one to face the monster and defeat it in my Father's place, as God is my witness. I am **_not_** hiding anymore. Never again. You may tag along if you wish." Elsa haughtily holds her head up high and declares this with pride as she extends the glimmering golden Royal scepter of St. Olaf she had stowed away inside her snowman she had named Olaf when this questionable mission began.

This was the ancient relic that belonged to her country's ancestor—_Rex Perpetuus Norvegiae—_Norway's eternal King whom her Papa would always read the skaldic poetry saga of to her when she was a young Princess. Elsa holds it up to the shining Midnight Sun that refused to sink beneath the horizon.

For even in this darkest hour, there were still those streaks of uncanny light that would find their way to race across and illuminate the magical Norwegian night sky like a shining beacon.

"Now, you know your mission, Olaf. Here is the Queen's seal. Go and warn Minister Kai of the sea monster's threat so that he could ready the citizens of Arendelle for evacuation to the continent, if needs must." Impressing Hans with her organizational leadership wherewithal, she gathers her icy powers in order to blow her friendly saluting dutiful snowman upon the Arctic currents.

Above the atmospheric pressure of the clouds the Ice Queen and her little snow creation had practiced in training for just such a desperate hour when she would be required to send a message to someone far away.

Elsa glances over to where she kept one eye on Eugene, who, on Vise Admiral Westergaard's instruction that she refrained from countermanding, conducts the ice carriage to leave with her parents for the safety of home.

And so, on her self created polar vortex's dense air that produced sudden plummeting temperatures with its circulatory pattern strong winds, Olaf takes off with a waved pair of twig hands. The excited snowfriend swirls around the Ice Queen's low pressure system as she sends the willing snowman on swift moving currents and air streams on a direct path southeast home to Arendelle.

Home. Where, after all, the heart never strays far from.

After sharing a nod with Kristoff, who had Anna securely loaded on Svala beside his Sven, Elsa's eyes meet Hans', who dramatically falls to his knees in a reverent flourishing bow to her greater authority.

"I am but a foot soldier at your command, Queen Elsa, and will give my utmost to vanquish this villain for your nation." Hand over heart, Hans dramatically pledges again his loyalty before he smiles at her apologetically before he must crudely raise his thin fingers to his pale lips to give a high pitched melodic whistle. And the pair of flying white mares from across the still lake responds willingly.

As does Elsa, as she allows the Danish Prince to easily lift the lissome royal beauty, back in her shimmering Ice Queen dress, onto the golden saddle of one of the horses. The handsome Prince squeezes both her hands around the reins.

"You have my complete trust to lead us into battle, Vice Admiral, as well as my gratitude for what you have already done for my father." Elsa answers, wanting to say more, but Hans seemed preoccupied with strategy as he then gallantly slings a long agile leg around to alight upon the other white steed beside hers himself.

"Then, my Queen, let the Wind Whisperer be our guide. I will take the rearguard flank."

Kristoff glances from Sven back to Hans and seriously nods at the plan before taking off on his soaring reindeer over the sea in hot pursuit of the foul creature that has so disrupted nature itself. Anna, on Svala, hovers over to Elsa with a positive arm squeeze and thumbs-up before the two Arendelle sisters soon take off in unison after Kristoff's intuitive heels. Hans takes position with his flying horse in the rear.

And the cold chill that gripped Hans Westergaard's secret heart would hide the bitter truth for as long as he could spare her from it.

_I only can pray there will be time enough to make my amends…_

And the four beasts in flight quickly carry each of their anxious young passengers with the same valiant goal in mind through the dusky skies over the wave crashing Norwegian Sea towards the final battle…

* * *

_First off, **Merry Christmas!, **everyone! We hope you had a special time to share with the ones you love in celebration of baby Jesus' birthday! The treasures of Family and Faith are so important this time of the year, aren't they?_

_Sorry for the super extended wait, but you all know this wondrous blessed time of the year is sure a busy one for us all, getting presents ready, spending time with friends and family as we celebrate the birth of our Lord!_

_Hope this fairly long almost 10,000 word, thoroughly juicy, turning point chapter was worth our month long writing hiatus! (Boy, I've missed the joys of writing ^_^! I do hope to get to another chapter by the end of the year in the works very soon!)_

_As for this edition, I do believe that Queen Idun's healing song: 'Angels, from the Realms of Glory' once again fit in with the season of her first child's birth perfectly. And the entire beautiful Christmas theme of a glorious Savior who was born to sacrifice everything selflessly for another was reflected all through this pivotal chapter as well in small yet significant ways by our humble cast of characters. Don't you agree?_

_Please review all the nooks and crannies of this ever twisting tale! Tell me your favorite parts! I've missed you all, and am dying for some fantastic fanfiction friend fellowship! ^_^ How's that for alliteration?_

_So, for my sister (who has been busy illustrating several more romantic chapter scenes; check out SetsunaKou on Deviant Art or TsukimoriKahoko on Tumblr) and I:_

_"We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!"_

_God bless you, Frozen Friends!_

_HarukaKou_


	54. Chapter 53 -Act IV: Angel at My Shoulder

**"Godt Nytt År!" **_pronounced: __(Gott Neet Or!_)

_**'HAPPY NEW YEAR!'** in NORWEGIAN , FROZEN FRIENDS!_

_I've been churning the chapters out on my Christmas vacation time!_

_We hope you enjoy this installment of our adventure, the first of New Year 2016!_

* * *

_We do __not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act IV**

**Chapter 53**

**"The Angel at My Shoulder"**

_I'll mount my ocean steed, and o'er the ocean speed._

_Forests and hills are not for me – I love the moving sea…_

_Saga of St. Olaf verse 168_

* * *

But the stunning peaked mountain range in the Eastern distance that lined the Norwegian mainland's coast was as breathtaking as it was ominous.

For at only a scant view hundred feet aloft the sea wind so they could scan the ocean below, on invisible winged reindeer and horseback, the quartet of airborne riders overview the magnificent landscape where the sea meets the remote craggly island of Vaeroy.

The seabird rookeries in the towering ridges above the white sand beaches there housed over a million aves of all shapes and sizes. Puffins, auks, kittiwakes, Arctic terns and cormorants were but a few gathered in the rookeries, especially overpopulated during this busy breeding season.

But from the invigorating steep climb up the Mahornet peak to the eerie, elongated Isthmus of Eidet, the sparse few inhabitants of the Northwest island were also graced with a historical Vaeroy Kirke. The oldest church in Lofoten owned an altar of English alabaster relief that depicted the Annunciation, the Resurrection, and the Ascension of Jesus Christ beneath its onion shaped dome in Nordland that could be seen from the island's northern coast.

However Midnight Sun scenic and breathtakingly beautiful the Norwegian island was, under its sparkling waters a dark shadow moves at a tremendous rate that belied its bulky size alongside the circular pattern of the Isthmus' narrow landforms.

"So, not that I care, but – where did that sneaky, slippery red fox of a Dane silently disappear off to so clandestinely? Hmph! That yellow bellied coward is probably halfway to Agrabah by now, shaking in fear of mussing his perfect hairdo." Anna disdainfully scorns after glancing around the skyscape she was racing past the winds alongside her sister, with no Southern Isles Prince as the backup flank rearguard as he was supposed to be.

Upon a white flying mare, Queen Elsa, whose eyes had been closed in both concentration of her powers and fear of flying at such rapid speeds over the crashing ocean waves, now open to gaze around, only to find the Danish Royal nowhere in sight. Her anxious heart sinks the smallest tiny bit at her sister's pointed out suspicion, but she wanted to believe.

As the vivacious orangey Princess was gyrating around poor Svala's dizzied back, the younger girl totally fearless-of-heights heedlessly swivels down to hang on the harness of the reindeer's soft belly. In her suspicious eye peeled search for the red-haired boy, Anna's wide pools of eyes spot something below instead.

In her exuberance, Anna spins around like a crazed daredevil to rearrange herself – not to mention her equilibrium – as she bounces across her ruffled reindeer.

"There it is! The monster's down there! Ha ha! You give excellent travel directions, o handsome husband of mine! But **I** spotted it first!" A glowing Anna nearly falls off Svala as she giddily points down at the rippling waters several hundred feet below their flight path.

"Anna! Both hands on the reins. Remember?" From his position forefront of the flying team formation, Kristoff admonishes his reckless mate as he reaches a concerned arm to spin the nearly upside down girl perpendicular again when his powerful muscles pull her onto Svala's bumped and tugged back squarely. He and Sven instinctively pull up beside the slaphappy female before she tumbled off into the drink below.

"Right, right. But I did spy that evil Draugen first, didn't I, Kristly! Who needs that stupid Red anyway?!" Anna responds to her husband under her saucy breath with a wrinkled sourpuss as she glances around one more time for the missing rearguard.

Candid, honest Kristoff affords Anna a silent smirk, technically pretty certain that it was he and his tracking skills incommunicado with more than a tad of the dolphin sonar beneath the crashing waves he was psychically being updated with at regular intervals, that should claim dibs on the '_first spotting the sea monster'_honor.

But he'd let his spirited little wife have it. If only because she was so adorable in her lively enthusiasm.

And the stoic, quiet man was intelligent enough to know when to give in to Anna's demands.

_Which is like, almost always. In every way…_

{"Snow Prince!"}

Kristoff is called out on his momentary bliss as the newlywed young man by the urgent voice _– erm, voices –_ of several of his underwater allies.

{"Yeah! I'm here!"} Harried, the Wind Whisperer then tries to clear his beta male endorphin clouded mind once his big distracted palms finish squeezing his wobbly Anna's topsy-turvy torso and wiggling lower body to stay put atop Svala's worried backside.

{"The creature is destroying everything passed in its underwater wake east towards the mainland! But it is starting to turn more to the east than south across the Norskehavet, I think!"} The heavily accented, high pitched squeak of faithful little Uni the seal cries out in distress to Kristoff.

For, on the outset of this pursuit, the man of nature had already discussed with many of the sea creatures below that the Draugen could not be permitted to cross the channel of the vast Norwegian Sea.

{"The abomination is beginning to dive into the far depths under the cross currents, where it is more difficult for most of us to track, Wind Whisperer!"} A deep throated killer whale and a gravelly voiced walrus, who were usually mortal enemies, cry out in agreed unison as they swim side-by-side as compatriots today against the greater enemy.

Kristoff gazes downwards as the shadow beneath the waves begins to almost totally fade from his actual sight, as he considers his evolving plan of action.

And just then, as if on cue, the missing rearguard soars in on his white steed that escalates through the sky.

"Mr. Bjorgman! Our pursuant is rapidly heading due east across the straits under the converging seas' cross currents! If it goes any deeper we may lose track of it altogether!" Only mere seconds after Kristoff's silent informant beneath the waves passed on their directional information, Hans Westergaard's lofty orator's voice above the waves chimed in his own instinctive seaman's tracking of the shadow in the waters below. Navy man Hans understood the neap tide progression of these odd tidal currents, bizarre wave spillage and peculiar breakers in the upset sea as well as the continental flow of this area well enough to read the creature's divergent course.

"Damn, he's good." Kristoff murmurs under his breath, impressed by the Danish Prince's extensive knowledge of the abnormal patterns of this northern sea. But the Snow Prince was already in motion to steer the entourage he was heading in that new direction Hans was affirming.

In the corner of his side, the intuitive mountain man suddenly sees the reason why the Danish man had gone unaccounted for the past half hour or so of sky flight elapsed time.

"Did you just say something, Kristly?" Anna's incredulous tone right behind him told Kristoff to button it up concerning his growing admiration for Mr. Hans Westergaard's capability. But the honest soul in Mr. Kristoff Bjorgman wouldn't let him tell lies.

"Yes, I said that he was –" With a twisted lip, Kristoff was about to genuinely reaffirm his previous statement (perhaps, minus the crude cuss word that Bulda would have been appalled to hear from her 'cutie's' lips) but Kristoff is cut off by the selfsame redheaded Prince sudden sharp request.

"My Queen! I believe it would behoove us to take action at this time before the creature submerges any deeper beneath the mesoscale eddies and isotherm meanders too beneath the surface to be apprehended anymore."

Hans calls up to Elsa, armed with his Søværnet Naval Academy book-learned series of technical terms.

"Wow. That's a mouthful, Showoff." Anna sticks her tongue out back at Hans. She, for one, was never able to retain much of the boring old encyclopedia that Mama had tried to pound into her energetic, longing to play outside in the yard rather than be cooped up inside the library, brain.

However, older sister Elsa had spent a great deal of her time in that library, being more studious, especially when it came to one of her lifelong Navy man Papa's favorite subjects that the two would discuss at long length for hours about –

The Sea.

"Yes, the divergent currents of the continental slope in this area of the Norskehavet, where it leaves the submarine shelf range, lies in a great depth of over 2 km." Elsa answers in a similarly serious intelligent tone. "We must accost that Draugen before it is able to travel to a submerged underwater level beyond my ice blast reach. Let us proceed, with all due haste, Vise Admiral Westergaard." The icy maiden Queen seemed to get a thrill in saying Hans' titled name and rank that she and her father independently had deemed the Prince worthy of, as she steadies her surging anxious emotions upon seeing his eager to please beautiful green eyes upon her.

But, although awed by her extensive research and knowledge of ocean dynamics, the man doesn't allow himself to enjoy her smiles for long, and he simply nods. Now that he had his leader's approving order as to his plan, Vise Admiral Westergaard turned to the cold face of the sea below.

"Mr. Bjorgman, if you could please direct your army of rorquals below to maneuver the creature as close to the ocean surface as possible." Prince Hans utilizes all his resources of good leadership as he addresses the Wind Whisperer for his strategy to begin to set into play, even as he ignores the rigid chills running up and down his well covered and gloved body in this warm almost 80° summer weather.

"On it!" Kristoff answers enthusiastically, recognizing the need in dire situations for team spirit. Besides, between the rough and tumble, blunt mountainmen and overbearing troll family he grew up under the thumb of, mild-mannered Kristoff was never one to mind taking orders.

{"You're needed guys!"} As Sven encircles for better range, Kristoff begins to immediately broadcast his mental request for assistance to the compliant creatures of the deep.

And the Snow Prince's undersea army rallies to their nature spokesman's call.

Hans, too, moves right into action as his flying white horse pulls up beside Elsa's.

"Queen Elsa, when the Draugen is forced to the surface from beneath, may I request for you to be prepared to freeze the wave crests. So as to contain the monster as well as slow itwith your constant gelid application as we drive it back towards uninhabited Mosken?"

"You may, Vise Admiral." In a grandiloquent tone of voice that couldn't fear when she was secure in the steady strong beat of his gaze, Elsa immediately follows Hans' stalwart lead to have their pair of horses bend to hover mere feet above the disturbed ocean's starting to bubble surface.

But the competent leader in Hans Westergaard wasn't finished yet.

"Princess Anna! Please follow me!" Hans beckons up to Anna on Svala to accompany his ascent, some approximate 100 feet above the ocean surface.

"Could I entrust you with this important task of providing cover support for your sister should the approaching monster's grasping tentacles manage to break free of the Ice Queen's verglas shield?" Hans moves his flying mare close in Anna's and unbuttons his grey cloak to reveal several weapons that the forward thinking young man had obtained upon his absent excursion from the team.

Hans removes from his inside pocket a small walnut and brass Navy issue Deringer compact pocket pistol and holds it out the Anna, who just blinks back at him across the flapping winds, momentarily stunned.

"You _are _acquainted on how to handle a firearm, are you not, Princess?" The suddenly uncertain quizzical Prince questions the wisdom of his backup endeavor as he impertinently asks the young lady whose jaw-dropped face and blinking eyelids made her expression difficult to read. After all, Elsa seemed quite versed as to the weapon's handling when he handed her a revolver before.

"Could you _entrust_ me to give you another **punch** in the face again?" With an in-your-face jut-out chin, Anna challenges her sworn enemy with a saucy smirk. "I'm my father's daughter, Mr. Lonely Heart." The orangey ginger girl makes the scathing remark, not realizing how close this walk down memory lane hurt young Mr. Westergaard as the crestfallen man literally must shake off the unpleasant recollection of his cold-hearted past deeds.

"Of course I can shoot a gun! Gimme that one!" Anna's big round eyes glimmer like a kid in a candy shop. She sticks her mitts into Hans' cloak roughly and purloins another weapon other than the one he was offering her.

"Anna! No! That is a double-barreled twenty shot French import with quite a recoil for a lady to handle—" The archaic gent in Hans protests.

But Anna would have none of it as she merely snorts back at him and returns to face forward on her own transport with not one, but two, guns in her frisky hands.

Anna totes the interestingly shaped three barreled pistol in the air, brashly showing off her gun wielding skills to Hans as if she were an old hand at it. Although, in circumspect, even the overconfident girl still remembered the few close shaves with this type of newfangled weapon in her past. So much so, Papa and Kai both deemed to ban little Anna the usage of any firearm, for fear of keeping the remainder of their outdoor statuary (not to mention their own) heads still firmly attached.

But visiting Prince Hans was hardly aware of this little tidbit of information as he allowed Anna hold of the newly invented French volley gun he had procured earlier.

"Let's see. Just pull back the hammer and – oh no!" Trigger-happy Anna had pointed the gun right at Hans parallel to her, quite unintentionally. Feisty Anna is nearly knocked off Svala's back by the recoil of the quick-to-ignite striking pin of the already loaded modern weapon, that had the same resulting action as any other old gun she held in her inattentive hand before.

Luckily Hans, whom the .54 ball from the Derringer bullet had just missed grazing his temple or big earlobe, reaches one strong arm out to tug the recoil-thrust-girl back onto her flying reindeer's shocked back.

_Wow, he's so fast. And so cold… Why are Hans' hands this cold, even through his gloves?!_

As his ice cold palms leave a lasting chilled feeling that permeates upon her straightened shoulders, Anna's shivering subconscious recognizes the frozen symptoms she herself once suffered at the Ice Queen's inadvertent touch.

Her bright turquoise eyes gaze in stunned wonder at the man flying alongside her. Despite her best efforts to be impassive, Anna calls his now dulled, pale green eyes to meet with her inquisitive ones.

"Hans? Are you all right?" In the crisp high altitude, Anna whispers for the first time since the Coronation the first name of her sworn enemy/former fiancé in worry, remembering now how Hans had shielded her from the full first brunt of Elsa's maddened ice rage earlier at the mountain lake.

"Yes, Princess. Thank you, I'm fine. But we all will benefit from you taking better aim with those firearms. Perhaps, in future you should point them only at the enemy, if you please." As Hans teases of her less than stellar display of marksmanship skill, Anna thought she could detect traces of white streaks mixing with the vibrant red of his rich auburn coiffed hair that gave the Danish Prince an even more distinguished look and dashing air.

And before the curious Arendelle Princess has the chance to inspect her new suspicions with a closer eye view, Hans and his white steed, rush away to make a swift-footed dive. Hans, upon the Snow Queen's enchanted horse, flows back to where the energy reserving Elsa had been joined by Kristoff once the Wind Whisperer had apprised his gathered underwater friends beneath the sea.

"Did you have to go and give her a gun? Anna's a danger to herself without a deadly weapon at her fingertips." Exasperated protector Kristoff, mind busy but not blown enough to be happy with Anna's new _toy_, lodges his complaint to Hans. Above all the other extrasensory noise in his bursting brain, Kristoff had watched in terror when haphazard Anna's pistol wielding misadventures had almost taken Hans' head off. (Or at least almost turned the Danish Prince into a good 'earless' impression of Vincent van Gogh.)

"God-given free will has made us each the bringer of and the revolutionnaire against our own impending doom, with any choice of weapon, harmless as a pillow or sharp as a blade, at our command, sir." Hans justifies in contemplative soliloquy to the frowning blond mountain man as he approaches. "Besides, I am a firm believer that the firearm is the great equalizer, whereas a female with lesser arm strength and upper muscle structure required for, say, sword or archery, can deliver as much ferocity and impact as any man."

Kristoff smirks at the strange logic in Hans' supercilious, yet at the same time practical, choice words that the Ice Harvester knew his Anna would've loved to heartily agree with, had she been present to hear.

Elsa simply giggles nervously. After all, Prince Hans did not have any idea of just how little Anna's revolver aim could serve anyone, equalizer or no.

But his smooth melodious voice in recitation still sounded quite nice, quite calming to her frazzled senses, nonetheless.

"The female of every species have proven time and time again that they are, by far, a formidable force, even more so than their male counterparts." The naval tactician answers in cool, calm, quiet terms, meeting Elsa's hard breathing gaze momentarily. She was so wrapped up in keeping her own cool that the Ice Queen did not yet notice any intemperate change in him.

Glad not to be cause to unsettle the delicate young woman's psyche, Hans' keen eyes, even though clouded with a light frost, then continue to resolutely examine the unpredictable sea. It was just beginning to grow murky from the depths somewhere beneath the crashing waves.

"I must say that I have discovered that the fairer sex has a more important contribution to make in this world. Although, generally unsung." Hans speaks these words of encouragement tossed behind his back to the growingly anxious young woman who had been silently filled with nervous trepidations. He then bows his head in reverence to a trembling with anticipation Elsa as his horse hovers near hers.

Her troubled, furrowed brow eases into a grateful smile over to him, her resolve strengthened by his bolstering belief in her ability.

As the very water seemed to begin to palpitate with raw energy, Queen Elsa takes a deep breath and summons all of her powers to her glowing long-nailed blue-white fingertips.

The dark green ilky shadow looming from fathoms below starts to emerge nearer the surface as all the good marine life beneath the waves, in every class, phylum and size, as one, bravely rush upon the unnatural abomination of nature until it is repelled just at the cusp of the upwelling waves' surface…

And the dark shadow of the gigantic sea monster between the foaming spumes draws nearer to where the Ice Queen and her handsome Prince of the Southern Isles were hovering on their horses awaiting its imminent approach.

With Sven to Elsa's other side, vigilant Kristoff gives them both a thumbs-up signal pertaining to his helpful sea force militia below, and a two-handed, double-gunned, '_born ready'_ Anna on her female reindeer high in the air takes a sharpshooter's vantage point aim above the united team in triangulation…

_**GRRRRR—**_

Just milliseconds before that earsplitting feral scream already erupting in the noisy pandemonium within the ocean below can escape its watery bubble, Hans calls out to Elsa:

"Now, my Queen!" Even as Vise Admiral Westergaard gives the commencement order to the most beautiful combatant who would ever serve under his command, he was already moving his flying horse back so as he could draw the long sword obscured in the lining of the full length of his gray cloak.

But it was something quite dissimilar to the regular officer's issue long naval sword that Hans was purposefully producing, that had been hidden within the folds of his Arendelle cloak jacket.

In the pinpointed range of a fifty foot circumference, Ice Queen Elsa wordlessly goes to work. Her stunningly beautiful creation of a picturesque frostbitten and polar-capped section here in the middle of this summer Norwegian Sea that normally never saw ice for its isothermic temperatures all year round was a sight to behold.

The Draugen, who had been driven upwards north again and away from the populated island of Vaeroy to the south, nor its intended first target of the continent east, is more angered to be impaired by Elsa's hard fought for ice freeze of the rolling, relatively warm ocean currents.

It growls viciously through the thin layer of the surface ice that was just thick enough to hold the monster's deafening roar down to a low, impotent gurgle instead.

The impatient, indignant Draugen's haptera spikes and venomous seaweed intermittently break holes up through the frosted verglas coating, wriggling wildly apoplectic up into the dusky sky where a focused Elsa on horseback just luckily avoids.

The wicked slimy algae vines shoot up around where Hans, who was by now actually standing on Elsa's frozen sea surface glacier along with an employed Kristoff, was too preoccupied to take mind to the multiple attacking seaweed tentacles that appear between and beside the two busy and brave men.

So that left it up to Anna to protect her vulnerable sister from the virulent, venomous vines alone.

Just a few meters from where Elsa was constantly pouring ice crystals over the moving sea, several pernicious tentacles poke up through her created iceberg, about to close in around the Queen who was the cynosure of all the ice fighting them down—

That's when Anna, after more than a few rounds that went quite askew, finally is able to blow all the tentacles away until the miscreant vines wiggle their way back down into the chilled waters in broken off pain.

"You okay, Elsie?!" Anna yells down to her blessedly untouched sibling by either wicked vine from below, or friendly-fire bullet from above.

"I'm all right! But you should have spent more time on the practice range with Papa, Anna! _I_ would have required only one shot per weed." Crack shot Elsa calls up to teasingly taunt her little sister, feeling more in control of her powers than ever before, perhaps due to a certain gentleman's constant encouragement and beautiful green eyes.

Not to mention, she was always quite peacock proud of her own well honed, deadeye sharpshooting skills her patient father taught his little girl that helped mold Elsa into the precision ice caster that she is today.

"Oh, yeah?! Well, I bet you can't…thrust or, or… parry, or…riposte! Yeah! Riposte! –_I'm great at parry and riposte!—_ as good as I can—" Boasting of her own secret weaponry skills under Papa's deft tutelage, with loving sisterly bantering back and forth and fun jabs, this deadly struggle didn't seem all that scary anymore.

And now that Elsa was in full mastery of her talent, she was starting to be able to open up and not always be so scared of herself, or the world around her. That was the sunshine breaking through that she certainly could hold Anna responsible for.

_You've always been that sweet angel at my shoulder, Anna…_

The platinum blonde smiles fondly up to her sister, who was indeed hovering high above the clouds with a spray of sunshine like a golden halo emanating all around her bright glowing features.

_This is so nice, Elsa…_ Princess Anna felt tears sting her emotional eyes as the sisters, in high spirits, share a happy smiling moment amidst the pressing chaos.

But it all almost comes to a terrifying end in the flash of a shattered icicle…

"ELSA! Watch out!" Anna shrieks, indeed having the full bird's eye view of the situation below, just as Hans concluded she would.

_That Red thinks he's so smart!_

A vision of him gets Anna's ire up. But that generally was when she did her best at anything…

_**C-C-R-RAAC-CK! C-C-RRAC-KLE! CR-AA-SSH!**_

When the going got tough, tough Princess Anna was able to get going and accomplish whatever she set her mind to do. Just and Mama always said of her plucky littlest child.

_**SS-PP-LURRTT!**_

The quick three-barrel shot Anna daringly fires, with her left hand no less, makes a direct hit with the second attacking round of the Draugen's thicker chest algal vines. Even from beneath the ice coated wave, every one of them above the iceberg are still jarred by the underwater monster's horrible pathetic screams of pain.

"Ha ha! Take that you Old Algae Mosshead!" Anna and Elsa's shared sisterly laugh of triumph at Anna's lucky shot rings music through the sea breeze.

But it is short-lived, as the vengeful monster, as if hearing their ridiculing laughter, rears its hideous massive head to violently thrust through the ice coated glacial surface.

All at once, the Draugen frees its multiple seized up immobile vines and seaweed. It erupts to the ice quaking surface mere feet away from where Kristoff and Hans were perched on the icy surface, hastily assembling something of great interest…

The Danish Prince and his flying horse beside him are unfortunate to be plunged into the crusty waters. Though the magical steed kicks and rears her whinnied way out into the Midnight Sun sky's freedom, Hans is dragged under the rest of the way by the vehement vines when the perforated breaking iceberg beneath their feet fully shatters.

As the precarious ice too does crack apart beneath the slipping and sliding, dodging Ice Harvester, ever ready Sven comes to his skittering best friend's rescue. The reindeer scoops up with his single antler both Kristoff and that certain item he and Westergaard had been industriously assembling that was still clutched in the Wind Whisperer's sturdy arms.

"Hans!" A rebounding Kristoff and Sven team make a dive for the seaweed grasped Dane when his thrashed about, gasping for air head comes above the surface.

"Never mind me! This is our one chance! Aim for its neck's spinal column!" The self-sacrificing Prince is able to cry out before he loses the struggle with the strong haptera weeds he had been valiantly fighting and he is once again pulled under the chunked iceberg waves.

"Prince Hans!" Elsa screams out in terror for the heroic man's life as Anna zooms down with her reindeer to help.

Meanwhile, leaping from Sven's back onto the opposite side of the glacier with thick ropes looped all around his arms and shoulders, surefooted iceman Kristoff purposefully slides across the cracked up, hypnotically swaying glacial ice until he was level with the creature's protruding head and neck region that Hans had specified to him earlier.

_**SP-PLLURR-TT!**_

Without hesitation, the musclebound mountain man plunges the three foot long iron and metal hand-darted harpoon that Hans had obscured in the folds of his Arendelle cloak before, decisively into the neck of the livid fuming Draugen.

The sharp angular pieces of the harpoon Hans had specially modified spike out to embed themselves to the monster's spinal column just as envisioned.

The cold slowed, lethargic Draugen is unable to shake the hook-barbed iron-angled harpoon that had been strategically placed at the rear of its neck where short stubby arms could not reach. The Draugen screeches in frustration, knocking a close by, stunned deaf by its roar Kristoff back to Sven who flies up and away to safety.

As the seaweed vines attached to the head attempt to tear at the piece of metal jammed in its neck, the Draugen inadvertently releases an ample amount of the sedative mixture Hans had ingeniously filled into one of the hollow glass vials within the harpoon head.

Namely, Captain Houtebeen's favorite Dutch rum. The one that always made the old pirate almost instantly fall asleep, in hopes now it may still have some same effect on his unleashed soul's mirror of a creature.

Which, of course, it seemed to be doing the trick.

The sluggish monster is still unable to burst through the ice wholly, for Elsa was turning up the cold at the same time she was attempting an urgent emergency rescue with her sister's assistance.

"Hans! Give me your hand!" While Elsa, with great conscious effort in stabilizing her mind and her powers, was holding back the humongous creature with her ice from this side of the Norwegian Sea, Anna haphazardly leans her elastic body around as she did before, like a bat hanging from Svala's back. The ginger Princess makes a blood-rushing upside down double arm extended catch of the thin man who had washed up flailing in the icy waters, as if she were performing some daring acrobatic high wire act.

But the clumsy roughneck of a boisterous little girl had grown up quite accustomed to hanging off from the staircase, balcony, or even chandeliers on the ceiling as she recklessly bounced and sang and danced in Arendelle castle's empty halls throughout her lonely childhood.

So this was a piece of cake compared to then. Except this time, Anna had a dance partner. And a familiar one at that.

"Come on, you dumb cluck! Wake up and give me your hands!" Mere inches from Hans' passed out face, Anna demands and insults the comatose man whom Elsa's ice magic was keeping aloft the frigid ocean waters.

Elsa manages to multitask somehow, keeping Hans afloat at the surface while pushing the icy frozen waters back from swallowing either he or Anna up. Even as the Ice Queen continues to placate the Draugen beneath her continually building glacier that the rancid beast keeps knocking apart.

_Whew! You go, girl!_

Anna would have so proudly congratulated her cool collected sister had she not been so darn ticked off at Hans for not just manning up already!

"I SAID WAKE UP, MISTER!" Sensing Elsa's ice hold of the Prince of the Southern Isles already turning blue body at her break limit, the panicked, energetic Anna, hanging upside down by the strength of her athletic legs and agile feet from a balanced Svala's saddle harness, goes extreme and slaps Hans in the face hard as she could.

Not once, not twice, but three times before he is finally rustled awake.

"Anna?" Their inverted faces were moving so close to one another against the rushing wind and bobbing waves that the pair could almost kiss when the red cheeked Hans comes to. He looks up, woozy and disoriented, into Anna's wide eyes.

"Yes, it's me! I'm your Guardian Angel today, Red! So, get your skinny butt in gear and help me get you out of this mess! Here, take my hands!" Anna extends her pair of dangling arms down to the drenched wet, seaweed thrashed and throttled, wave tossed bilge rat who gazes up at the small girl with an incredulous shaking head.

"No, Princess. My added soaked weight will only drag you down as well. Just let me go." The chivalrous man in Hans, resigned to the cold overtaking his battered and spent body, countermands the slight wisp of a girl's peppy attempts at a rescue. He feels the numbing urge to just close his eyes to let the cold hoarfrost building from within and without utterly subdue him…

"Don't I hear you going on and on about having a debt to pay, Mister?!" Anna berates a depressed Hans who doesn't respond more than to hang his head in defeat. "Well, you haven't done it yet!" She adds in the pointed murmur under her breath hot right in his face.

But still Hans does not make a move.

_I guess we'll have to do this the hard way…_

"Elsa! The Vise Admiral over here is playing hard to get! Now that's a change…" Anna comments at her own strange statement, recalling how easy-to-get this mercenary prankster was once upon a time, as she calls out of school on this contradictory, most difficult boy.

"Vise Admiral Westergaard! Snap to attention! That is an order!" Her sister's high pitched Queenly voice booms down from her high horse to project authority over him.

But when his exhausted eyes simply flutter open to gaze up at Elsa with a sad longing, the Queen's tone goes more tenderly meaningful. "Please, Prince Hans… I need you..." Elsa says soft and pleading of her desperate struggle to stay strong enough and keep fighting.

After a few silent seconds go by of Hans being unresponsive, his weary eyes flutter open and closed, even against blood-drained Anna's persistent slaps and shakings.

"Snowflake…"

Anna's pensive lips purse when she hears the Danish Prince's soft utterance of his own silly sappy affectionate cute little diminutive for the Ice Queen. She also can't help but notice how instantly Elsa's eyes in return, somehow gaze even more tenderly at him, their eyes locked in an impossible yearning. No other man ever dared to entertain the thought of a normal relationship with the distant, frighteningly powerful monarch.

_It's almost like how Kristoff calls me 'Baby', or how Papa calls Mama his 'Swedish Delight'… Or even how that stupid brother of yours, Eugene, calls cousin Rapunzel 'Blondie,' for who knows what reason…_

Anna's honest innermost heart can't help but relate to the nearly passed out Prince's tone of voice addressing her sister, even if the rest of her didn't even want to admit it.

_Ooh! That man!_

_**HONK! HONK! HONK!**_

"The Gler! Thank God!" A grateful Elsa glances over to where her Royal Norwegian Navy's proud new vessel was rapidly steaming towards them, doing over 20 knots between where it had been patiently moored at Mosken's southern tip to the Norskehavet here between Vaeroy where the adventurers had left it.

By the time the foghorn called Anna out of her flustered reverie concerning this most conflicting Prince, the man in question had somehow not only awakened, but also managed to reach a long limber arm and climb onto Svala's helpful back in front of Anna before the girl even registers any of it.

Hans' gentle yet firm, and decidedly frigid hands had spun her dizzied disjointed and ungraceful form back right way up onto Svala's saddleback before she could say:

"Whoa! I'm still awkward. And you're still gorgeous." Princess Anna's unhinged mouth still ran off without her as the head spinning dizzy girl gazes upon Hans. He was wet and shivering with cold, and his slender princely form gives her a warm smile beneath that sultry-eyed dashing flattened wet hair look that brings all the memories of that first moment they met stampeding back over her senses.

"Thank you, Anna. You saved my life." Back to reality, Hans gently tugs her pair of braids still standing straight up stiff with Elsa's permafrost down to normal like a big brother would to a little sister.

"I never realized Guardian Angels wore braids." In a soft, yet smarmy voice, Hans muses with a smile warmly behind his shoulder to his rescuer.

"Don't mention it." She answers as if in a dreamlike trance.

"Really, don't! Eww!" Then, all at once, a weirded out Anna responds in the unsavory embarrassment of having to wrap her arms around Hans Westergaard's soaking wet thin torso so tight for the sudden speed they were traveling that she could feel every sinewy muscle and underfed rib along his cage. She holds on to him close as the reindeer flies them starkly vertical into the sky, up and away.

_What will Kristoff say?!_ Anna's still dizzy eyes roll guiltily around her once again blood-rushed still spinning head. She waves to her far hunkier hubby as Kristoff comes into view where he was kneeling in much industry near the rear gunwale on the aft deck of a big beautiful incoming Norwegian naval ship that Hans directs a compliant Svala over its deck rail.

"Now, get your guns, Annie! Go provide cover for Queen Elsa again, please! Help her to hold on for a bit more! Help is coming, I promise." And without a single word of explanation more beyond giving Svala's rump a directive slap to return downwards for Anna to be Elsa's guard again, Hans makes a momentum propelled fearless flying leap from Svala's airborne backside to land agilely on his catlike crouched feet to the ship below.

Upon the deck of the HmNos Gler, its Kommander, no, its _Vise Admiral_ – steps on board his commission vessel once again.

"Kommander!" The respectful saluting officer who had beenplaced as Hans' second in command first mate patiently awaits his leader's orders. All on board stand erect and salute their returned Captain, who has courageously arrived, soaking wet and valiant fresh-from-the-battle, on a soaring horse's amazing blaze of glory.

The first mate and fellow crewmen whom Hans had previously awed on flying horseback just an hour so ago, had willingly armed him with every weapon they had at their disposal, and then some he wished to quickly customize. After that task was swiftly fulfilled, he asked the gathered crew of all hands to the deck.

There, Kmdr. Westergaard concisely, with a tone and demeanor that inspired complete loyalty, told those who wished to remain at the relative safety of Mosken Island to leave the ship and stay behind without shame or disgrace.

Those daring sailors who still wished to perform their patriotic duty in the face of extreme danger, _'for God and Queen and Country,'_ they should rally the Gler and follow him here to these coordinates as soon as possible so they could take on this sea monster together.

Not a one of the brave Navy men who were inspired by their dashing intrepid young Captain's riveting speech remained on the island. For they all now looked to their action packed leader with eager anticipation of the crucial life and death struggle ahead.

With pride in his men as he nods respectfully to each brave face he passes on deck, Hans swiftly strides the Gler's polished wooden strakes over to where reliable, and perhaps most crucial of them all, Snow Prince Kristoff was already setting the final battle plan into motion…

* * *

_Norskehavet -_the Norwegian sea

_Søværnet_ – the Royal Danish Navy

* * *

Happy New Year, readers!

We hope the Good Lord blesses you with so much happiness and joy this coming year 2016, that you'll always remember to Whom we are the special children of!

God love you and keep you in 2016, Frozen Friends!

I'll be penning another 'Frozen:Again' storytime today! Let's see how the gang progresses in defeating this terrible vicious sea monster this time...They are getting closer to the end game...

Please review these past two action-packed chapters!

God bless you all through the year!

HarukaKou ^_^


	55. Chapter 54 -To the Cold Heart of the Sea

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act IV**

**Chapter 54**

**"To the Cold Heart of the Sea"**

"Elsa! Just hold on for a little more down there! Our beautiful boys are up to something spectacular!" A peppy, perky, and pumped Princess proudly pronounces as she and Svala come bounding across the skyline. Even if she had no clue as to Mr. Bjorgman and Mr. Westergaard's enigmatic machinations aboard that ship deck, excitable Anna was thrilled nonetheless.

_Our boys?_

Elsa, amid all of the controlled ice brimming from her fingertips to keep that constant rolling sea wave tossed iceberg she had created above the Draugen's head, smirks a quirky crooked smile at Anna's inadvertent admission.

Secretly, Elsa had not only been battling her own restrained feelings and hesitation concerning a certain young redheaded Prince, but the Ice Queen also had guilt that her adored little sister would _never_ come around to be content with Elsa having a relationship with someone new.

Especially when that 'someone new' turned out to be Anna's jilted, criminal, former fiancé.

But maybe the transformed man's noble heroism and fine qualities of trusted selfless concern for her whole family along this journey has caused Anna to have a change of heart in his direction.

"At least, my Kristoff is being spectacular doing practically all the hard work up there. That_Hans_can only stand there looking pretty making flowery speeches to the sailors. Hmph."

_Or not._

"So, the sailors respect his decisions?" Queen Elsa asks coyly, with a twinge of hidden pride in the background as she attempts to make her comment sound like a normal humdrum inquiry.

"I guess. Like they have a choice after you and Papa so cavalierly go and promote any no-good jerky twig of a man to the highest ranks in our Nav—" Anna begins to grumble the injustice of it all as she was practicing her sights through her pair of gunnery in bored turns at the back of a targeted certain red head on the ship deck behind her. After a few glorious seconds of imaginative vengeful self-indulgence, Anna returns her full attention to the quiet floating iceberg below where she was supposed to be providing cover for her sister.

"Prince Hans is hardly a twig, Anna! He has a fine stature of a manly figure." The artist in Elsa can't help but assert her artistic opinion as she indignantly defends her guy's slender and wiry physique.

Much to her little sister's mocking rejoinder. "Ha! Have you seen that lightweight stand next to my Kristoff lately?" She scoffs before turning her short attention span to another more serious subject.

"You think Mama and Papa are okay out there with that unscrupulous cousin Eugene as designated driver? What losers those Westergaards are! It's all their fault that we're in this mess!" Blowing off some steam as she blows air over one of the gun barrels she was packing like a pro, Anna complains of their thieving cousin and his newly assigned brethren.

"And why we _have_ Mama and Papa back, too, Anna. Can't you see that everything happens for God's intricate purpose? _'And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose Romans 8:28.' _And,_ 'To every_ _thing there is_ _a season, and a time to every purpose under the heavens' _Ecclesiastes 3:1."_"_

Elsa quotes from some of her favorite Scripture, where she could always feel the presence of God in her life. It helped her mind to know that there was a Higher Being. One Who had a plan for her and a place and a time for His purpose in her existence.

"Remember, Cousin Eugene _and _that _Hans_ were both working for the evil scum pirate! They hardly count as grand purveyors of godly wisdom in my book, Elsie. 'Nough said." Anna retorts, screwing her face up distastefully at the scheming brothers.

"Anna, please. Being sold into slavery by his brothers to work a pirate ship's galley does not make him—" But before thoughtful Elsa can finish upbraiding her younger petulant sibling, the heretofore quieted sea monster's drunken nature rears its ugly head...

A massive dark green, hideous hand clutches around the edges of her woman-made floating iceberg and makes a grab for the beautiful Ice Queen's vulnerable shapely legs…

"Queen Elsa!" Gallant Prince Hans comes sliding down the thick rope, that Kristoff had securely attached to the Gler's windlass winch, at such a velocity of speed and agility that Hans beats Anna's quick shooting reflexes.

_**KICCKK! SLLICCE! SPPLURRTT! SMMASSH!**_

Vise Admiral Westergaard uses all four of his pediments to kick away and smash down, double handed sword and dagger blade off the Draugen's still disgustingly concupiscent wandering digits away from Elsa's vulnerable bare leg regions.

Hans knocks the remainder of the sea monster's dismembered green oozing digits off the edge of the iceberg and into the roiling sea below.

"_**SSCCRREEECHH**__!"_ The drowsy Draugen screams out in pain and withdraws its shaved knuckles and creeping up fingers that had been so coolly deducted by the decisive dueling Dane.

"Arghh!" Hans grunts when the last of the deadly gargantuan's sliced digits above the surface gashes its clawed nail into his thigh in a final spurt of vengeance, blood gushing out of Hans' severed artery vein.

"Hans!" A panicked Elsa was beside herself with terror and she cries out as the man's blood splashes across her Ice Queen blue dress hem that he was kneeling down beside.

**_BANGG!_**

A crack gunshot blasts that final clawed fingertip to plop lifelessly over the glacier's edge.

"Here!" At breakneck speed, Anna was barreling down on Svala to leap and slide from reindeer's back until the vivacious girl was kneeling at Hans' wounded side.

**_R-R-RIPPP!_**

Without a second thought to her royal fashion, Anna tears with her powerful bare hands at the ribboned hem of her long forest green summer skirt and ties the long fabric piece around Hans' injured upper leg as tight as she could to serve as a makeshift tourniquet and stop the bloodflow thereof.

"Once again, it is prodigious to have a guardian angel for a little sister." Hans, despite feeling the overwhelming urge to faint, teases Anna. His eyes full of longing glance up at the graceful woman he was lying at the feet of.

Elsa had been trying her best to stay focused in battling the angry sea monster below with her ice barricade. But she could find pause to afford her hero a tender grateful smile for yet another courageous save.

"Don't you dare call me your _guardian angel_ ever again, Mister! And I'll never, ever, EVER be your _little sister_! Now grit your teeth, this is gonna hurt." Even as she felt so angry she could explode at the patronizingly presumptive man, Anna remembered Mama's experienced field nurse techniques. For the clumsy little girl had more than her share of scrapes and cuts and broken bones that required constant attention from both her caring parents.

"You're quite adept at – _ergh_ – tying the knot – _erf_ – are you not, Princess?" Hans banters as he grunts in between Anna's rough hands and tightly jerked knot in patching up his rather deep cut wound with the bandage of her skirt hem.

"I should take some – _ugh –_ lessons from you." Hans smiles up at his 'nurse' with an insinuating grin at his lack of success in that particular sanctified area, whereas, she on the other hand, excelled at accepting offers of holy marriage.

"Ungh." Hans dismisses the urge to simply double over with agony as he continues the pasted smile at Anna kneeling beside him.

This amount of great pain would have caused many a man to pass out already at the sudden loss of blood, but the ice coursing through his veins helped slow down any excessive pulmonary spillage. A thick ice coating even starts to form over the instinct calculating man's punctured thigh so the escaping blood was almost instantly coagulated.

"Har-har-har hearty Har-har-har. You're a real laugh, Westergaard." Combative Anna was inexperienced enough not to know how badly injured Hans was. She only recognized that same sycophant smile upon his cloyingly good-looking features as he chuckled along with her, ever the master of disguise.

Although, Anna couldn't believe how well she and Hans were getting along at this point. She was sure she was supposed to shoot or strangle or kick him off the mountain herself and finally be rid of the slimeball stalking her sweet innocent sister again. The spunky girl just didn't get around to it yet.

But the pathetic way his eyes were glazed over, the small, almost unnoticeable way he trembled and shook every now and then with imperceptible frigid cold, made this Prince of the Southern Isles a pitiable figure indeed. Especially to the girl who knew from experience all too well how it felt to be cast out, all alone in the world, and left in the bitter cold.

'_The only frozen heart around here is yours.'_ She vaguely hears her own biting cold words to the man who had betrayed her replay in her head.

"Oh, Hans. You've been frozen, haven't you?" Anna quietly breathes out in a whisper, all at once reality hitting her as she close-up goes to examine his bandaged wound, only to find it iced up. With wild eyes, Anna looks up to Elsa, but the Ice Queen was too busy in her own world of trying to keep control of the awakening sea creature beneath the waves.

"Say nothing, Anna. Please." Touching a rigid hand to Anna's shoulder, Hans' ragged breath was sincere in its demand as he sees the Arendelle Princess about to inform her sister of his condition.

And that was the last thing he wanted to burden the fragile Queen with at this moment when she needed all the stability she could get.

Elsa looks to her companions with worry on her beautiful face after being satisfied with her ice cover over this floating chunk of the ocean for the time being.

"Please show no concern. It's a good thing your sister is such a fine field medic, Queen Elsa. It is but a minor scratch." Anna knew he was being deceitful, but she grudgingly admired him for it this time.

"But all this blood…?" Elsa motions her shocked hands down over the appalling squall of blood that had seeped through her snow and ice, coating this section of the iceberg a crimson red.

"Royal males are well known to be hemophiliacs. It's in the blood, so to speak." After trying to minimalize her worry with a jovial excuse that held no basis for him personally—the Danes well-known for their strong constitutions—Hans, with Anna's aid, rises to his feet. Despite the terrible deep wound cut that causes pain to shoot right up through his quivered spine. He smiles at Elsa in that disarming method he had of easing her mind.

"I'm sure it will heal soon, no doubt, due to Princess Anna's skilled ministrations." He reassures as he pats the band of fabric Anna had securely tied around Hans' upper thigh leg. The ice had it numbed to pain already as he gives the sisters a generous smile, sucking in air as he stands up straight and tall.

"Are we ready yet down there?! Because I'm just about – _argh -_ done at my end – _argh_ \- up here." Kristoff's tense voice calls down from where he had been on the deck of the Gler above winding the lever of its windlass winch. Using his massive display of pure raw musculature's rigid, well-formed offerings, Kristoff was purposefully reeling in the thick cable/rope that he and Sven had hauled up there.

The loose rope hanging down, now floating in the waters, was still attached to the harpoon head that the flaxen haired mountaineer had plunged into the vile creature's neck earlier. But Kristoff begins to slowly take up its tensioned slack, with faithful Sven in the rear.

"Ladies, I believe it is an opportune time for us to make a graceful exit from this floating iceberg you masterfully created. My Queen?" Hans lowers his head respectfully over to a knit-brow Elsa as he stands erect and ignores any residual pain in his thankfully ice blood clotted left side. He points Anna up to encircling Svala and the lively young Princess wordlessly hops onboard the reindeer. She even turns back to actually help the wounded Danish Prince join her on Svala's back behind her.

"Are you sure?" The timid Elsa's eyes snap open as she breaks her silent concentration over the continual ice field she was unnaturally forming on the surface of the summer Norwegian sea's warm current.

"As sure as I am about many things I had only dreamt of heretofore." Hans' cloudy eyes clear for a few seconds as he whispers warmly despite the cold chilling around the murmured walls of his slowly pounding heart.

Anna directs the champagne reindeer across the iceberg until they were hovering right over the Ice Queen's slender form.

"Come on! Elsa! Let's go!" Anna urges her reluctant big sister. But Elsa glances around, still uncertain if it was the best course of action for her to leave just now with the monster perhaps ready to awaken again and be loosed.

"Please trust me." Hans quite calmly and gentlemanly offers Elsa a gloved hand down from where he was behind a harried Anna on the female flying reindeer's back.

"But if I stop my ice, the creature will most likely break free –" Second-guessing herself at the last minute and turning back to her position of pouring her ice blizzard down upon the glacial floating iceberg, Elsa's insecurity still crept into her frosted subconscious. The bitter cold was surging its low temperatures in her body, making her cold and detached to go it alone again.

But moved by the constancy of his olive eyes, Elsa swallows hard as she stares deep into the green pools. Something behind those absinthe eyes called to her to follow him. Something beautiful and sparkling that she couldn't deny.

Elsa finally takes Hans' extended palm and uses a small amount of her cryokinetic powers to levitate onto the reindeer's waiting back.

Elsa leaves the iceberg and all the other heightened frozen powers that had been gnawing at her mental barriers behind as she squeezes her restless uncertain arms around the man's upper torso and firm shoulders for stability, both physical and emotional…

"Let 'er rip, Kristly!"

Vice Admiral Westergaard's stoic command is overwritten by bossy Anna's bright eyed order first up to her impatiently waiting husband.

_He is **my **fella! Only _**_I _**_tell him when to jump and he says: 'How high?'!_

And for his Anna, Kristoff Bjorgman could jump very high indeed.

"Ungh! Ungh! Ungh!" Swift as the wind, the Wind Whisperer calls upon all the elements at his disposal to add to the great physical strength in his upper body and to his hold over the crank handle.

With nature's fundamental forces the sun, the sea, the wind and the earth all lending strength to the Wind Whisperer to accomplish his goal. After he finishes reeling in the cable tail-line of the ratcheted spool mechanism, Kristoff then fiercely spins around the pulley handle of the windlass wench. He had been doggedly turning the maritime device to tighten up the slack of the rope dangling over the Gler's upper deck edge to where he had attached it to the 50 plus long-ton beast below where it had been plunged into.

"_**GR-ROARRWW!**__"_

The humongous monster, try as it might to pull back, only worsens the ingeniously designed barbed spike harpoon, made expressly for such big-game hunts as 60 to 70 long-ton whales, that Kristoff had placed in an advantageous spot.

In other words, where Hans told him to.

The customized hand darted harpoon was, for the studious young lieutenant who kept abreast of every new and exciting invention during the beginning of this Industrial Age, an amalgamation of many of his book read studies of varied researchers and theorists on the subject of capturing big-game sea creatures.

From Norwegian scientist Foyn's theory of the barbed explosion head and discharging rod, to Americans Moore and Brigg's invention of the glass hollow vile and iron pivot shank that friction set off to explode, the young naval scholar in Hans Westergaard was fluent with them all.

And with the materials the ship building stockyard of Salsbrucket had readily available, plus the experienced manpower aboard the Gler to follow his theoretical schematics thereof, this type of harpoon that Kommander Westergaard required would be a snap to have finished by the end of the Gler's voyage.

The timed detonation of a gunpowder explosive laced harpoon would instantly kill a beast of this size, or at least render it essentially brain-dead.

But this was, by far, no ordinary oceanic beast. So nothing could be overlooked as overkill, and all precautions were taken as necessary.

As the Gler's massive steam powered engine starts to pour on the coals to surge forward across the waves at increasing nautical knots, something inside the harpoon head begins to happen as the pressure against the remaining glass vial causes it to be crushed and crack open…

**_BA-BOOM!_**

"**EEWR-RKKK** **EE-EKKK**!

As the Draugen was near the surface of the waters just beneath the glacial ice that also was being dragged in the Gler's powerful steam engine wake along with the creature's frozen solid upper tentacles, the second vial filled with gunpowder rather than rum is crushed and friction released within the harpoon head. As it implodes upwards at its neck base, the Draugen's head is violently exploded apart.

Bits of ilky dark green seaweed and shredded vines catapult from the convulsing waters as the harpoon-snagged, near-destroyed Draugen remains subdued for a reconstituting regeneration of most of the back of the its blown off head.

Elsa and Anna, who were just about airborne enough to be safe upon Svala's ascending back with Hans sandwiched in between them, were not suitably distant to escape the squalling sea monster's deafening scream as it causes them to shudder.

The young women, turning towards one another, both end up clutching Hans' partly frozen chest in their hug's way. At least they lend more than a little heat between the three of them clinging to one another aboard a racing away Svala, who stumbles away after being bombarded with the disturbed sound waves .

The gooey oozing, seaweed chunks that smelled of burnt asparagus, pelt at the escaping threesome as they ride out the concussive explosion.

Though the shivering cold Prince was appreciative of the sisters' double body heated embrace, from behind and forward, Hans Westergaard could not let himself stick around to enjoy the Arendelle hospitality of the soft feminine variety, as much as his lethargic tired body wished he could indulge within its limits.

_But I mustn't be giving up to that gnawing inner instinct to let the overwhelming ice pervade my body… And lull me to sleep…_

_What did Anna tell me to do before?_ Hans' shivering, groggy and disoriented mind tries to recall some of what the gingerly firebrand of a little Princess had besmirched him with earlier that would pertain to the current situation. The synapses of his mind were intelligent enough to keep firing off information rather than give in to the slack-mind laziness of welcome repose that would certainly hail in the end game…

_Ah, yes! She said to: 'Man up!'_

_So that is what you must do, Westergaard! If just for Elsa…'Man up!'_

With a deep breath filling his nostrils with the salty sea air he loved, Hans was the first of the three of them to come back to his addled senses. He directs a disoriented Svala, whom a leading Sven had speedily flown from the deck alongside to use his big wet tongue to lick the doe's cheek to awaken her like a sweet Rangifer version of Sleeping Beauty. The fully conscious female reindeer is able to then land on the deck of the full steam ahead moving Gler, following her bull's lead.

"Do please pardon me, ladies." Steadying himself to leave, Hans, with a knowing smirk attempts a gentle push at Anna, who was partly turned around crumpling her face on his chest.

To Elsa, who had her closed weary eyes snuggling into the red bristle nape of his neck, Hans grants a meaningful tender squeezed shoulder as he gently, yet firmly attempts to extricate himself from their double sided comforting embrace.

But the Arendelle girls were a bit too sticky in their desperation for a warm hugs to make this an easy task.

After several sailors aided the ice harvesting powerhouse's securing of the lever winch's ratcheted spool in place with its strippers and cleats to maintain the constant tension, well-toned Kristoff had rushed over to where Svala was leaning to the strength of Sven's sturdy body.

"Anna! Enough of the hugging. You're safe now. You can let him go already." Deadpan Kristoff, droll more than jealous, instructs his little wife to un-entangle herself from her ex-fiancé's body that she was squeezing so tight that the man was wont for breath.

"While I do enjoy waltzing with a lady, this may not be the most appropriate time for a reel, m'lady…"

Kristoff rolls his eyes at how smooth the Danish Prince was, even in the heat of battle.

"Oh! Yeah! Like…yuck! How did that happen? Get away from me, Candyman!" Frazzled Anna gets quite repulsed and nauseated by the saccharinely sweet tone of Hans' over-sugary, too polite well-mannered tenor when she pops open her eyes at Kristoff's mellow voice only find her cheek smooshed to Mr. Hans Westergaard's increasingly cold shoulder.

His literal frozen cold shoulder.

Anna shakes herself fully awake from that chilling reality as she feels Kristoff's familiar big hands crawl all over to claim his bride from the reindeer by her hip and waist section as if she were weightless. Her strong husband lifts her straight up off Svala's still trembling back and into his muscular bare-chested embrace.

_That's more like it_.

Anna feels around and ogles her own piece of eye candy—the sundrenched peach of a golden Snow Prince for a few seconds. She collects her woozy wits against Kristoff's ripped muscular chest, reveling in the recently power pumped and flexed muscles he had used to winch that hundred foot plus tall several thousand pound sea monster, no less.

_Beat that, Hans!_ Anna's first impulsive saucy antagonistic thought is replaced by one she had not envisioned herself ever having for her former despised enemy.

_Concern_.

Hanging onto Kristoff's might, Anna's hesitant eyes watch the tentative scene playing before her with less animosity and more anxiety for the ultimate outcome.

Now, as for Elsa, the platinum blonde's depleted dizzy mind was at first content to be actually hugging another human person's warm torso for such an unregulated extensive amount of time.

_And in such close proximity of personal intimacy, too._

A dazed Elsa fuzzily muses to herself at the sheer pleasure of the sensation. Actually touching, without freezing the other recipient with her frigid fingers and cold nose, especially after all the stressed torment her fragile mind had just been through.

The smile on her face as her eyes were still closed was an ethereal pleasure to behold for Hans as he glances behind his shoulder. Elsa was feeling the control she was proud to hold her head high and profess, that she attributed to the Danish Prince of the Southern Isles' warmth of character and belief in her, not to mention his stunningly celestial profile, until she realizes all once that the cold chill wasn't emanating from inside of her…

"Prince Hans…?" Elsa gasps, pulling back from his frigid back with a suspicious eyebrow cocked at him when he too pulls away rather too rapidly.

Elsa brilliant blue eyes stare in disbelief of her greatest fear – of her ice harming someone dear, of that childhood terror of her innate powers going out of control and hurting someone she lov—

"All hands on deck!" Neither answering nor ignoring the Queen's unasked question either way as he gives her a dutiful nod, Hans abruptly shouts out the cool call to arms to his shipmates in a detached manner, right over Elsa's stunned head.

As he leaps his agile body from Svala's back to the Gler's deck, his air cool and dismissive, Hans had removed Elsa's two long fingernailed hands from their cozy position across his pecs.

The Ice Queen had been rubbing across his cold chest as if she were trying to ascertain if that slight touch of frost she felt even through his thick naval uniform's tunic and grey Arendelle cloak was as she feared.

"Men! We are the appointed custodians of a great and vital trust as we embark on this dangerous mission that we each have sworn to uphold the moment we pledged ourselves to this fine Navy under the command of her eminent Majesty, the Queen." As Hans addresses his gathered naval forces who were listening to him with rapt attention, he gives Elsa a deferential cool nod, as if they were not much more than passing acquaintances.

"We will, to every last sailor's vowed honor, defend our righteous ruler and this country we all love from this evil menace's threat to Norway's sea and shore alike. Even into the most treacherous waters we will sail to rid the nation of this foul invader. Will you stand by your sworn pledge to help vanquish this deadly beast on this, our course set for its final destruction? Under the rule of gracious Queen Elsa whose special abilities have been blessed upon her to protect her kingdom and her people by the Lord God Almighty? Are you with me, Sailors?" Hans quite clearly and eloquently addresses the twenty some brave men who had been running this fine Norwegian naval craft in volunteer service to their country's most urgent hour.

"Aye, Kommander!" As one voice, the naval men raise their saluting hands to their respected Captain with a rousing reply.

Tears well up in Elsa's eyes at the wonderful display of patriotism in each sailor's loyal tribute to their leader upon his stirring oration. The reserved young woman marveled at how the eloquent Prince held the group of rough men in rapt attention with his mesmerizing voice.

Vice Admiral Hans Westergaard, who proved indeed worthy of the position to inspire and lead her naval men of service, even into battle, garners a genuine smile of grateful pride, and more than a little admiration, from his Queen.

Pleased to see her confidence in him, Hans, most reverent of all, fully falls to his knees at Elsa's feet, his head pressed to the back of Elsa's palm with his forehead in utter veneration to his Queen.

"My men and I pledge our allegiance and the honor of this second-to-none exceptional ship to keep your bright kingdom safeguarded, Your Majesty. As God is my witness."

And despite the glory of national pride in her Navy, and this marvelous inspiring man she chose to command it, as well as her warmed heart, Elsa's smiles transmute into fears that are suddenly exacerbated by Prince Hans' intemperate cold brow pressed to her hand.

But moving away from the Ice Queen, Hans stands tall upon his tall black boots with a look of determination in his momentarily defrosted eyes.

"Helmsman Jan! Set a direct course to coordinates: 67° 44' 52"!" Vice Admiral Westergaard's clear tenor voice rings true across the top deck to carry into the wheelhouse.

"To the very heart of five converging bodies of water that intersect their strong currents, diverse temperatures and salinity factors with great amplitude of tidal force to create the greatest anomaly ever beset upon the ocean waves—"

"Make swift course for the Moskenstraumen!" The audible gasp proved every seaman's terror by a nightmare that each fearful mariner avoided on any vessel they traveled, and by any means circumvented with every ounce of their lives...

Their most terrifying _mareritt - t_he Maelstrom of legend- a nightmarish devouring chimera of raging chaotic waters that portended certain doom…

"Where we will drive the abomination into the ebony swirl of the dark abyss… May God help us all in our task we place before Him." Said now so soft and prayerfully that only Elsa could hear the whisper on his lips, Hans causes the Ice Queen's barraged mind and palpitating heart to beat all the faster in a dizzying mass of imaginary roiling eddies that converge into the depths of the ocean, fathomless kilometers below.

Elsa gazes down at the thirty inch long gleaming royal scepter she, at this moment, produces from beneath her long icy blue cape to clutch it her hand. As she gathers her powerful energies back with each new second the windchill brings her a gust, the blue ice diamond obscured within the golden crocus at the scepter's tip, begins a small glimmer with an unearthly light, as if responding to her prayer for fortitude…

* * *

_**Meanwhile, some skyward kilometers away…**_

_"'My faith looks up to Thee,_  
_Thou Lamb of __Calvary__,_  
_Savior Divine:_  
_Now hear me while I pray,_  
_Take all my guilt away,_  
_O let me from this day_  
_Be wholly Thine._

_May Thy rich grace impart_  
_Strength to my fainting heart,_  
_My zeal inspire;_  
_As Thou hast died for me,_  
_O may my love to Thee_  
_Pure, warm, and changeless be,_  
_A living fire.'_"

"Hmm..mmm?..._cough…cough_… Elsa?... _cough_!...Idun? Is our Snow Angel safe in her baby cradle? I imagine she's frozen her bottle solid again... Isn't she amazing, for such a tiny wee little lamb...?" On some subconscious level, his wife's lullaby transported him through time to more peaceful days when their first Christmas gift was born. Although now in the present, King Agdar's deep baritone was thin and frail to say the least. But it was so full of paternal love and pride and protection it made his weak voice sound yet strong.

For one terrible moment of teary-eyed prayerful silence, her song ceased, the older Queen of Arendelle knew not how to answer her wounded husband's anxiety filled escapism down memory lane. Because she too was incredibly worried about both their daughters who had grown up to be bold and daring young women, born to a modern new age that took life's reins in their own liberated hands –

"Idun? My Swedish Delight, please answer me! Where are our girls?!" The dazed demand of Agdar's urgent voice was building into a climax. For their great true love was so close and so pure still for this pair of relatively young sovereigns that the King knew his dear wife by even every breath in between her words left unsaid.

"Agdar, please try to stay calm. The girls have gone on ahead with their young men. Your wounds this time were quite severe and will require more healing sessions when I regain my strength. So please do not move around so sharply, my love. Your head—!" Queen Idun, in her quietest melodic tones, calmly tries to change the subject while stroking her injured lover's cheek softly.

But the King of Norway would have none of it, as he brashly sits up from his prone position across her lap in the flying Brougham carriage sleigh.

"— Is suffering from splitting headache. But that is nothing compared to what that young man out there driving this carriage east will suffer if he does not heed the express orders of the ordained King of Norway." As the grandiloquent man cradles his throbbing cracked skull that was yet in mid-repaired knitting, Agdar's quiet rumbling voice was even more frightening than his roar.

He was conscious enough to look around and see that both of his children were not present in the Snow Queen's borrowed flying carriage.

And this man of honor's first and greatest duty as a husband, and as a father, branded upon his heart from the day God gave his cold existence the miracle of a family to love and cherish, was:

'_To keep all three of his precious girls safe, no matter what the personal physical cost or hardship to himself.'_

Now that vow was circumspect since he was flying away from the raging battle that may – _Please God, No! –_ be cruel enough to take the pair of adored little girls away from his protection again.

"But, Uncle Agdar! You're too hurt right now. Please sit back for a little while. Don't worry. Hans is filling in for you as Admiral, right? So you can relax a bit. He's got you covered." Rapunzel tries to pacify her uncle with a tender and caring, yet patronizing brush back of the errant shock of caramel orange bangs that perfectly frame his handsome ginger features.

"ACTING CAPTAIN FITZHERBERT!"

But the Corona Princess is blown back with the fierce cold tone of King Agdar's subzero temperature bellow aimed up and above through the front communication window with the driver.

Whom would probably rather face the open air weather's harsh elements than that of a ferocious Ice King inside.

Rapunzel bites her lip as she trips backwards to where a quiet Job steadies her back to her bench seat beside that overgrown with wool puff of a furry lamb of hers that had taken an interest in nibbling upon his work.

Job had been carving at his mother's crucifix again, fashioning a figure upon the old, weather worn, rugged piece of wood as the dark Caribbean did in times of deep thought and soulful searching.

* * *

"Now, that can't be a friendly _'Hi, how're you doing out there? Need any help with the directions, Son?_' Can it?" A heavy lidded, jaded Flynn Rider comments to the chameleon companion balanced on his shoulder. Holding his end of the nautical map open that they had been studying for the past fifteen minutes of sky travel and one-sided arguing as to the best course to travel to Arendelle on the confusing, blasted map until the color changing lizard was a rainbow splotchy mess, Pascal shakes his head in total agreement.

"EUGENE FITZHERBERT!" This time at the condemning loud bellow, Eugene practically jumps out of his seat, letting go of his side of the rolled paper that slaps around the small green lizard who ends up, dizzy from being spun, inside its paper folds.

"We-ell! Good to see you up and so chipper after that pretty darn punishing slap-down wrestling event that you duked out with that big ugly bruiser. Am I right, your Ice Kinglyne—?"

"BE SILENT AND LISTEN FOR A CHANGE, young man!" The Royal monarch of Norway berates his overtalkative driver with vehement passion in every ice laden word.

"Turn this carriage around, immediately, sir! Head trauma, or no, I will not sit idly by and allow my little girls to be dragged into a life-and-death battle by a pair of irresponsible young rascals –" The old-fashioned, high-class King breaks into his haughtiest, most condescending manner, that could primarily be blamed on his pounding migraine plus skull fracture headache as ice starts to form upon his precariously defrosting, dashing and debonair mustache.

"Actually, Onkel - _Can I call you 'Onk_?- I never had a real live and kicking uncle before. Never had a family much before, until that little lady started taking in strays. And now a certain Sideburns practically adopted me, no doubt because of my stunningly handsome features and charming personality. Anyways!" Prattling at ninety words a minute, undaunted Eugene holds the reins with his one hand while he sticks his head close to the communication opening at the coach front.

As if it were all a perfectly normal conversation, the former thief comes out of his under breath mumbling that frigid King Agdar either couldn't have heard in his current state of head trauma, or chose to ignore for the utter banality of the man.

"Your precious little girlies were factually the ones doing the dragging – and threatening as well, if mine ears doth not deceive me – of those two fine examples of upright, good looking fellows since joining them to said battle, on moral grounds of defending this beautiful country that they love as selfless noble rulers. May I say, sir, you have raised a proud pair of young women who know their own mind – _and_ just happen to also be some pretty stunning beauties, along with their gorgeous Mama you got down there, if I do say so myself."

Although Flynn audaciously added that interesting semi-flirt at the end of his long paragraph tirade, King Agdar and Queen Idun look at each other and blink blankly.

Both find their irreverent nephew–in-law's speech an eye-opening glimpse of Elsa and Anna as they have blossomed in their own time, showing an independent streak in degrees that the antiquated stuffy royal ruler father of Arendelle simultaneously disdained—

And admired.

The undignified disdain stemmed from his strict, by-the-book upbringing by his own stern parents. But the admiration came when his icy blue eyes melt a few temperature bars upon locking with the woman who always spoke her own mind, was brazen with modern ideals, and had the strength and backbone to mentally hold him up, when he faltered.

Namely, the liberated wildflower of a wife he would adore unto his dying day: Agdar's Swedish delight named '_Idun'_.

Agdar and Idun share a forever stare as she reaches a soft hand to pet his injured skull beneath those voluminous waves of ginger hair she loved to play with. She gazes into the icy glistening of his sad eyes.

And all is understood between them without a single word needing to be said.

"Nephew!" Dignified, yet still that hoyden beneath the fancy womanly exterior, Queen Idun climbs up to stand on her tiptoes upon the coach's plush chair bench to speak to Eugene in a more personal, civilized manner than barking up screamed directions and orders at him.

"My husband's headache will never go away as long as he cannot rest." She starts out in that soft and pleading feminine tone.

"But there is no way in Hell - _pardon me, Lord_ – that either of us are going to rest on our laurels while our baby girls are in danger. So, do please turn this carriage around in quick pursuit of catching up to my brave dear children and their courageous young men before I direct my Agdar to frost freeze your sorry assets."

Demure little languid-eyed Queen Idun shocks both Rapunzel below and slack-jawed Flynn-er-Eugene and yellow belly streaked Pascal above with her at first introspective, that abruptly turning emphatic best impression of a dedicated mother hen needing to protect her little chicks who strayed from the barn with a pair of wild young roosters.

_Nevermind that cantankerous Ice King you got down there, Pretty Lady! Now I know, you're the real fire under his –_

"Yes, ma'am!" Eugene salutes at the Queen with verve. "Fasten your seatbelts, kids! Mama and Papa Bear are on their way to the party! Who cares what my kid brother is gonna say about it? This dynamic duo was rocking the royal house when little Sideburns was still in training pants swinging his little wooden toy sword around. No wonder they produced a duet of independent, powerful – and did I say drop dead gorgeous – young women to glimpse such spirit of pure will! Makes one proud to be a human being. Especially a devilishly handsome one."

And the self described handsome rogue pulls the reins back for the two flying horses to do a 180° hairpin turn. The carriage was already almost over the land mass continental shores of this beloved homeland.

_Damn, they're an impressive couple._.._I hope Blondie and I will still be that tight after so many years together.._.A 'written the riot act' Eugene peeks down into the coach to watch Queen Idun settling back onto on King Agdar's lap now, to keep the still shivering with spasmatic cold bouts Ice King warm, among other benefits.

Of one mind, the anxious parents snuggle close in murmured prayerful song for Elsa and Anna's well-being until they arrived. And in the opposite course correction, the Snow Queen's enchanted carriage soars with renewed purpose back west across the vast Norwegian Sea…

_'While life's dark maze I tread,_  
_And griefs around me spread,_  
_Be Thou my Guide;_  
_Bid darkness turn to day,_  
_Wipe sorrow's tears away,_  
_Nor let me ever stray_  
_From Thee aside._

_When ends life's transient dream,_  
_When death's cold, sullen stream_  
_Shall o'er me roll,_  
_Blest Savior, then, in love,_  
_Fear and distrust remove;_  
_O bear me safe above,_  
_A ransomed soul.'_

"My Faith Looks Up to Thee" 1842

* * *

_Mareritt_ – nightmare in Norwegian

_Onkel_ – Uncle in Germanic Prussian

* * *

Frozen: Again's at the 350,000 words+ mark!

Reviews are greatly welcome, Frozen Friends! Tell me what you think of this danger-filled, action packed chapter!

See you next week!

God bless you all!

HarukaKou


	56. Chapter 55 -A Descent into the Maelstrom

_We do__not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act IV**

**Chapter 55**

**"A Descent into the Maelstrom"**

_"But the yell that went up to the Heavens from out of the mists, I dare not attempt to describe…" 'A Descent into the Maelstrom' - Edgar Allan Poe _

* * *

The surface waters in the Lofoten section of the Vestfjorden Norwegian Sea were starting to swirl with its strong semi-diurnal turbulent flow caused by a number of multiple factors. Between the high wind velocity, driving layered currents, and the underwater deferential topography of five dispersing converging oceans, the great amplitude of the over 4 meter high tides twice a day's revolution were the product.

The peculiar shape of the seabed, the shallow range between the Moskensoya and Vaeroy Islands resulted in creating this most powerful, inexplicable anomaly of the sea.

The legendary Moskenstraumen was both feared for its almost unearthly power and respected for its unforgiving ferocity that had swallowed up many of vessel and killed many a sailor. Thus calling for any stouthearted maritime wanderer to steer clear of its twice a day 8 kilometer wide vortex of violent turbulence and danger, if he valued his life.

But Kommander Hans Westergaard of the Sjoforsvaret neither feared the danger as he doggedly steers the ship forward, nor valued his own life not to risk it all, if only for a certain pair of brilliant azure eyes…

* * *

_Speaking of which…_

"… Cold…So cold…Where am I?" Oddly shivering from the_ cold that never bothered her anyway_, the pale blonde haired young woman suddenly sits up to huddled position with arms wrapped around herself. It was almost as if she was feeling someone else shiver, right down to the depths of her bones.

Elsa perches daintily on the edge of an unfamiliar bed in the lower deck forecastle cabin area in the waist of the HmNos Gler. The minutes after she and Anna had been brought to the naval schooner on flying reindeer and horseback by a certain redheaded hero had gone by in a stupified blur.

It was an icy, defrosting blur after the Ice Queen's amazing courageous test of strength in staving off the fearful Draugen that they had all worked so hard together to capture.

"Elsa? You okay?" Vigilant Anna had been watching over her sister and had been pacing like a caged animal in the captain's cabin since that Kommander Westergaard just **had** to personally carry the dazed sovereign to lie on _his_ own **_bed_** to catch her breath.

_Oh well. At least Elsa was too spazzed then to notice Hans' super super low body temperature…_

"We're here in Hans' room – _erm_ – the_ captain's _cabin – so you could take a breather after that amazing job you did down there freezing that monster's sorry butt." After stumbling at the mention of **his** name, Anna proudly states her older sibling's triumph over adversity. The perky younger female sits down to the bed and hugs her trembling sister to generously rub some friction warmth onto Elsa's chilled arms.

"How long have we been aboard ship? I must've passed out a while back. My throat is so dry." Elsa's shaky voice asks in a more stable tone than she felt inside, experiencing a cool ache in her heart that she couldn't quite explain.

"… About 23 minutes… I'd say." The braided girl answers, gazing out the cabin window. Anna had learned to tell time at a very early age when she often had nothing better to do than watch the clock's hours tick by far too many long lonely hours without a playmate or friend.

"I'll go get you something to drink. Be right back, Elsie. You just rest." Anna presses a warm hand to Elsa's cool cheek and smiles as she scurries to fetch her poorly sister a pail of water from somewhere in the ship's lower galley.

Almost as soon as Anna leaves though, Elsa stabilizes her long legs to stand from the captain's stately bed to stumble back into her icy high heels, her mind whirring.

Still a little woozy, she accidentally knocks into the small end table stand at the cabin bedside. Her hand that had gripped the edge to steady herself had also dislodged a well-worn copy of the Good Book that had been left opened to a specific page. A passage of it was dog-eared turned over to read a holy verse: _'I have set the Lord always before me. Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken_.' Psalm 16:8.

And then, there was another, purposely bookmarked with a torn in half page of a naval harpoon schematic: "_Cast your burden upon the Lord – He will sustain you; He will never allow the righteous to fall.'_

The other half of the page was carefully folded to show the bolstering words: '_Surely God is my salvation. I will trust in Him and not be afraid. The Lord is my strength and my song. He has become my salvation."_ Isaiah 12:2

Her glazed over eyes open to clearly read the verses that had been perspicuously marked out by the most recent occupant of the Captain's cabin.

But this time an enlightened Elsa did not feel guilty for prying into a certain young man's personal walk with the Lord. She was glad to see he was still living it, and held all the more admiration for Prince Hans and the higher wisdom he sought in his private times of duress.

Reading the verses on her heart, Elsa, too, felt exactly what these Scriptural words were inspiring her to be able to do. She just had to hold on to enough courage to stand and face the nightmare one more time again.

Armed with her faith and reassuring phrases that repeat over again in her mind, with St. Olaf's holy sceptre clutched tight in her right hand, Ice Queen Elsa leaves the captain's cabin to stride into the Gler's lower deck hall.

Up the companionway steps, she turns many sailors' surprised heads. The volunteer Sjoforsvaret navy men who were keeping watch standing guard near the railing over the captive creature were either too awed to move a muscle to stop her, or too obedient of the Queen who silently ordered them to stand down with a raised halting hand.

Graceful as a dove and swift as a cat, Elsa cuts across to the edge of the top deck's aft stern until she was gazing down at the mystically reconstructing sea monster that was being dragged along the schooner's undertow wake by the thick harpoon hemp rope and sturdy cables.

The Draugen was not yet conscious after the powerful implanted explosives that Hans and Kristoff, working together, had inflicted upon it before, and the monster was subjugated for now.

Queen Elsa intended to keep the grotesque beast who was the embodiment of a repulsive human being, that way for good.

_"_You can do this, Elsa. You can do this_. I will not be shaken."_ The young woman murmurs to herself the psalmist's quote she'd just been reminded of. She begins to form an icy ramp beneath her feet like second nature to easily flow over the edge of the ship's rail.

"Elsa! Wait! What are you doing?!" Anna cries out as she dashes and trips over her own feet upon the aft deck. After returning to the captain's cabin, only to find it vacated, the orangey girl panicked. She shoves the drink of water in her hand over to a midshipman nearby though it had long since splashed all over the deck as she leans over the Gler's rail to watch her sister bravely float down on her mid-air ice platform.

"Exactly what Papa would do if he were here now! I must protect our nation – our people – in Papa's place, while it's still vulnerable and weak." Elsa puts on a brave voice to answer her terrified sister as the Ice Queen mentally lowers her cryokinetic ice dais towards the dark churning ocean below.

Elsa levitates herself upon her created ice closer to the dormant Draugen below until she was only a few feet away from its glowing with dark energy exploded head that it was still in the process of regeneration.

"Elsa! You're acting crazy! That's my job! Get back up here! Kristoff! Help!" With wild eyes scanning around the deck from each shocked sailor's face to face, Anna shrieks for her other soulmate to come and talk some sense into this one.

The mountain man had gone below earlier to secure the pairs of reindeer and horse teams with wobbly ship legs, even for this short stint that he himself wasn't sold on yet. After all, the mysterious predictions of those 3 Old Saami way back when who spoke of him having some vital role as '_Christ-bearer' _in defeating this dreaded '_Bielgomai'_— the foretold fearsome sea monster of Lapp legend— had been nagging at the back of his mind for a while now.

_But what can I do versus that big ugly sea creature?__ Shoot it with this little bow and arrow? It didn't seem to make a difference before. Let's face it_. _I'm still just a nobody mountain man/ Ice Harvester that a special little Princess took a shine to._

Though a confident boy by nature – literally – Kristoff Bjorgman still maintained the levelheaded inner modesty and realism with no delusions of grandeur that truly became a Snow Prince as he pats the quiver of the Saami longbow strapped to his bare chest beneath his black cape.

He would always go the extra mile for his Anna. So that meant going the extra-extra mile for the sister dearest to his girl's heart, too.

Distinctly hearing his frantic little wife's desperate voice through their psychic link in his mind, Kristoff bounds up the companionway steps three at a time.

He arrives at the aft deck in record speed as he tugs his spirited little caramel crème back from the railing Anna was practically doing a balancing act upon in monitoring her daring sibling below.

"ANNA! STAY HERE! I'll go!" Kristoff's normally mellow voice commands as he goes to take matters into his own capable hands and climb over the railing to retrieve the ballsy blonde bombshell.

"Keep her from tumbling over, guys! You hear?!" The mountaineer gruffly addresses the group of sailors who were looking on the scene as he scales the rope attached to the Draugen's glowing neck and climbs downward.

As he climbs down, Elsa appeared to him to be indecisively just hovering over the shadowy monster just beneath the crashing waves as the speeding forward Gler was dragging the dark ilky beast in mid-regeneration along.

"Elsa! What on earth are you doing?!" Hanging down at her level on his rope, Kristoff needed to yell above the din of the crashing waters mere feet below them, not to mention the vicious incapacitated sea monster in all of its regenerative convolutions and gurglings and growling just underneath the foaming surface of the ocean, to be heard.

"Kristoff! As Queen of this country, I have to try to do this! This may be my only chance to get this close to this evil menace after you and Prince Hans have incapacitated it here!" Elsa pleads with her brother-in-law with hope-filled determined eyes.

"I don't know if it makes any sense, but if you read between the lines of the old skaldic verses that Papa used to read me from the old sagas of our ancestors when I was little, this holy sceptre, that once belonged to our great leader King Olaf II, not only symbolizes power and dominion over all the land, but also wields some great ancient powers. I can feel its energies surging right through my fingertips now as we speak! It's as if this holy relic has been calling to me to help stop this looming threat and rid the world of this scoundrel once and for all! If only I could channel the sceptre's mysterious energy source now while the Draugen's still weak. I know I must stop this creature from regenerating and reduce its energy level before it hurts anyone else." There were tears in Elsa's blue eyes as she describes the pain she felt for her countrymen's dreadful losses she'd witnessed not an hour ago.

Almost tentatively uncertain at what she must do, but determined to give all her strength and vigor to fulfill her destiny in defense of her country, Elsa thrusts the thirty inch long golden sceptre down towards the awful cacophony of the polluted regurgitating beast below the murky cold waters.

"On behalf of my proud nation and all those who held this precious holy relic before me, I hereby banish your abomination from this land!" Taking a deep breath before pronouncing a sentence upon the foul creature, Ice Queen Elsa holds out the sceptre boldly, followed by a quiet prayer: "Please God, give me strength to defeat my enemy in Your Holy Name." With a pure heart in her beseeching soul, Elsa focuses all her mind and powers to recall every historical battle and fabled tale of daring courage of the past that documented her forebears gone by in ancient days of legend when the sceptre was used as a weapon to dole out punishment upon the wicked that threatened this great God-fearing land before…

St. Olaf's century-old holy sceptre begins to glow with an eerie icy blue light from the center of its hidden recessed golden head.

And the Draugen reflexively shrinks back in fear of this immense unknown power...

**_HHUUMMMMM…_**

**_GLLL-OOWWW…_**

But just when it appeared as if the ice-blue diamond secreted in the golden crocus center of the sceptre's pinnacle was about to work some miracle, it just as suddenly ceases the palpitating unearthly shades of the iridescent blue over the dark evil shadow beneath the spumes. So, the disgruntled Draugen returns to its rejuvenating gestation, undaunted and seemingly unharmed.

"But… That was… It should have affected the creature more… " In a daze of utter disbelief, an energy drained, stunned Elsa shakes her disappointed head and the now unresponsive sceptre both in frustration.

As the Draugen begins to lash out its vines outward uncontrollably, Kristoff grabs a disoriented and distressed Elsa by her slender waist and climbs the rope with one powerful arm. The strong mountaineer carries the saddened, staggered young woman back up the rope to the Gler's top deck.

Alerted by some of his more brazen sailors who dared to defy the Ice Queen, Hans had dashed out of his hectic bridge duty station to see what the ruckus on deck was just as Kristoff was climbing to bring Elsa back up.

Kristoff was grateful that the capable redhead was there to lift Elsa over the ledge, even when all the other sailors kept a respectful, somewhat frightened, distance from the powerful Ice Queen. Each man seemed afraid to touch her alluring physicality for fear of getting frostbitten.

But former Prince Hans of the Southern Isles never was intimidated – nor hesitant of the young woman who wielded wondrous power.

"Queen Elsa! I must insist that you stay aboard the ship! It is far too dangerous down there and that rejuvenating, latent power creature is far too wild to dally with. As I informed the crew earlier, please allow your capable, loyal Naval officers to take down this monster by _our_ methods. Princess Anna, please return your sister to my quarters to rest." In that sententious, imperious bordering on impertinence, voice, Hans gives the sanctimonious, commanding order.

"You did get it to do that cool glowing blue light-uppy thing, Elsie." Encouraging Anna sprightly tries to comfort, with a placating arm around her sibling. But Elsa was despondent of her failure as the royal heir of great responsibility and power that she knew not how to control her birthright.

_Control… Always I'm chasing that word…_

"Queen Elsa, your strength hasn't returned enough yet to be used to do something as foolish as risking your esteemed and irreplaceable self in danger at such a close proximity to that behemoth! I must forbid you to make any further attempt to –" As he held her weak body that was actually shaking in his arms, Hans felt the weight of his responsibility to protect the beauteous susceptible queen in her father's place, exquisitely sharp and cold against his frosted heart.

Hans is disturbed to hear his own words affected by the cold ice running through his veins as he unwisely articulates without the tact and eloquence the young Dane usually commanded.

"Stop! I am still the Queen, Kommander. This is **my** country! **My** people whose lives are at stake here! **My** ancestors used this sceptre to defeat their foes! It should have worked! It would have worked for Papa… He would've known how to wield it…" Elsa, in self-doubt and shame anew, trembles even more after upbraiding the Danish Prince whose arms she was embraced in. She wrings her hands clutching the golden rod until it falls uselessly to her side.

"Please excuse my unbecoming and inexcusably crude forwardness, your Majesty. I am only expressing my concern for your current safety and well-being. I am, by no means, undercutting your authority." Going back to the over polite address and curt apology, Hans carefully releases Elsa's slender body to the deck under her anxious sister's waiting care.

"Princess Anna, please walk your sister along the deck for sufficient fresh air to clear her head." In a more respectful way, Hans shows his concern for the two independent girls he felt a great responsibility for, now more than ever that their father placed him in command.

"Take some deep breaths, Queen Elsa. The salty sea air will revitalize you soon." Prince Hans fights the overwhelming urge to extend a hand out to touch her pallid cheek or even a wan smile. Instead, more dismissively he turns a cold eye to an insecure Elsa whom he passes over to Kristoff to escort the sisters down to the lower deck below.

"Keep her warm, Anna." The Vise Admiral of the fleet more orders than asks in a detached, rigid tone, as he coolly passes by Elsa's knit-brow little sister. Anna's keen eye watches as a white streak begins to frost a large tuft of Hans' hair in his strident indifferent path back to the bridge wheelhouse.

"You, too, Hans." Softly Anna affords her archenemy an anxious bitten lip as she hugs a tender arm around her older sister and tries to smile.

"Why do you say that?" Elsa, although physically drained and emotionally, mentally deflated was still lucid enough to detect that odd touch of sympathy coming quite unexpectedly from her little sister for the Southern Isles Prince.

"Because, it's awful drafty in that 'ole wheelhouse! Brrr! Now, march, big sister! And breathe in that salty sea air like your _Kommander_ instructed!" Anna feigns to shiver as she pushes Elsa's uncertain suspicions, on some cognitive level, across the Gler's top deck strakes towards the companionway stairwell below.

* * *

Feeling a profound sense of coolness, but combating it from inundating his clever quick-paced mind by mentally reciting his deduced algebraic equations of geometry, trigonometry, calculus and their effects on the nautical maritime cartography of this distinct region's anomaly, Hans had gone back to the helm of the vessel, maneuvering the HNoMs Gler with his own frozen cold hands and applied intellect.

Earlier, he had relieved young helmsman Ensign Jan from this unpalatable task that only a leader should undertake the full responsibility thereof. For there were more than a few lives on board this ship that Hans Westergaard did value the further existence of, even if he felt, even more so now, that his own worth was a questionable thing.

The Danish Prince's once vividly viridescent green eyes, despite the frosted haze that coated them with verglas cataracts of a sort, adjust from their steady gaze over the steering column upon the sea just beyond the coordinates of the Mosken island shore.

His cool set jaw softens into a smile as he periodically catches glimpses of a certain platinum blonde beauty who replaced any real want of sunlight's rays for him in this dusky hour of the Midnight Sun sky.

Queen Elsa, resplendent in her light cerulean blues Ice Queen garb as she strolled the deck on her sister's arm, was the recipient of the attentions of more than a few of the crewmen out of the corner of their supposedly industrious, bedazzled eyes.

_I will have to have a serious talk that may involve some galley duty with several of my men later on. After all, 'idle hands are the devil's workshop; idle lips are his mouthpiece'…'_

But their ship's Kommander neither blamed nor forgave the virile young men who were not so _idle_ in gazing upon the shapely young lady with an unquenched longing he understood all too well.

Although, Hans' jealous cold heart was abated a few degrees by his red hot temper on this point, his precision mind that had been assessing his perilous options was diverted a few ticks to glare at each approving smirk he wished to rub off those sailor's faces as they greedily drink in the pale beauty's none-too-modestly displayed curves.

"So, what's with this **big bad whirlpool** that's got everyone on board spooked?" Kristoff Bjorgman's calming down-to-earth voice brings Hans back down from his all too human – and all too male – fantasizing of the comely young woman and the envious green of his eyes upon every other mariner starved for such a pleasing pound of feminine flesh.

"Oh, yes – ahem—" Clearing his guilty throat, Hans' cloudy eyes have to physically force themselves to focus back to where he, as ship's Captain, was supposed be angling the vessel to some precise location in the open sea. The Dane purposely must wrest his gaze away from his incessant jealousy of other men eyeing _his_ Queen Elsa's lovely delicate moves as Anna strolled her elegant tall sister along the top deck for some sea air as per his instruction.

"— We have taken point of sail and safely navigated around the island's shoals. We are currently leeward of the nautical range directly abeam of the lat-long compass coordinates towards the latter half of the diurnal tides. There, the Moskenstraumen maelstrom begins to come and play with it violent deadly surges where we will deliver the monster into the vortex force. And optimistically before that Draugen manages to fully reconstitute itself again."

Hans speaks in those regal pompous tones with fancy Navy terms that the simple mountainman was quietly listening to. However, Kristoff had already reasoned that the uppity Prince was using all those high-faluting words to try to convince himself more than anyone else that he had full control of the situation and risky game plan scheme.

"You're scared that this won't do it, aren't you?" The intuitive Wind Whisperer states after a few silent seconds of scrutinizing reflection. Kristoff had been staring across the bridge at the other man who was clutching at a worn-out map, scribbled on from frequent use of study in one shaky hand.

The younger man's normally gruff and coarse tones with other men – this one especially – transmutes into a more familiar sympathetic analysis. Kristoff closes the door of the wheelhouse he entered into furtively when its young helmsman who Hans had relieved went scurrying through the exit to fulfill an order from his silently cool, impassively austere Kommander.

The big blond takes a step further into the interior of the naval schooner's roomy bridge moments after Hans had tersely ordered his coxswain, Ensign Jan, to go on deck and inform the first mate and other duty officers of the ship's itinerary status.

Even without using any of his mental tapping abilities, the observant Kristoff could sense that, for all Westergaard's bluster and speechifying earlier – he still was a young man like himself, with only so much genuine confidence to splash around.

"Fear is not an emotion worthy for the Kommander of any seaworthy craft." Kommander/ Vice Admiral Westergaard responds in a cool detached manner to the young Ice Harvester who owned a wisdom far beyond his 23 years of age.

"And neither is evasion of a frank question." Kristoff stares Hans the right in the eye.

"Look, all the sea critters down there are so terrified of getting sucked into this spot in the ocean, that they won't come in miles of any direction from here. So I get it. You're not on your own here." Relaying his mental link with the creatures of the ocean below, Kristoff runs a hand across the metal implements and instruments filled wheelhouse where so many devices totally foreign to the rugged mountainman were adorning every cranny of the ship's bridge.

Now, as for the lifelong Navy man named Hans Westergaard, who had just brushed off the straightforward query with a non-answer, everything from the cavitate bell to the magnetic compass to the gyroscope and binnacle across from the communication and voyage systems at the instrument panel was almost second nature.

It was the convulsing sea itself just ahead of the Gler that had the usually composed, self-possessed sedate young royal seaman well…unhinged.

Hans turns to the front view screen window to face Kristoff, the look on the Dane's face full of tense cogitation.

But it wasn't the sincerely earnest somber gaze on the redhead's undeniably introspective expression that gave Kristoff new cause for anxiety.

The few white frosted strands of hair here and there that had now turned into an over one inch thick streak had wormed its way across the left side of his coiffed hair's front wavy fringe straight back and down the length of his head.

"Hans? You feeling okay? Not…too cold…or anything?" The rational Ice Harvester, lifelong mountain man had seen too much of this type of ice magic not to recognize a frozen heart when he saw it.

But the blunt man was at least attempting to broach the subject tentatively, had Hans not been aware of his condition yet.

"Yes. My heart was struck and had been frozen when she lashed out in anger earlier. Kristoff, I do not wish to burden Queen Elsa with my trouble. Do you understand me? As Kommander of this ship, I judge that she does not require regard nor awareness of it." As if not talking about his own peril, Hans coldly states the facts as he turns back to the wheelhouse's front window panel then stares again at the incoming dark swirls of the sea ahead.

"… Right…" Put in his place distinctly with no room for argumentative recourse, Kristoff considers the measure of brutal honesty versus tactful wisdom and decides to go with the latter of the two with his own hands-on approach.

"Then you'd better start wearing one of these_, Kommander_." Practical Kristoff moves across the bridge to the Gler's officer coat rack in the far corner of the bridge. There, he scoops up a Navy officer's hat that some of the other men were trying on for size in their well coiffed Kommander's off-duty hours.

"What are you doing?! Leave me be, sir!" After coldly barking the haughty, pretentious invective, the ice seeping into his soul making him edgy and ill-tempered, Hans peers up from adjusting the wide brimmed white and dark blue brimmed Navy officer's hat with the Sjoforsvaret wreathed crocus symbol in gold on his badge that Kristoff had brusquely laid atop Hans' indignant redhead.

"I've been hanging around her castle for the past two years, pal. Elsa's no dummy when it comes to noticing things. If you want to be the silent strong type, you'd better keep that hat on or she'll find out for sure in a second with that snow white streak in your hair."

Unperturbed by the insult, as the thoughtful blond acknowledges his rival's tribulations, Kristoff makes the definitive statement. He had lived side-by-side with Anna's older sister long enough to know personally that the prim young woman noticed everything about the details.

If his clomping patched boots had been through the mud as he walked into the chapel on Sundays; whether his new silky shirt that she had personally picked out for him for a Christmas present had tear in the elbow; right down to whether he and malodorous Sven had taken a bath lately – Elsa and her sharp artistic eyes_ knew._

A change this drastic in Mr. Suave Hans Westergaard's normally pristine appearance surely wouldn't go unnoticed, even more so by her. Observant Kristoff had seen the way his sister-in-law had been regarding this good-looking man all along their journey when she thought no one else was aware.

"Does it look that bad?" Prince Hans still _did_ have that little nudge of vanity that kept his clothing impeccable and sideburns well trimmed as he raises the naval officer's hat to smooth back any traces of that frozen white streak creeping across his hair beneath its wide brim. Pushing back the crusty cold ice streak, Hans asks his companion's opinion of his bi-colored tresses' attractive appeal.

"Why is that always the first question? And no, I did not hesitate. You even sound like her." Kristoff mutters to himself as he recalls his own guilty retort to his kooky female companion that was just crazy enough to take on another hundred foot tall monster with blatant disregard of the dire consequences for herself after their first day together.

_You two gingers have more in common than either of you would likely care to admit._

('I never met someone who thinks so much like me! Jinx! Jinx again!')

_Now why do I find that totally scary, Anna?_

* * *

"I know I saw my Kristly rustling about here SOMEWHERE!" As if on cue, Anna's melodic voice echoes conspicuously into the bridge's porthole window loudly enough to make a man choke.

**_Cough! Cough!_**

Kristoff starts going into a coughing fit that prompts Anna, who had been attempting (and miserably failing) to eavesdrop in on the conversation in the wheelhouse all while keeping Scuttle chattering with Elsa on deck, to make her entrance.

The friendly seagull may have been one of the only of nature's creatures foolhardy – or just plain crazy – enough to keep pace with the steam-powered ship madly heading straight towards the certain doom of the dreaded Moskenstraumen.

As Scuttle was flirting with Elsa to the amusement of all the sailors around, Anna had been trying to convince her sister that everything was going to be just peachy. She had been discreetly waylaying her sister from entering the bridge wheelhouse unannounced.

"There, there, Kristly! I'm here!" Anna barrels through the door to whack her convulsing hubby so squarely back that he starts gasping for air anew.

"Nice hat, Red." The wide-eyed girl comments on the side as she gives her guy a sideways smirking glance and knowing wink.

"Yes. You do look very… _inspiring_… in that naval officer's hat, Kommander Westergaard." With the intent to make amends, though many other terms race through her impressed mind that was still glossy, even after all that refreshing sea air, Elsa tries to smile. Memories flood in of how fine Papa looked in his full uniform when she was younger and how proud seeing him made her to be Norwegian.

_Just as Prince Hans does now._ Elsa shyly adds her own tribute as she joins her noisy sister into the open bridge door. She hoped that their little tense momentary tiff before had passed for him as it did for her, as she gazes upon the uniformed man with admiration more than with concern. She did not see a certain tale-tell white frosted streak in his titian hair that would have, no doubt, caused the already anxiety-ridden young Queen more angst.

"I am fortuitous still to meet with some of your approval, your Majesty." Hans bows his head with nothing more than a sad weak smile and courteous nod before he reluctantly turns to keep his eyes trained on the wave crashing sea, where soon all of their attention is drawn.

"The wind's starting on the move out here! Sqwaukk!" The dizzy bird was about to become even dizzier as the spinning winds above the deck of the Gler start to howl with a strange unrest as the vessel moves closer to the heart of this Norwegian sea's most inexplicable anomaly.

The ocean begins to pick up turbulence and roil ahead when these strong early August winds carry with them a high amplitude of tidal currents adding to the growingly intense free vortex.

"How long before the maelstrom becomes too strong for the ship to sustain –?!" Elsa had to raise her quiet voice a decibel to be heard above the booming waves hitting again the side of the Gler as she starts to pose the pertinent question. That's when the tall dashing figure at the helm of the ship interrupts, quite frigidly.

"—Soon enough. But that has always been in my foremost calculations, your Majesty. I would insist on strongly advising you and your sister to immediately vacate the Gler upon your airborne rides, so my men and I can work unencumbered to the task at hand, unfettered of concern for your welfare."

Hans answers in a far more abrupt manner than his reassurance had first intended to sound. But the cold was starting to overwhelm his weary, rigid body and took on this clipped unaffected air rather than give in to the chilled uncontrollable freeze entirely.

Securing his Navy hat upon his head all the tighter, Hans brusquely turns back to his cold stare at the darkened view screen ahead, never once meeting Elsa's distressed eyes upon him

"Ookay… Let's go see if we can find Scuttle before he blows away in the gusty tailspin, that silly bird!" Anna tries to lighten the mood as she grabs Elsa's upper arm and drags her out the bridge door to go hunt for their seagull friend.

But not before she mouths urgently to her husband: '_Do something, Kristly!'_

"Hans?" Unflappable, responsible Kristoff takes a step closer to the back of the hypothermic man at the wheel of his vessel.

"Prepare to deliver the women from the ship, Mr. Bjorgman, on your flying reindeer and horses, now that they are rested for the journey. My men and I will take sanction the monster's deployment into the heart of the maelstrom without need of further worry of the ladies' delicate sensibilities." Kommander Westergaard responds with neither affection nor malice.

Simply cold, hard logic.

"But if your scheme to dump that Draugen into the whirlpool doesn't get rid of it, you'll need Elsa's ice powers to at least suppress it again! There must be another way, man! You can't do this alone!" Kristoff argues, shaking Hans shoulders to make him see reason.

But the ice cold impression that the pensive Danish Prince's thin icy form gives off, even through thick layers of his Navy tunic, jacket and Arendelle cloak, causes Kristoff to let out a shocked gasp.

"You're wrong there, Mr. Bjorgman. I thought before, perhaps, but I can see now that there is no other way. With all my precise map plotting, wave course measurements and wind velocity charting, I believe this ship may be able to utilize some rather unorthodox close hauling techniques and angle trimmed sails to broach our heading and deposit the creature in the midst of the vortex's most violent section. And then hopefully be able to ride the backwash up from the tempest again to safe waters." Hans succinctly explains his plan to Kristoff as cold ice puffs spew from his overthinking mind's revelations.

"And if that doesn't work to stop this malevolent monster from gorging on the land and seas of her beautiful nation, I do have a secondary effective backup plan, as I always do." Defying the philosophical consequences playing in the back of his mind, Hans stiffens his posture as he stands tall and straight, frozen cold with foreboding breaths of ice to reveal his rudimentary backup plan –

"May God help these brave men if I am forced sink the Gler to a watery grave with their unworthy wretch of a Captain in retribution for my sins. But, for Queen and country, we will all go down fighting this evil menace with every last breath of our being." At this inglorious thought of innocents being punished for his crimes, at his discretionary choice, Hans suppresses an inherent shiver.

"Yet it was their choice to render aid in vanquishing this unholy, mendacious creature, for the honor of their nation, even at their own peril. I will order the men to the lifeboats once their task of letting seawater into every valve and hatch below in the hull is complete. I pray to God for me be the only one to die this day along with that wicked Draugen as we're dragged down into the brutal ebony vortex. Two vengeful souls sealed to their fate and sentenced to a deserved parallel execution." Hans' disdainful shrewd mind and arbitrary alacrity of his subjective aloof words startles Kristoff at the impassioned cold dispassion behind the remorseful man's nearly ice blue-white eyes.

"Leaving them endangered in the midst of the maelstrom's tempest, can I ever wipe my hands of even one lost sailor's sacrificial blood?" His guilt unpretentiously convoluted, Hans tugs off one white glove to stare at his already blood-stained, yet lifelessly pallid white chilled hand in horror.

"Come on, Westergaard! Get a grip! It's just the bitter cold in you doing the talking! Elsa can ice that monster until we can figure this all out! Maybe I can get you back to Grandpabbie and the trolls and they can fix it if only your head or your leg was struck—" The kind boy in Kristoff compassionately tries to reach out sufficient words of support and aid to the shuddering young man standing across from him.

"No, Kristoff! Their magic will not apply to me. I am certain it is my heart that has been pierced by her ice. But she must never know. Promise me. **SHE MUST NEVER BE TOLD.** Do you understand?" Hans pivots around on his tall booted heel to look Kristoff directly in the eye.

"You saw what happened to Queen Elsa before when this despicable monster nearly destroyed her when her overwrought emotions took control. Whether it be Heaven by our Lord's Grace, or Hell that I so richly deserve that is awaiting me, I cannot ever again permit her to be ravaged by this demon pirate who so detrimentally abused and unjustly injured and held captive her dear parents, the good King and Queen of Arendelle for so long. Not for one second more. Not when I have the ability to trounce this iniquitous creature of pure evil once and for all, without risking her fragile emotions. If only I can hold on for a few minutes more." The lamenting, driven Prince understood the tantamount importance of taking down this villain for Queen Elsa of Arendelle's country, family, and her delicate psyche.

"Let me do this for her. As I know you would do for the one you love." The bitter cold ice may have been eating muscle by tendon and limb by organ up through Hans Westergaard's entire slender frame, but that spark of loving care he truly felt in the deepest reaches of his hidden heart, engraved by burning embers for Queen Elsa, is able to continue on with fortitude on his final mission to preserve her pure innocence and that of the people she loved.

"All right. I can't stop you from going gung-ho in doing what I know I would do in your place for Anna. But remember one thing, Hans—" The honest man in Kristoff couldn't dispute nor fault this formerly conniving Prince's honorable reasons for sacrificing his life by scuttling his ship and drowning the heretofore insuperable monster straight into the convulsing Moskenstraumen along with him.

"—'_Only an act of true love can thaw a frozen heart.'_ Kristoff carefully repeats the wisdom of what he heard Granpabbie impart over two years ago when his Anna was suffering the same ill fate by ice clutching her most vital organ.

"Then, perhaps, the sentiment I feel in my heart for her will not allow me to be an entirely frozen dinner for the bottom feeders of the ocean floor to devour as they feast on my bony carcass. But if that Draugen is ripped asunder and consumed at my side, my worthless life may at least count for some good at last. Wherever this maelstrom that we are standing at the ebony threshold of decides to scatter my inferior physical form to its final end, God's justice be done." In cold, chilling, self deprecating terms, Hans graphically describes his violent death wish by means of swallowed up, thrashed and demolished sunken ship into the eerie black spiraling vortex of every mariner's worst doom.

"Ookay. Sounds like you've made your mind up there. Any last request messages to send out before you drown yourself like a God-fearing, honest man should?" Now, as he runs his big hands through his tousled blond hair, Kristoff **did** mean to sound mockingly condescending. For Troll mama Bulda had made sure she raised her adopted son to be of the opinion that God was the only One who had the right to decide when and where and how each of us lived or died.

_But I'm no expert. This guy is more of a Bible scholar than me, the way he can quote Scripture by chapter and verse. And he's way more experienced with ships and the sea as a naval officer. And he does have a point about protecting Elsa and keeping her country safe._

_"_Yes, dear Lord, please forgive a lowly wretch for still being so selfish. But I do wish to say something to her." Hans was holding conversation with Kristoff even as he orders through the engine room telegraph to the able crew in the decks below to '_adjust to a -20 degree rudder'_ before steering the Gler into the crashing currents of the foaming maelstrom as the Moskenstraumen's semi-diurnal tides really start to build their deadly whirlpool nearby.

The adept Naval officer, while keeping a tensed, partly frozen muscle to the ship's wheel at maximum hard rudder to add to the Gler's revolving turn directly into the swirling part of the dark ocean vacuum, continues to speak.

"— Tell Queen Elsa of Arendelle," Huffing out the heartfelt words between his cold breaths, Hans Westergaard begins to formulate the million unspoken thoughts that were racing through his mind, straight from his heart to his trembling bluish purple lips, even as he continues to steer his angling vessel into the dark abyss, already taking into account the huge creature's weight starting to struggle against the hull.

The devilish monster yet attached to the Gler's schooner held by thick hemp rope and a sturdy cable wound to the windlass wench welded to its solid aft deck, begins to stir awake from its obliterated head and rum and sedative induced state that still was loosely coursing through its algal veins.

More than a few dozen thick rejuvenated haptera vines with black inky eyes peering out of each wriggling one had regenerated upon the ever regrowing beast's neck where the iron harpoon Kristoff had plunged into its spinal column was still firmly in place.

Frighteningly, the Draugen appeared to have mirror doubled its hideous face on either side now in duplicated compensation for the harpoon launched implosion that had blown the rear of its head clean off.

The monster's dual sided mouths, that were the last of its injured body parts just finishing up being reconstituted, were moments away from finding its accentuated voice boxes to let out a pair of deafening screeches…

"— Tell my precious Snowflake that: 'On this Earth, there is no one like her… She sees the man I long to be, making even me believe in me.'" With words spoken from the heart, despite his chest seizing up with choked up ice, his voice scratchy and catching in his throat with every breath thick with cold rimed clouds of verglas, Hans smiles.

For her, he has still retained a heart beating with the warmth of a profound nascent love that would not give in, would not be swallowed up by the bitter cold to his last breath.

And even though it was _her_ ice that had penetrated his heart due to _her_ guilt, _her_ fear, _her_ sadness, Prince Hans of the Southern Isles still was deeply and irrevocably in love with Queen Elsa of Arendelle.

Her righteous soul's pure untainted beauty of true forgiveness to a soiled heart of a man who wronged her and her beloved sister, with the sweet pious kindness to the one lonely soul who tried to steal from her that unreachable something he had always hungered for –

A loving home of his own.

And now, this gift from God named Elsa Bernadotte with the crystal clear blue eyes, had granted him the precious treasure of hope beyond cold rationale, of worth beyond the crowns of a thousand kingdoms, of wealth beyond any earthly measure that Hans Westergaard has come to recognize would carry him from this world to the next.

In other words—

"—Tell her, that I did **love** her. With all my heart, and not even death will change that. Please, Kristoff, I trust you to find a way to let her know, somehow, someday at the right time when she is happy and settled and secure in the bosom of her family, and—" He seemed to have a difficult time continuing.

"—And with a man far more deserving than I to keep her heart safe and warm. You see, I am excessively sorry for having to burden her with the knowledge that an unworthy man loved her as none have ever loved anyone before. And I always will, no matter where I am ultimately judged to belong. She taught me so much about how to truly live an unselfish life, how to truly love without expecting a single reward in return." The tears formed in Hans' eyes were already clouding up into ice crystals upon his frosted sideburns that had only the faintest hints of red anymore.

"Thank you, for patiently listening to my heartfelt confession. You have been a fair and true friend to me when you didn't have to be. And a far better man for certain, Snow Prince Kristoff." With a respectfully bowed head, a humbled Hans finishes his agonized message with a gracious thanks to composed young blond who heard more truth in his genuine emotion than to ever question Hans' warm sentimental words. "And truthfully, maybe you had better never tell her. She'll be better off without wasting any further thought on me…" Hans murmurs heartrendingly.

But then, just as unexpectedly, the gallant Prince under that white Kommander's hat transforms the mood of the room entirely solemn cold with his sudden laboriously stern tone.

"Kaptein Loyntnant (First Mate) Kaas! Please escort Mr. Bjorgman to his transport and see that the women leave the ship immediately." Hans barks into the communications unit at the instrument panel.

"Aye, Kommander!" A gruff voiced burly sailor replies through the basic naval intercom.

"Wait – what?" A sentimental smiling Kristoff looks around confused as a large husky man enters the bridge and lays a heavy hand on the mountain man's surprised shoulder.

"Be sure that the female civilians are removed from my ship, for their own safety, as we enter this dangerous territory. That is a direct order from Vise Admiral Westergaard of the Sjoforsvaret. I have the authority directly from the reclaimed King of Arendelle, I assure you. Our window of time is running out, Kristoff. God bless your journey." The Kommander of the Gler orders his silently obedient first mate of a lieutenant as both bouncer and witness and the big brawny bearded seaman ensures that the blond Ice Harvester has no further alternative of action than to be hustled out of the wheelhouse at Hans' urgent command.

"Kristoff?! What's going on?!" Inquisitive Anna was as indignant as she was surprised by her big strong muscular husband being pushed around by even bigger, broader, and brawnier ship's first mate. Soon an entourage of Navy lieutenants and midshipmen all pause in their shipboard duties to see to their leader's expressed wishes with the First Mate.

"Just get on the white mare with Elsa and hold onto her tight, okay? We _mere_ civilians have to listen to the _Vise Admiral_. Svala, let's go." Kristoff didn't need to be prodded around much further by the tag team of sailors instructed by their Kommander to guarantee that these passengers were no longer on board.

He also was concerned for the powerful yet fragile Queen and his own little woman whom he placed before God to love, honor, and protect all the days of life. Kristoff Bjorgman concludes the sagacity of letting Hans be Elsa's hero, who will risk it all for the woman he loves.

As he helps Elsa onto the flying horse's back, Kristoff meets his elegant sister-in-law's deep vulnerable eyes with many unsaid words passing between them. Especially questions concerning the regal redhead who had left his post on the bridge to be engrossed in watching her departure from his leaning stance at the wheelhouse doorway ingress.

The Wind Whisperer then leans his telepathic head close in to nuzzle his warm cheek and kissing lips to Anna's bewildered palm as he lifts her puzzled protesting form behind Elsa onto Flurru's back, the flying white mare whose name this man of nature instinctively identified through their mind link.

{"Fly straight up, Svala! Lead these girls back to your team at the Snow Queen's carriage and then home with their parents, Flurru! And don't either of you let my Feistypants convince you otherwise!"}

{"It will be done, Snow Prince."} Flurru and Svala respond in reverent unison to their chief as they take off from the ship's deck, swiftly rising to the dusky sky above.

Flurru the mare takes off like a silvery shot on the pale reindeer Svala's cloven hooved heels, so that Elsa and Anna lurch back in the flying white steed's noble saddle. But as instructed by her husband, Anna holds on tight to the reins behind a dazed, overcome Elsa clutching her sceptre to her.

"Wait! Kristly, Sven?! Aren't you coming, too?!" Anna cries out frantically, swiveling her head around to adjust to see the swirling ship below until she was dizzy. "Those darn boys! Horsey, turn around! I mean it! Oh, what did _that_ Kristoff call you?!" Anna scrunches her eyes closed tight trying to catch all the words floating past her addled brain. For her bond with her love was so close that she could just about dance on the edges of eavesdropping on his psychic conversations with the animals.

"Floral? No, that's too flowery for horse belonging to the Snow Queen of the far North. Flora? Nah, too pink bossy fairy sounding. Oh, oh! I've got it! _Flurru_! That's it! Turn back, Flurru! Please!" Princess Anna, as per usual, talks her way through the noble steed's naming she had traced from her husband's mind.

She fully expected the white mare to respond, now that she had her name on right. The snorting horse simply gives the female reindeer soaring beside her a determined nod as both continue forward unabated as the Snow Prince directed.

"Just peachy. There's no brakes on these girls. Argh!" Smacking Flurru's rump angrily, the ginger girl grouses and grumbles at being overly cosseted as she and Elsa are torn away from all the action in the roiling sea's howling currents below.

The mercilessly swirling waters forming a funnel hole in the middle of the Norwegian ocean causes Anna to frown even further that her Kristoff was still so pigheadedly male enough to be a fool to stick around with that crazy Red daredevil Hans aboard the Gler.

The Navy schooner, along with the just-about-to-awaken, two-faced beast of the sea tethered to it, was in the preliminary stages of being sucked into the eerie enlarging eddies of the rapidly circulating, foam spewing maelstrom.

Stark against the murky gloaming sky's unearthly shades, the ghostly spiraling vista was so entrancing and surreal that a petrified Elsa couldn't tear her luminescent tearful eyes away.

As for her angry sister, amid her worry for her Kristoff and holding a silent trembling Elsa onto the speeding white horse tightly, Anna's bright eyes out of nowhere spy a familiar and welcome sight up ahead.

Anna wildly urges Flurru to race even faster across the skyscape, away from the swirling deadly dark abyss of the surging Moskenstraumen below that their courageous men were riding the waves into. And as if with an unholy voice be-crying their fate, the deadly maelstrom lets out a tormented howl …

* * *

_Sjoforsvaret_ \- Norwegian Navy

_Flurru_ \- Flurry in Icelandic

* * *

New Year greetings, Frozen friends!

Okay! Now we know brilliant strategist Kommander Westergaard's self-sacrificing plan to go down with his ship to spare the land and its beautiful Queen Elsa whom he declared his love for aloud! At least for Kristoff to keep secret for a while!

Everyone always spills their guts to the reliable quiet mountainman, it seems! I guess its because he's a 'Love expert', right? ^_^ Aren't our two hunky leading men getting along wonderfully in these stressful situations?

Please review this chapter as the story moves forward...into the dreaded maelstrom of doom...

HarukaKou


	57. Chapter 56 - Two Parts of One Whole

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act IV**

**Chapter 56**

**"Two Parts of One Whole"**

Over this northern hemisphere ocean's dramatic backdrop of rugged mountain peaks, a zealous young woman brazenly begins to climb out through the small front communication hole opening of the skybound ice carriage.

For some time now, Rapunzel Fitzherbert's bright emerald green eyes had been keenly watching the soaring cirrus clouds of the eventide's gloaming ominous sunless vista flow past ahead of her curious view.

But the oddly quiet, reformed scoundrel with the stunningly handsome, Roman nose profile, who had remained in her anxious vision's foreground all the while, garnered more of her interest than the stunning scenery.

"Eh? Rapunzel?! What are you doing out here, girl?! Get back in that coach!" Unaccustomedly raising an authoritative voice to her, Flynn Rider had been so concentrated on driving his quartet of snow white flying horses at breakneck speed to backtrack through the increasingly drab and dusky sky, that the cocky man's keen senses were beyond edgy.

"I didn't marry a circus contortionist! Remember, you're going to have a baby, Blondie! Or did that little fact slip your mind, you nutcase?!" With a pair of deeply furrowed eyes full of consternation for the dangerous waters and impending battle at the reported treacherous dearth they were heading for, a startled Eugene gives his little wife an askance look of dubious disapproval.

This was quite a change from the lazy, humored, and amorous smirk that generally accompanied her husband's heavy lidded pupils upon her scampering up body since she approached him to plop in the driver's seat beside.

"Eugene. I don't think I could ever forget that _your_ baby is in here. But it doesn't make me an invalid. At least, Mother said, 'not yet." While giving her gurgling stomach a tender rub, uncertain first mother Rapunzel peeks up at her scolding mate sheepishly.

"That's something to look forward to." He responds, wryly playful, as his complex worried face softens to a light smile.

"Besides, you've been awfully quiet. I thought you would appreciate some company up here." Once she stops biting her lip, Rapunzel enjoys her skeptical rapscallion's glint of a tender expression.

"I've had your pet here with me. Although, I must admit to prefer your little gams straddling me better than his chilly frog legs any day." Flashing Pascal a smirk, he swipes his hand to force the chameleon to jump over to Rapunzel's shoulder. Flynn answers in that smug, flirtatious way full of racy innuendo that his wife found both frustratingly querulous and adorable, in turns.

"Actually… To be honest, I was missing being near you. It feels like it's been forever since we just… talked." The palpable sweet love between her gently murmuring aunt to her injured uncle in the coach below made Rapunzel yearn for a secure love like theirs in her marriage, too. The young woman with the brown short spiky hair nestles up to her chagrined lover's right arm with a hungering-for-attention soft squeeze and beseeching pair of eyes.

And though it was Eugene's recently wounded appendage, he couldn't help but be soothed by Rapunzel's warm nuzzling little nose softly pressed to it. Even though he was a man who didn't wear his deepest emotions on his sleeve, Eugene missed having her close, too.

"Hey, listen. Still, after all this time, you've never been away from here, Blondie. Not even for one second, even when we were apart." The smoothtalker in Flynn Rider was speaking from the heart as he pats over his chest's pulmonary organ's location with profound meaning in his eyes. "After all, this 'ole heart would be just one big empty hole without you to fill it with that matching pair of twenty carat flawless in clarity, big emerald jeweled eyes that I consider my greatest heist of a treasure yet."

And Eugene, despite tenuously keeping up the Snow Queen's quartet of horses in flight, hurtling at top speed above the clouds, still manages to wow his Rapunzel with that sought after attention. He taps two fingers over his heart, then to his lips aimed back at her in an over sentimental, schmaltzy blown kiss he never would have imagined himself to condescend to just a few years back.

_For you, Blondie, I would do anything for, be anyone you want to be. And I will never, ever, **ever** leave you in the lurch again…_

"Look. I know I don't say it that much, but I do lov–" Rarely one to choke out those three simple little words, lifetime loner Eugene Fitzherbert is unceremoniously interrupted in his sticky attempt.

"Eugene! Up ahead!" His little wife, who had been adoringly petting her strikingly dashing husband's desirably hirsute, stubbly chin after deciding she missed the prickly feel of it against her bare skin too, abruptly cuts short her not so oft sentimental partner with a shout.

Rapunzel practically leaps off Eugene's cuddled chest she had been indulgently leaning upon to point an extended forefinger out past the windswept clouds they were flying through.

"What do you two see up there?! Report!" King Agdar's supposedly resting voice was anything but as he bellows out quite contentiously sharp from below, causing both Eugene and Rapunzel to cringe at the sudden inception of cold biting at the backs of their necks.

"One tantalizing beauty of a powdered sugar frosted _fasnacht _and her matching spicy gingersnap cookie tasty sis at 12 o'clock incoming!" Flynn whistles low under his breath so as only own blushing bride could hear his patronizing and male chauvinistic, flippantly testosterone driven appraisal of the two young women forthcoming on flying horseback. Rapunzel reflexively slaps her naughty hubby's still bullet-ridden arm again, evincing an "Ouchy!"

"A flying reindeer being trailed by a flying white filly with your own pair of long-legged fillies on board, Onkel, Sir!" Eugene, his saucy words toned down for a more mature audience, quite impatiently replaces his phrasing to answer his uncle's barked query.

The cocky pilferer was only lucky that the weakened King's ungovernable anxiety deigned Agdar too apprehensive and uptight to be very critical of the presumptive, bawdy amount of insolence shown.

"Elsa?! Anna!? Are they all right?" Deciphering her nephew's crude linguistics, Queen Idun stifles a shriek of joy as she quite agilely balances her slender frame on the coach chair bench to be able to get a glimpse of her little girls' supplicated arrival.

"Yep. Both of your enticing Norwegian beauties appear to be in fine shape. And I do mean fine." After his squint had zeroed in on Elsa's long limbed legginess, Eugene calls over his shoulder in affirmative response to their Mama's question.

"Curb your perverse witticisms and employ yourself to maneuvering this carriage faster, young man, rather than spew ribald and crass vulgarity concerning my unsullied daughters." The elitist aristocrat scowls, not at all receptive to the ungroomed, former thief's improper, disparaging and salacious connotations.

"Wow. There is a myriad of noteworthy words just for little 'ole me. Can't say this humble _crook_ knows what they all mean, O Majestic Ice King. But I am beginning to get the impression that you don't really like me. I guess I do have that negative effect on people." After rattling off in that Flynn-esque, under his breath manner, the comical look on Eugene's face turns serious. He urges the quartet of mares at his reins' command to meet up with one of their flying sisters who was barreling towards the aerial carriage.

"Idun! Get me up!" Still making improvement on her husband's ill health with her healing song, Queen Idun assists the aggravated man on her lap to sit up. Agdar was as angered with his own failing body as he was testily irritable with this foolhardy cocksure nephew. And above all, as the stalwart father, he was beside himself with worry.

Without giving argument to her stubborn mate whom she knew would never succumb to rest when either of his precious children were trouble, as his partner in life, Idun was instantly at her husband's side to aid the unsteady King to his feet and towards the royal coach's doorway exit.

The big man named Job silently remained at the ready to render aid as he moves to the ailing royal pair's side of the coach to help stabilize the somewhat dizzy stumbling King.

Agdar exchanges a grateful glance with the dark man as to facilitate the yet recuperating ruler to stand at the side door carriage exit and precariously lean out.

"**Elsa! Anna**!" King Agdar's deep baritone rings across the voluminous airways as pure music to his daughter's ears.

"Thank God! My babies are safe!" Queen Idun's gentle soprano intermingles with her husband's call of their daughters' names as she, too, boldly leans from the carriage, hanging on Agdar's arm to get a better glimpse.

Unvoiced Job's supportive strong grip holds both noble rulers firmly onto the carriage to keep them from tumbling off in their exuberance to see their children.

""**Papa! Mama**!"" The Arendelle sisters felt just the same as the King and Queen, who were relieved to hear their dear children's sweet trilling voices crying out for the parents in unison.

"Bring your horse around to the side, Anna! I'll transfer you two in from there!" Agdar directs his younger child, inwardly sensing that his little Snow Angel, all pallid and shivering blue in the saddle front, was too distressed to be as responsive as her eager sister.

"Whoa, Flurru! Slow down, girl! Okay, now backup, just a little to the left…That's right, good girl." The spry young woman usually didn't have much of a knack for calming horses – Anna normally had the opposite effect on her equally high-strung creatures – but the Snow Queen's intuitive white mares were more agreeable to the girl's spirit then normal equines. Perhaps that was owing to Princess Anna being so in tune with their Snow Prince's soul, and the animals innately desired to please his wishes.

"We have to get back there to save my Kristly and that Red on their fool mission, Papa! Those crazy boys are still on that ship!" '_Legendary Snow Prince'_ or no, Princess Anna was not about to take a back seat on any ride and let **_her_** guy she just married die being all heroically dumb.

_At least not without me by his side!_

"Steady on, lass." Whether he was speaking to the now becalmed flying horse or either of his two frazzled young ladies in answer to her plea, Papa's frost punctuated voice modulates to that soft soothing warm tone that Anna remembered growing up with as a loved, spoiled child.

Anna then turns from pensive to giddy as she witnesses, with an excited thrill, her kind-eyed, always able and strong, yet elegantly regal father extend his long fingered hand out the open door with a flourish. And there, her gallant Papa's elongated ice ramp forms at the carriage doorstep for the eager young girl to fearlessly leap from her horse's back to bounce and bound across the high-altitude thin air onto the slippery ice podium where Papa catches hold of her flailing arms flung around his neck.

With Agdar and Job's help, the peppy girl boards the carriage straight into her joyful Mama's hugging arms.

"Wow! That was fun! Come on, Elsa! You try it!" As if this was an amusement park ride, impish, unquestioningly believing Anna enthusiastically prompts her less spontaneous, less energetic and less trusting sister to join in on the buzz of her daredevil stunt.

"Give me your hand, Elsa." Brave Papa takes another sure step, extending his svelte form out into the billowing winds further for his withdrawn eldest child whom he could perceive was holding back again, not only physically shy and withdrawn, but reticent in her innermost inhibitions as well.

"No, Papa. I prefer to remain out here, please. I'm afraid that I'm too cold right now to be in close quarters with anyone." Though her voice was composed and unruffled, there was that vulnerable quality about it that caused her worried parents to quiver with the chill interlaced in Elsa's underlying tone color's timbre.

The entire ride here, the Ice Queen had been replaying her unsuccessful failed attempt to preserve her nation with one of its legendary mystical weapons, perhaps at the cost of the Gler and its courageous crew. It was consuming her up inside that all her vast powers were for naught, since she was wholly inadequate to the task.

"Please come in here with us, Elsa. It's too windy out there, sweetheart." Her Mama's caring, concerned voice pleads with her stubborn child to join her family in the carriage.

But Elsa sadly shakes her head, beginning to urge Flurru to move away from the open door. Idun places a desperate mother's wringing hands on the stability of her partner's cool back, beseeching comfort now from him to do something to change their little girl's inflexible mind.

"My baby girl, I am the one solely to blame for never sharing with you my own struggle and my own fears of this overwhelming, irresistible ice that ran through my veins as I matured. And subsequently into yours, though I desperately wanted to keep you sheltered from its frozen grip's quandary. But I'm here for you now, my precious one. Please, let us share with one another our fears, as well as our strengths. Let's hold nothing back, and work through this as a family should."

As Elsa shrinks back into herself, arms wrapping around her trembling body, fraught with self-doubt and fear, her emotionally self-possessed father starts to open up in hopes to bring her out of her shell again, Agdar's baritone soft yet entreating.

"But Papa. I failed our people." A heart-wrenched Elsa at last admits the source of her torment. She stares down at the pensive hands that she had focused all the remaining heat of her frail form to her arms and upper torso to keep Anna unaware of her distressed freezing-up state as the flight here progressed.

Anna and her mother emerge at each of King Agdar's sides with sympathetic, understanding eyes upon their troubled sister and daughter as they cling to their patriarch.

Her failure to defeat the Draugen had ebbed clear away at Elsa's thinly built-up confidence and resolve, despite her bright little sister's best efforts to keep a-singing and constant chattering – Anna's brand of relentless sunshine for her quietly dour and introspective sibling— to help Elsa find solace.

But it would take more than cheer to bring the Ice Queen back out of her cocoon this time.

"No, Elsa. I was the one who failed you. I naïvely believed that if we taught you your proud ancestral history, to cherish your countrymen, to respect and esteem God, that, with our care and love, it would be enough for you to take up the banner of our nation, when you were older and stronger, my Snow Angel. We never meant for you to constantly be alone. But your inability to control made the time never right for me to explain… And then it was all too late." The King's pale blue eyes connect with Elsa's cerulean ones regretfully.

"Elsa, the Lord has given me this second chance to make things right with you this time. Please forgive your silly father for denying your God-given talents. I was only afraid of how the world would shun you if they discovered your capability. But Papa has realized he was so erroneous, in his fears to keep you safe and hidden from even yourself. I am so sorry, my little one, that Papa could not assuage your doubts all those years ago, only proving to confuse you with his own apprehension of control and emotional issues." King Agdar stares down bleakly at his woefully inept cold hands. As, astride her white mare, Elsa mirrors her handsome father's exact expression, the holy scepter still clutched in her one clammy palm.

"I could see now how mistaken I was to falsely believe that you wouldn't be able to surpass my own weak uncertain fears. Because fear is always wrong, Elsa. I have had so much time to think long and hard about it. Fear is the devil's method of implanting doubt to keep us from our full potential. It is strength without fear that comes from the Lord."

The two cryokinetic wielders gaze up from their hands' pale blue tinted skin to intersect with one another's icy blue eyes.

"But, Papa. I _couldn't_ live up to our heritage, as I'm sure you would be able to. In every one of those stories you used to read us of St. Olaf and all the kings and queens and rulers who came before, they _defended_ our nation. I am so sorry, Papa, for being so inadequate and a disappointment to you and Mama. I wanted to make you proud." Elsa emotionally vents her lamented frustration to fall short, yet again, of making her parents pleased with her.

Although, her wise father was glad to distinguish that Elsa's unbidden tears were not at all frostbitten, but were warmly wet enough to clearly run down her pale alabaster cheeks. Her body may have been gripped by an inexplicable unreasonable cold, but it was her heart aching for her people, her nation, _and_ the new love of her life, that caused Elsa to start to sniffle, then softly sob and weep into the palms of her purple-hued, but not entirely bloodless hands.

And that was half the battle right there.

"We couldn't be more pleased with you, Elsa, for how far you've come against adversity and loneliness, even without us here to guide you." Queen Idun, who had been listening intently to the soulful conversation, chimes in with her melodic voice she reaches a hand out to pet her daughter's cheek and collect some of the wetness away with a warm loving hand.

"You were created perfect, my Snow Angel. And you have surpassed all of my aspirations for you with the effulgent light of undeniable love that never allowed your heart to be stricken with the unforgiving cold I identify with all too well. You have become so strong and independent to become a just and righteous Queen for our kingdom. And I am so proud of you and Anna both for finding that warmth of love in one another as devoted sisters again, though I wrongly separated you, in fear, as children." King Agdar proudly wraps one arm around his wife's thin shoulders then the other around Anna's sturdy bones to steady himself, body, heart, and soul, in the bosom of his family.

"It was my commitment and determination to defend our people, with my faith in God and my great love for your mother, and hers in return for me, that had kept my cold heart warm all those first hesitant years, Elsa." King Agdar reaches out his large fingered hands towards Elsa's delicately demure ones as her flying mare takes the initiative to move closer to the carriage again.

The inviting smile on her father's debonair face pleaded for his daughter's forgiveness for his faults and for trust in her own strengths, too. Their cold hands squeeze the bond so tightly that they only felt one another's warmth once more.

"Oh, Papa!" Elsa's tearful eyes glimpse her mother and Anna's bolstering nodding ones sparkling back as she lets go of the invisible mental barrier and she trips her petite high heels right over the created floating ice projection. Like a child lost, Elsa unabashedly throws herself bodily into her Papa's waiting arms that were similarly cold, yet so full of love's glow neither noticed anymore.

"That's right, my baby. Just let it go." Agdar pats Elsa's back as she shutters with raw tears that had been building after being held back, concealed for too many long years.

"Those times when I told you to '_Conceal it; don't feel it; don't let it show'_, I only meant the ice, my girl. I only meant the uncontrollable cold within that I, too, strived to deter for many a long lonely year, at my good parents' bequest. I never intended for you to conceal the most precious gift our Creator provided to his children on earth – the depth, the emotion of our feelings for one another evoke. Especially that dearest one called '_Love'_. Can you ever forgive me for unwittingly misguiding my most precious treasure in you?"

"Of course I forgive you, Papa! I love you. I love you all dearly." Already coming to terms that her father and mother only intended for her good in the past, Elsa can smile now through tears up at her parents. By now, reassured Papa was crying cool tears onto his daughter's neck too, which causes Elsa to weep more openly and unashamed as her luminous pools also draw in her mother's gladdened blue eyes.

A relieved Mama Idun goes over and wraps her thin arms around the embracing icy pair so dear to her heart, and her utmost warmth melts away all conceptions of cold. Anna's anxious mind benefits as well, as she too joins the family embrace that had been long past due for this tested clan, finally overcoming the misfortune of solitude's fear.

"Just checking in on the in-transit new passengers who hitched a ride on the _Rider Express_ – Ha! That is rich! I crack me up in stressed situations! – Whoa, crying. Not good." Eugene peers down into the carriage with all of his usual bluster and vim, just to catch a glimpse of this teary-eyed, heart-rending scene of familial bliss.

"Is this is about my driving again? Don't worry, folks. You can chill down here for a while _– no pun intended –_ because my little woman took up the reins for a bit while I take a breather. That gal can drive a pretty mean caboose, if you know what I mean." With a winked implied smirk, Eugene peeks his nosy head in closer to garner what the ruckus was about.

Beyond silent witness Job giving him a merely acknowledging, noncommittal glance, the loving Arendelle royal family reveling in their first full family embrace in a very long time ignore him entirely.

"I don't mean to be a killjoy, but I would be remiss as chief pilot of this Flying Fortress not to inform my passengers that our infamous – _May I say off-limits and deadly? _– destination is in sight."

"Ah, yes…I will confer with you in a moment, young man." King Agdar was not as embarrassed as he was disgruntled to have this rare familial interlude interrupted. The Victorian older man tries not to show his manifest tears as he collects his weary self together to join a skedaddled Flynn Rider at the driver's bench above for discussion of their imminent situation.

But Elsa had been groomed to be Queen by this great man who understood duty, honor and service of his country all too distinctly and had trained his daughter to follow in his principled and God-fearing monarchal footsteps to be able to do just that.

"Papa, wait." In all seriousness as she sets aside her tears, Elsa turns regal and prudent and responsibly no-nonsense in charge as she composes her scattered thoughts to be able to explain the situation to her nation's ultimate leader – the Admiral of the Sjoforsvaret, the Arendelle King, the Norwegian sovereign – in other words, the one and only person on earth above her command, her Papa.

"Elsa?"" King Agdar pauses in his role as leader to hear his successor out as an equal decision-maker.

"Papa, I did attempt to defeat that evil monster with this sceptre unsucessfully… So, Hans—Vise Admiral Westergaard–had conceptualized another daring and courageous stratagem on his own. One where he and Mr. Bjorgman had first valiantly immobilized the gargantuan Draugen with sedatives and explosives, then industriously harpooned it to the aft windlass winch of the Gler. As ship's Kommander, he explained to the willing, loyal crew that they would plot a daring course to route and drag the vile creature into the maelstrom at the point of its most violent thrashing vacuum's turbulence. Or, if no other recourse, after he has ordered the crew to their lifeboats, Vise Admiral Westergaard has pledged to go down with his ship to ensure that reprehensible abomination's demise and removal from our land." With all her poise and self-possessed deportment, Queen Elsa, at length, explains the dire situation to her father, and all its varied contingencies up to this perilous point.

"And then, he sent Anna and I away to safety, back to Arendelle – back to you." Elsa's eyes were wavering with awe and alarm for the enterprising, courageous young officer who still took her breath away, even from afar.

"Good man." King Agdar, both perturbed and impressed by the decisive young naval officer who continued to amaze the King with his steadfast intelligent valor, mutters his assent for the conscientious actions of the absent Danish Prince.

By the end of Elsa's concisely related speech, she was in tears again that her authoritative father conjectured were due to her warm compassion for her faithful naval officers in danger that made the feminine heart much more beautiful and tender than a man's.

But his wife, the Queen, understood exactly why this tender feminine heart, that similarly beat within her own chest, was the main cause of her Elsa's tears. She knew they were not merely tears of fear, but pules out of that elusive indefinable dream called '_love'_.

Queen Idun shares a smile of hope with Anna, who gives a tepid half-grin back.

Wanting desperately to discuss it with Papa alone, Anna knew an icy secret about that so valiant and so impressive heartthrob of a Kommander Westergaard that the befuddled ginger didn't quite know how to address without harming Elsa's fragile psyche all over again.

Plus, the younger princess was too perplexed about the welfare of her own gallant boy to sanely figure how to handle this frozen heart problem of Hans. He was the one man in the universe, who even against her better judgment, Anna was starting to have a new appreciation for.

Almost a sisterly feel of worry for his well being.

_Wait! What?! Yuucck! Hans Westergaard will NEVER be a family member of mine! _Anna vents her irresolute frustrations concerning the infuriating red-headed prince, who even bothered her mind when he was in peril, on the poor little lamb. Distracted as her head spins, Anna starts feverishly fluffing the way overgrown wooly creature to a frizz that Job had been silently tending for Rapunzel.

"An intrepid scheme from an audacious young man, to be sure." After a few terse moments of exchanging words with their pilot (and his lovely co-pilot in life in the driver's seat) King Agdar considers Hans' gutsy plan that he himself may have been bold enough to shoulder in his own valorously heady days of invigorated shipboard youth gone by.

But if this Dane Prince his daughter had made Kommander, then he himself had promoted to the high rank of Vise Admiral of his Navy was assiduously astute and adroitly perspicacious enough to embark on such a brazen bold endeavor, the Supreme Admiral of the Sjoforsvaret felt the need to commend the undernourished sea-faring lad who even had brashness to have turned his inhibited pretty little girl's head.

And this protective Papa didn't even know half of the sordid ins-and-outs that this winsome would-be hero caused for his other daughter's aching head to spin once upon a time.

After pondering the plucky flamboyant offensive exercise's proposition at this eleventh hour of do-or-die urgency that gave King Agdar a proud-to-be-a-naval-officer admiring manner of thought, after a few seconds more of gazing into his all-female family's distressed, despondent, and dizzied eyes, Agdar wipes the smile from his own adventurous seaman's face.

"What could that young officer be thinking? Sinking a ship of my fleet so blatantly? We** must **find another way to stop that pirate's abomination. The Gler will not go down on my watch!" Putting on his most indignant voice, although his energized eyes were sparkling, Agdar's statement causes both his daughters to spontaneously hug his now-more-determined-than-ever body on either side.

The freshly healed man smiles in that fatherly loving way as he strokes the ginger and platinum blonde heads clinging to him on either side for his support and guidance as the leading influence in their lives once again.

_'As a father shows compassion to his children, so the LORD shows compassion to those who fear Him'. _Psalm 103:13

The psalmist's words speak directly to the King's heart as he embraces his offspring tenderly to his chest, empathizing with their troubles with the silent vow to pick everything fallen right side up again, as a good father should.

And Elsa and Anna's Papa would never again let either of his girls down, no matter what it took to see this turmoil through.

"Papa, I recalled those many legendary tomes and stirring sagas you used to read Anna and I when we were so little. We begged you over and over to recite the verses in your eloquent voice and you would always do it for us." With luminant eyes, Elsa speaks as her father brings the group of them to sit on the bench in the carriage coach.

"Oh yeah! I remember the tomes! I liked it because they rhymed and you'd sing them to us Papa, sometimes in a funny voice!" Anna recalls some of her earliest childhood memories of fun time storytelling in the nursery.

"Not exactly light reading for young girls' bedtime stories, Agdar. And I thought you were supposed be reading my little ones the Brothers Grimm fairy tales or that talented new author I'm fond of who writes children's moral stories, Hans Christian Anderson. '_The Saga of St. Olaf'_ indeed, husband dear?" Queen Idun grouses at her erstwhile man and giggling daughters who were one as guilty-faced at the other at this well-kept secretly shared enthusiasm for the oft violent, thrilling skaldic verses that the peaceloving Queen never shared her true love's passion for.

_Give me a lullaby or ballad any day, rather than endure through those profound ancient ramblings of centuries gone by. Why did you think my girls would be interested in that old dusty tome?_

But both Elsa and Anna were riveted then by Papa's retelling of the thrilling tales when they were tiny babes. Perhaps it is from there that stems the pair of Arendelle princess' affinity for excitement and adventure.

"So, you _were_ listening to your silly old Papa retelling his favorite skaldic poetry put to memory." The pleased king puffs up with pride that he left an impression on his children for the precious time he took out of his busy schedule to spend with his little ones.

Anna nods enthusiastically after planting a kiss on her dear Papa's cheek, her youngest memories in the nursery of hearing daring ship battles and sword-fighting daring-do all in poetic rhyme, still some of her most prized.

"Of course I was listening, Papa. And I never thought you silly. Those soaring tales were pivotal in instilling my sense of duty to my country and national pride in our heritage. There was a time that I forgot how much that meant to me…" Elsa's true blue eyes wander for a few seconds in deep shame that bespoke of her inaudible regrets from two years ago of what her confusion did to Arendelle in her mind's eye periphery.

"This day a light Divine

Upon our land begins to shine

Where darkness brooded long;

King Olaf has regained his throne.

Orb and sceptre purchased with His blood;

Of God's eternal truth and golden love.

Together worship God they shall stand

As long as Norway is a Christian land."

_Legendary Saga of St. Olaf, verse 142_

Avid reader Elsa begins to recite from childhood memory, when she and her learned Papa alternated in assonant verse their memorized beloved Saga in her youth. As they do again now, word for word, some lines in unison, some lines singularly, but always in one another's shared icy blue eyes, unafraid at last to squeeze one another's paralleled cold hands.

"Papa, why didn't the holy sceptre work? I held it. I believed in it, I even heard the sapphire jewel calling to me, humming my name almost. But then the music suddenly ceased and I didn't know what more to do. Perhaps it doesn't trust me anymore to deserve to wield it." After the father and daughter sentimentally finish that quote with a smile, Elsa questions her debatable right to rule again. Indulging in her inadequacies, the young Queen almost falls back into her dejected insecure state, until her mother places a stablizing hand on her daughter's trembling chin and smiles into her eyes.

"Or perhaps…" The King looks his unsure daughter directly in the eyes, "It wasn't what you didn't _do_, as much of what you _did not_ give the sceptre what it was asking for—its mate to couple it with." Agdar leads with the enigmatic statement that causes both Anna and Elsa to look inquisitively at each other in wonderment of their father's words.

"Saint Olaf's holy sceptre is indeed a legendary symbol of power and dominion over all the creatures of this land and sea. But if you read deeper into the text, my child, you'll find that it never does stand alone. Just as our God, Creator of Heaven **_and_** Earth, ruler over the sun **_and_** the stars, Mighty Power over the seas **_and_** the lands, formed the worlds to be. He is the One who fashioned every thing, every creature, even unto every living one of us, to seek out our one and only true soulmate to be paired with. Two **_by_** two, male **_and_** female they entered the Great Ark, after man **_and_** woman were adjoined by Adam's rib to journey this life together side-by-side as one flesh, until they are commingled into two parts of one whole."

And with each enlightened and sagacious word of his profound, insightful speech, King Agdar's resolve and strength is renewed. The noble man addresses his confused and distressed children's unconfident qualms with the wise comparative narrative based on Biblical teachings he was raised on and studied extensively in, all in search of comprehending himself.

At that last phrase, Agdar reaches a hand out, to which his other half, his true soulmate, Idun of Drottningholm, instinctively responds by squeezing his large cool palm tightly in her petite warm one. The Swedish princess still marveled at how well they fit together, a genuine smile coming to her lovely face, with the forever knowledge that this was how they too were designed to be.

Sensing her thoughts, Agdar draws his wife close with a kiss upon her diminutive forehead, pushing away with his chilled lips the loose locks of her cascading brown hair.

"The holy sceptre may have been the one relic of our ancestors that has been told to be able to reclaim what has been unjustly stolen, and wields the power to hold dominion over the lands. But it was its counterpart, Saint Olaf's holy orb, which symbolizes Christ's healing majesty over the people's hearts that I find far more worthy of awe. Although, as the key to any sanctified battle, either one is useless without the balance of the other." King Agdar relays his learned perception of the verses of the saga that he studied for the love of his country.

"And though we've all witnessed the miraculous healing of my own pitiful, unworthy body by the Lord's grace, we also saw what a depraved soul's judgment can reveal of the God's divine punishment."

"As I read it, the only way to unlock the vast powers of the holy sceptre is to conjoin it somehow to its legendary mate, the holy orb." The lonely young boy who spent his entire youth studying and immersing himself in the numerous pages of his traditions, history and legends, suddenly feels he did not spend his scholarly adolescence in vain.

Agdar trained his solitary mind for excellence rather than being idle as other young princes were wont to do in these modern days. And now, years later, that sheltered Crown Prince of Norway could still quote rhymed skaldic verse by verse to even greater knowledge of studied wisdom beyond the lines of each faded tome.

"The holy orb? That little golden, ornamental trinket that only comes out for display at royal weddings and coronations? I was just glad it served as a cup for the holy spring's waters you drank that healed you. Right?" Anna says incredulously as she exchanges a glance with Elsa, both looking towards that fateful Mosken island tall peak of Wilhelmstind and its secret crevice where miracles and hidden assets were both held for far too long at that despicable selfish pirate's evil hand.

"Alas, after that monumental battle, when that loathsome Draugen absconded with you, my precious Snow Angel, all was tossed from that mountain plateau, nearly claiming everyone in this party's lives. Save for the grace of God, who granted me the strength of purpose to preserve you all. But I fear our holy relic has been lost in the annals of history, buried for eternity beneath the stone rubble and crushed by gravity beyond recognition at the mountain base." King Agdar says solemnly as his mind races for another pertinent and, above all, immediate plan of action.

In every chivalrous corner of his mind, the indomitable spirit of undaunted valor and courage in protection of his family and his nation he served as caretaker thereof, equipped King Agdar of Arendelle to be fully prepared to give his life in order to preserve his fellow countrymen on that brave vessel who dared to selflessly challenge that unholy beast.

"Oh, poopie!" Anna crudely shrieks out in frustration to her wide-eyed mother's amusement more than delicate horror.

_I have missed my little ginger hoyden._ Idun shakes her head with a loving smile at the forever young girl, despite the askewed state of affairs.

Now Anna wished she had been a little more aggressive in keeping hold of that squirrelly holy relic that her thieving cousin swiped on her wedding night after casing the castle during the ceremony for that peg-leg pirate.

"Without it, this sceptre would be powerless for even you then, Papa?" Examining the golden rod in her hands with consternation, Elsa realizes what her sapient parent was informing them, as hard a pill as it was to swallow.

"I am afraid so, my children. However, I believe it is no longer time-pending advantageous for us to even attempt to return to Mosken in search of this precious artifact. And certainly not in time to prevent the deadly Moskenstraumen from overtaking that ship of our proud Navy and its fine men under the brave leadership of its new Vise Admiral before the maelstrom pulls them to the bottom of the sea. But without the orb, the sceptre's power is impuissant." Papa capitulates his overwhelming ineffective feeling as he hangs his handsome frosted tan blond head with a crestfallen sigh.

"Ahem—" At this ponderous, distracting moment, a sudden, sharply clearing throat erupts from the front top aerial section of the Snow Queen's carriage. All six pairs of curious eyes glance up to see who the new entrant was and why he had interrupted their important discussion. "Couldn't help but overhear some drips and drabs up here, folks. And, by no means, did I intend on eavesdropping on your compellingly eye-opening, heartfelt family moment, but-"

There, their married cousin Prince Eugene Fitzherbert had been leaning in, uncommonly quiet for once, as the garrulous young man had been enthralled to listen to the King of Norway's precious well-spun stories of his country's past historical saga and holy relics, then delving into his well-worded admission of guilt to his elder daughter.

"Would this, by any slim chance, be that little item you all are referring to? I just happened to pick up this nifty little, sparkly doohicky somewhere along the way. But if it'll save that foolhardy, gung-ho brother of mine and his ship mates from suicidal doom, I may be convinced to part with it." And in the master thief's propensity-to-steal-all-things-gold-and-shiny sticky fingered hands, Eugene shocks everyone by producing the very golden globular, sapphire blue jeweled, Arendelle's symbol encrusted holy relic that Elsa and her Papa had given up hope on securing in time to save the lives of the courageous men of the Gler.

And then the world beyond from that power hungry vengeful Draugen.

"My restless hands must've scooped up that pretty little trinket while we were on the mountaintop a-running for our lives from that dag-blame Draugen when I wasn't looking. 'Cause all of a sudden I found it ended up in my pocket after all the dust settled. Imagine that. Heh heh heh..."

"Cousin Eugene! You snaffler! I could kiss you!" Raucous Anna was the first to find her voice box and hop up to grab lucky, ne'er-do-well Flynn Rider by his unbuttoned shirt collar, yanking him down halfway. Haplessly smashing nose to nose en route (_Hey_! _watch the nose, Pixie!)_ Anna gives the culprit that crushing kiss on the surprised man's upside-down cheek.

Then she snatches from the kleptomaniac's shocked hand the pilfered purloined property that belonged to her kingdom. Anna scurries to return St. Olaf's holy orb back to her kingly father's rightful hand.

The fine cut, encrusted blue jewel adorning the orb now in Agdar's palm begins to gleam and glow at the Ice King's inherently cool energy touch. Soon, the matching sapphire's clarity and vitreous color luster of the gemstone on the staff in the Ice Queen's hand too starts to pulsate with her innate power, mesmerizing them both.

And the pair of holy relics held in the left and right opposing hands of King Agdar and Queen Elsa, who each had been coronated as the current, ordained rulers of the land, begin to glow their flawless gemstones with an eerie icy blue-white light that amazes all spectators within the Ice carriage coach…

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_Fasnach__t – _traditional Prussian doughnut type pastry served at Lenten eve in preparation for Shrove Tuesday's penitential fasting

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Thanks for reading! Review review, please do, please do! And eat lots of fasnachts! (literal translated from the German: Fasting Night, where those preparing to fast the next morn feast on desserts! But for now, around these parts, donuts - or cookies!- will do, day or night! ^_^)


	58. Chapter 57 - Clash of the Titans

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act IV**

**Chapter 57**

**"Clash of the Titans"**

The desolately beautiful Lofoten Islands, high above the Arctic Circle off the coast of Norway, manifest a mighty, treacherous whirlpool in this oceanic epicenter of the world that set this particular sector of the sea apart from any other.

The Moskenstraumen had been rightly given the fearsome name of 'maelstrom' – literally translated as 'a grinding, violent stream' by Scandinavian men, long ago.

For at this Mosken island location of the Norwegian sea, the marine anomaly, infamous for its wild, raging flow currents, was at its strongest around this early August time of year.

The massive tidal currents flowed between the shallows of Mosken, Vaeroy and Moskensoya, along this incredible point where the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, meet the North, Barent, and Norwegian seas. And here, the deep Vestfjorden intersects to create numerous eddies and whirlpools with a high amplitude of tides.

Yet none are more feared than the Moskenstraumen.

At a nearly 30 mile an hour turbulence, the maelstrom tides are combined with northerly Norwegian currents and storm induced flow, to result in a significant whirlpool stream. Though the moon in the Midnight Sun twilight could not currently be seen, the celestial body's full moon still had all the pull of massive gravitational tidal forces to affect the semi-diurnal tide flow.

But the entire phenomenon's fast flowing current did not dampen the drive of one handsome young Vise Admiral of the Sjoforsvaret.

Striding tall aboard deck at the stem of his wing twind-tossed vessel, Vise Admiral Westergaard leans over the forward bowsprit. There, his cloudy emerald eyes squint against the darkened gloaming and the rough, tousled waves of the dark-centered free vortex that the HmNoS Gler was now quickly spiraling towards.

With one ice cold hand gripped to the gunwale rail, Hans surveys how he had purposely launched a ship into the maelstrom's considerable downdraft of currents and cross-currents, under the advice of his own astute, well-worked out conclusions.

_Please guide my decisions to be right and justified, in order to vanquish this evil threat to her land's peace. Please give me the strength and control that only you can bequeath, Master._

As the Gler propels forward into unchartered waters, Hans devotes his silent prayer to the Highest Authority over the veil and sway of the vast sea. He stiffly goes down to his knees in one last fervent supplication for blessed foresight beyond sight and ability beyond human comprehension to accomplish his task and still keep his men safe.

The dauntless, courageous, selfless love which yet thrived securely in his faithful heart was perhaps the last vestige of warmth that was keeping the gallant Prince going, despite the deep freeze slowly overtaking the rest of his svelte physicality.

"Hey, you okay?" From where he was monitoring the captured Draugen, Kristoff's mellow voice, some meters across the schooner's top deck, was rife with concern for his fellow risk-taking champion.

When silence comes the only insouciant reply, the Snow Prince was unable – and perhaps a little unwilling at this critical point in their mission – to totally restrain his empathic scan in reaching out to the seemingly blasé redhead Captain of the doomed ship. After all, Hans had this ship heading point-blank into the swirling maelstrom that was swiftly picking up steam.

Something about the way Hans was still rigidly standing at the Gler's stern, and how difficult it appeared for the usually limber man to kneel, nevermind genuflect, causes the Wind Whisperer to suddenly shudder with an uncontrollable chill.

For Kristoff recognized that every living creature owned a certain level of generating warmth and pulsating lifeforce that this man of nature now was conscious of in all that surrounded him.

Even as _Kommander Westergaard_ was doling out orders again to his men at his beckoned instruction, Hans was currently displaying very little of either.

In a brown study, Kristoff focuses a steely gaze upon the Danish naval man across the minutiae of the various membered crew scurrying about, securing clewlines, adjusting the sails, etc, at their leader's tersely exacting orders.

Kristoff's naturally intuitive mind sifts through all of the busy convulsions of the courageous souls hard at work on their craft. Every man's heart, though logically fearful of death, was filled with utmost honor and patriotic duty for their home country, as the volunteers put their abilities to the task at hand for the sake of their families at home on landfall that they would risk their all to protect.

Although, after witnessing Hans' rousing speech to his troops before this death wish voyage began, he knew presumptively why the experienced naval men would place their utmost trust to follow the virtually unknown Queen's chosen man, who was even a _foreigner_, the Ice Harvester curiously notes, and watches how Kommander turned Vise Admiral Westergaard of the Sjoforsvaret deftly navigates through these most unbidden of waters.

Hans Westergaard, standing on the forward deck of the Gler, was unaffectedly examining the work of the men as they set the sails as per his concise instruction. Kristoff believed that beneath the fancy uniform's exterior—a detached, cold, calculating presence—surely the human heart of a man could be at least a little pensive, if not frightened, to plow his ship into the deadly Moskenstraumen headfirst.

But as the golden blond mountain man approaches Hans, the Danish royal exudes nothing but embellished words and a dominant will, along with a cool confidence that defined the character of a leader in the face of imminent danger.

However, rational and practical Kristoff Bjorgman saw through the once vibrant redhead's pain to truly see that the man's cascading to freezing heart, marked by his titian swept back tresses that were naught but a shadowy pale gray echo of his former flaming vibrancy.

"I asked if you were alright, Hans." Kristoff reiterates his ignored query when the bigger man finally arrived at the opposite end of the boat after making his way through the hustle and bustle of sailors and officers aboard the circling Gler.

"Of course I am quite adequate to the challenge, sir. I thought I made it quite clear for you to evacuate my ship. My men and I are readying the Gler for deployment of that contentious creature. So I cannot spare a moment for common pleasantries, or further thought to your well-being. I must ready my vessel for navigating this difficult portion of the sea." Hans condescends distinctively, his haughty nose up in the air as he addresses Kristoff, never deeming to risk looking the other man clear in the eye.

Instead, Vise Admiral Westergaard takes several long stiff strides back towards the bridge, shouting peremptory adjures and unequivocal enjoins as he goes.

"Ready the Gler to close haul, cut water at 45° at thwartships aft off the wind, Fenrik Kraun! Visekonstabels Jarl, Hjalm, Tryggsen! Keep a weather eye to the creature and alert me to any sudden change in his behavior below!" Their Kommander had memorized all his sailors' names when the voyage began, although Hans now impersonally gives the commands as he frostily passes by them on the ship's topdeck.

"Konstabel Orm! As soon as we achieve a _beam reach_ with the wind at right angles, sheet in the main sail tight! You reef in the mizzen, Løytnant Solveig! Don't just stand there, boy! Make yourself useful and help them, Menig Holfeldt!" Their Kommander barks with more bite in his voice mirroring the cold biting inside his shivering body that he forced, by unyielding will alone, to continue to function.

"Make settings hard into the wind, Helmsman Jan, as we prepare the Gler to enter the maelstrom!" Utilizing the direction of the wind that was shoving the storm-tossed hull listing sideways, experienced seaman Hans urgently orders the obedient crew to keep the ship steering-way into the whirlpool. All while still cleverly facing the windward course point-of-sail to keep its circular heading without losing to weather helm conditions, even against the excessive downwardly trail of the over 40 knot wind shear accompanying the irresistible devouring spiral.

"We will maintain this heading while heaving-to the main as necessary, so she can traverse the specified sailpoints as we take her down into the maelstrom, men!" Vise Admiral Westergaard, as many sailing men before him in the age-old masculine tradition of referring to his prized vessel in the feminine 'she' and 'her' personal pronouns, projects his voice as he relieves a tense Helmsman Jan at his white-knuckled post at the bridge's steering wheel to steer himself.

"I think you're enjoying this being superhero sailing-man-marvel a little too much, pal." Kristoff murmurs under his breath in frustration at how inhospitable Hans continued to coldly brush off his, and others', gnawing concerns. The inherently intuitive young man shakes his head at the obstinate Dane as he clumps his big curly-toed boots across the swaying ship with a refractory frown still etched on his own obdurate face.

Kristoff was glowering at the bridge where Hans' eloquent commanding voice sings clear as a bell above the din of the harrowing and raging waves of the mercilessly spinning swells. Just then, a discordant shriek rings out in the mountainman's head.

{"Arghh! My ears!"} Sven's low tone suddenly rumbles agonizingly in Kristoff's openly communicative mind.

Not a few seconds later, a cacophony racket of cries come from the men enlisted at their end of the Gler while they were guarding and keeping watch of the captured and hauled Draugen below at the crashing surface of the waves.

"Hans! We've got trouble!" Kristoff gives his former rival the heads-up as he rushes past the bridge with a bang on its wheelhouse door, beating the entranceway hard with a loud rap.

Kristoff dashes over to the ship's rear railing, sliding on his knees to cuff his big palms over the buckled down Sven's sensitive animal ears. The blond man peers over the gunwale railing to spy through the sputtering water's rushing, dizzying mists to try to take stock of the vitriolic malevolent monster's acrimonious caustic screechings.

The repugnant Draugen's multiple hideous faces and innumerable inky black eyes all are roused to blink back scathingly at the frightened sailors looking down at the disgusting the monster. But it was thankfully still tethered in the Gler's fierce wave-crested wake, despite all its noise.

But it wasn't the disturbing wriggling sets of bugging out ebony eyes that set Kristoff's teeth on edge.

It was the equally foaming, squirming and writhing amassed entourage of algal haptera vines that suddenly emerge from the horizontally mohawk-like head of the two-faced monstrosity.

Mainly because those hundreds of vines of seaweed were, little by little, inch by inch, using their leverage and gathered force to start to pry at that pesky harpoon Kristoff himself embedded in the rear neck region just beyond its clawing hands' reach.

"Not going to happen, Ugly!" Kristoff spontaneously announces. The big man immediately springs to action as Kristoff pushes the naval guardsman away with brazen aplomb. He whips out his Saami longbow and aims at the Draugen's numerous spasmodically brackish tendrils reaching to undo those bonds so it could escape…

_**T-CCHHKK!**_

The Wind Whisperer's well-aimed arrow knocks away the guilty seaweed that was wrapped around the harpoon head and splunks into the thickest, most vital tentacle until brackish green ooze spills out into the rushing spumes.

_**SGRONARRLWLL**_!

But the pain only proves to cause the previously immobilized gargantuan to snarl and growl at him angrily. The Draugen sends a vicious mouthful of algal noxious spit towards those who were unfortunate enough to be leaning over the rail of the Gler

"Oww! Yuckk! What the devil is this stuff?! Sven! I can't see!" Even sturdy Kristoff is forced to shrink back to the deck strakes, rubbing at his burning blocked eyes and temple to clear away the virulent multiplying microorganism-like sable-black slimy algae that spread to coat his handsome rugged features.

As do many of the other sailors who were keeping vigilant watch over the terrifying Draugen when the wily creature finds yet another tact to unleash its unjustifiable vengeance on humanity as a whole.

{"Buddy!"} Sven's deep 'HOMN!' cries out as the Rangifer skitters across the polished deck to his best friend. The reindeer selflessly bears the putrid taste of the potent algal all over Kristoff's face as the mountain man's lifelong pal licks away the sticky, rotted, plantlike substance from his best friend's darkened eye sockets and blocked from breathing nose.

After instructing young helmsman Jan to lock in his Kommander's devil-may-care, yet brilliantly plotted, spiraling course along the edges of the Moskenstraumen to continue on without him, _'No matter what is happening out there, '_ a flabbergasted Hans rushes out onto the deck.

Chaos greets him as he watches Kristoff and many of his sailors, one after another, go down after being pelted by the awakened Draugen's noxious spitting dark saliva.

The always ready to improvise Prince of the Southern Isles physically forces his stiffened legs to take decisive extempore action as he watches the huge creature prematurely break free of its surface bondage to the hull of the ship.

The sea monster begins to climb up onto the Gler to extricate himself from the thick cable and ropes of the windlass wench after a violent attempt to rip out the nautical device that was blessedly welded firmly to the aft deck.

The Draugen's innumerably limitless tentacles seem to be increasing in size with each inch gained. The leeched fear of every one of those brave men blinded and incapacitated by its briny, reeking, decomposed slime glued to each of their hopefully temporarily blinded faces and other key body parts was enough for the captured symbiont to feed upon for raw energy.

"Have fortitude and becalm, men! _Fear_ is the name of your enemy!" Yelling across the deck as he moves like quicksilver, despite his rigidly frozen limbs and increasingly pounding brain within his frozen head beneath that dapper Captain's hat, Prince Hans has the wherewithal and composure still to have the other few sailors below deck come up to help clear the injured men's air passages so as to be able to breathe. Those who could, help their Kommander load the blinded, burned and injured seamen into the lifeboat as expeditiously as possible, even as the ship rocks and sways under the invading monster's wrath.

"Mister Bjorgman, would you –?" The tactician in Hans already slated Kristoff and Sven's strength and talent for the task, even before the Ice Harvester opened his freshly cleared mouth to comply.

_**Cough! Cough!**_

"Don't worry! We'lll get them out of here, man!" Blinking, Kristoff, his face still a blackened mess, but his eyes and breathing clear thanks to a tenacious Sven, nods to the ship Kommander's half–unspoken request, the tense confrontation between men earlier passed.

The brawny muscleman lumbers over to where Hans and a few of his officers had already placed the many injured sailors into the lifeboat. From there, the experienced with ropes mountaineer ties harnesses around Sven and the Snow Queen's one flying white mare that was still on board to attach the flying pair firmly together with the lifeboat.

Kristoff, Hans and the remaining seamen of the team lower the lifeboat swiftly to the crashing waves on the more stabilized captive wake of the leeward side, protected from the prevailing sharp wind, and more importantly, away from the gigantic beast scaling their ship in an attempt to free itself from the Gler's dragged wake.

"I'll be back!" With purposeful resolve and his pair of muscular quadruped harnessed to the roped lifeboat just released to the revolving ocean, Kristoff, Sven and the white mare haul towards the Mosken island shore with the small boat craft, fighting against the funneling edge of the maelstrom all the while. But it helped that the wind itself was at the Snow Prince's command.

"First, I must thank you for your noble service to your Queen. This monstrous aberration must be stopped, men. The time has come." Standing in the entranceway of the bridge, Vise Admiral Westergaard steadies his chilled to the bone lower leg and frosted forearms beneath his Navy blue tunic with only three sailors of his dozen men crew left on board gathered around either side.

Hans eloquently instructs and thanks the remaining three men left of his naval contingency, as he meets the eye of each one in recognition of his service.

Kapteinløytnant Kaas and his brother-in-law Konstabel Orm, who had both recently lost sister, wife and child and niece to a sudden sea storm near their home at the coast just a year ago. Both big, burly, yet broken men had absolutely pledged to their Kommander their utmost loyalty to the welcomed death, which was part of the reason they had signed up for this most dangerous mission.

Then there was young helmsman Jan, the gangly 17-year-old orphan boy who so developed such a respect for his fellow naval genius wiry redhead, that the teen refused to abandon the first man who trusted him to steer his ship on this vital mission undertaken for their beauteous and pure Queen Elsa of Arendelle.

_**S-SCRREECHH!**_

The quartet of crewmates of the Gler are shaken to their core by the sudden deafening yawl heard of the reinvigorated beast trying to break free as the entire vessel is rocked fiercely back-and-forth.

A few seconds later, the monster's dark slimy claws start to wind around the edge of the ship's foredeck only meters away from the vital wheelhouse. Luckily, the Draugen was still entangled in the thick cable that was preventing it from immediately rising to the ship deck as it is dizzily tossed about in the spinning maelstrom.

"With haste, Kaas, Orm, I entrust you to begin to un-batten the hatches and each and every one of the valves in the hull below. We will go down and drag that monster with us, so help me." Hans succinctly instructs the two large fishermen as he turns to the skinny young helmsman inside the bridge next.

"Helmsman Jan, please continue to adhere the ship on course port starboard to heave then heel the Gler on its tilted rotational pintacles and gudgeons. Take us both hard rudder at the offset of the Moskenstraumen's violent turbulence. Surge, sway, pitch or roll. Whatever it takes to compensate. I trust your seafaring instinct implicitly on our mission to expel from the bright world this tenebrous blackhearted monster for our beloved Arendelle Queen and dear Princess."

"Once we are fathoms deep enough within the Moskenstraum, I will excoriate the foul creature of darkness to keep it firmly attached on board until our ultimate goal is reached for her righteous cause and the monster goes to his drowned death to the bottom of the sea with us, Gentleman.

"And may God forgive us all as we sink the good ship HmNoS Gler."

And to punctuate this final decisive crucial speech, comes a fitting Biblical truth that staves back a small degree of the bitter ice crawling its way into Hans Westergaard's cold heart

"'_Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in His mighty power._ _Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes._ _For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of_ _God_, _so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, you will stand. __Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place.'"_Ephesians 6:10-14

Hans was still reciting Scripture as he leaves his trio of men to their relegated duties whilst he attends to his. Balanced against the whipping wind and thrashing waves against the hull, our tall black booted and stylish hero steps out onto the top deck of the Gler's polished spruce and oak and wooden strakes, Vise Admiral Westergaard rallies his resolve. He draws his always at the ready gleaming naval sword, that only was rivaled by the steely glint in his eye. Hans clenches the hilt tightly in his blue bloodless hands, sure in the certainty that the demise of this monster of vengeful darkness would have to involve his weapon of choice.

From the first ilky flailing tentacles of the seaweed creeping up, to its scraping black claws and haptera stipes scaling the hull, to the sorus spine cluster of thallus stamina blades of its ravenous body clinging to the rail, the nefarious creature rises to the ship's deck like a perfidious macroscopic giant squid, ready to devour any vulnerable vessel and all its occupants whole.

But this repentant man whose spirit now walked with God would never relinquish his noble fight in the eternal struggle of man versus the pure evil of the devil himself.

This 'cabin boy' versus his Captain; the Prince versus the pirate in one final face-off—both man and beast were determined in a pit of wills to once and for all expunge the other from this world on the sunless night.

As Hans rushes headlong athwarts across the deck planks, he was fully prepared to give every last bit of the man he was, and every dream of the man he longed to be.

For the sake of what was good and righteous in the sight of the Almighty.

For the sake of the woman he loved more than life itself, though he could never confess his devotion.

And so, with every ounce of his intellect, foresight, dexterity and cleverness put to the test, damning his dead weight of his nearly fully frozen pair of legs, Hans still can use the well-toned muscles of his upper arms to swiftly climb the ratlines and foresail between the foremast and the mizzen.

With abandon, Hans' long legs gird up to climb the ratlines of the foresail shroud until the distinguished Danish Royal was boldly hanging, balanced on the mast over forty foot high on the roughly swaying and beating sails.

Once near the top tall spur upper tops'l raffle, Prince Hans refocuses all of his remaining strength and precision to his keenly honed cutting edge reflected in the failing midnight sun.

'_For it is God who arms me with strength and makes my way perfect_.' Psalm 18:30 echoes in his determined mind.

And with that deft swordsmanship the lonely Prince had mastered to excellence in many a solitary hour, Hans gives an abrupt and maddened smashing leap downward to have gravity help the half frozen, much heavier than normal weight, and less flexible young man slice the foresail's mast clean off from its double sails.

As high up as he needed to be, Hans' razor sharp sword ingeniously cuts straight through the tall wooden spar that, with calculated trajectory of the long sharp wooden timber trunk of a conifer tree, would rail down to pierce straight through the on-deck Draugen's exposed chest just as the beast was creeping its giant size onto the main deck close to the wheelhouse.

And the plummeting down mast pins the unsuspecting Draugen to the Gler's deck, straight through the vacuous space where its black heart did not beat.

As he lets gravity slide him down to stab through the forty foot tall splintered mizzenmast, an exhausted Hans knew this maneuver would not extinguish the regenerating beast, nor would it allow the sea monster to escape to the vast innocent ocean beyond the whirlpool.

But it would buy him time to keep the insensate and stunned monster captured on board for his original plan to assure the Draugen going down with the anchored Gler to its watery death.

As the Gler spirals deeper into the dark folds of the ebony abyss, the Midnight Sun sky flickers away any last salvage of light. The charcoal-greenish scaly appendages of the sea monster eerily hum and pulsate on the deck. The spinning ship is caught up in the full maelstrom as the naval schooner careens at top speeds along the funneling vortex.

Premeditated by the Vise Admiral, Kommander of this ship, the Gler spins and sinks deeper down against the towering wall of wind and water combined.

The rising whirlpool picks up speed and slams and thrashes against the hull in sputtered rotating squalls, drenching wet, pulling the overweight ship down.

And the results are tremendous, as one inexorable phenomenon of nature meets the other unnatural, inexplicable one in a legendary clash of the titans.

Both the Draugen's blood-curdling scream and the terrible audible histrionics of the howling Moskenstraumen battle to prevail over one another in voracious discordance…

* * *

"Dear God, that young Dane's impressive." At the flying carriage approaches from the eastern sky, the passengers just coming to view of the mighty maelstrom drink in the stunning sight of the monstrous sea creature being pinned down to the ship via its acrobatic, tightrope walking, sword wielding Kommander.

King Agdar gives credit where credit was due as, before the monarch's amazed eyes, he watches the able young naval officer slide down the splintered wood topmast he had skewered the hundred foot tall beast with to swing down the self-same wooden spur to stand his tall black boot on the unconscious monster's back.

By now, King Agdar had opened the door of the midair Brougham carriage wide to witness the ensuing battle of man's indomitable spirit trouncing a vile beast umpteen times his size.

"Impressive…" A stunned Elsa repeats in a soft murmur her patriarch's stirred remark, as the pair of Norwegian rulers were practically hanging out, one onto each of the open carriage doorways. A breathless Elsa grasps the doorframe of the plush carriage opening for support, her breath utterly stolen away by the valorous Prince's single-handed effrontery on the vicious enemy by his sheer cunning and aptitude alone.

"Hey! Never mind that Red! There's my Kristly! And Sven saving the sailors! Which is **way** more important!" Anna's competitive voice comes from behind where her impressed father and glowing with pride elder sister where perched side-by-side, practically fawning over 'that criminal Hans 'in the carriage doorway.

Anna peeks her orangey head between the two ice wielders to be more astounded to no end by her own precious love's heroic heralding of many of the Gler's injured sailors.

The Wind Whisperer's force of will and call upon the elements of nature itself, especially the capricious will-o'-the-wisp named the 'wind', gives the vigorous mountainman the Herculean strength to help Sven and the Snow Queen's horse pull the harnessed ropes around the lifeboat.

At his beckon, Sven and the white horse deliver the seven sailors – all thankfully still breathing with the algal splutter that had been removed from their vital breathing organs as they had traversed waters near the coast of Mosken. And it is here that the flying carriage carrying the Royal family back into battle, criss-crossed the Norwegian sea to have this double courageous scene of their daughters' young beaus exploits was a sight for sore eyes.

"Kristoff!" Impetuous Anna waits not. Without a second thought, the excited ginger sprite gives a two fingered whistle and eagerly leaps out into the thin air some thousands of feet up. Anna emerged from the opposite carriage coach door to her mother's gasping horror, jumping right onto Svala's intuitively intercepting back in yet another energetically crazy trust exercise.

"Anna?! I thought I heard your voice close, in here!" A not too surprised to have his feistypants return Kristoff Bjorgman plinks a forefinger to his forehead. The sticky blackish goo on which gets his digit all grimy and dirty again, causing the blond man to make a puckered lipped look at his little bride.

Those lips, the Arendelle Princess locks right onto as she launches herself from her blonde female reindeer to rush headlong back into her utterly male and studly man's arms. Anna didn't care if she got her yellow and chartreuse green shirt and vest all mucky stained, she had her much missed main man's kiss in her hungry mouth.

"Oh, Kristly! If you ever ditch me again!" Anna recovers first from their breathless crushing kiss as she unmitigatedly wallops her husband across his rock-hard abs in punishment for his previous misdeed of acting all selfless and nobly heroic like a man.

Not like her sweet Kristly.

And never without her. Anna purses her lips tight and glowers up at him, hands on her hips in dogged protest, as she stands her ground on the shifting to the beachfront of Mosken island.

"Okay, okay. I get it." Kristoff's smile, after he rubs his socked gut, doubles when he sees Anna's cute little nose and left cheek had become all blackened with the dark algal slime from his matching dirty face.

"Ha ha." The Ice Harvester, after assuring himself that those seven men were able survive on their own, allowed himself a momentary selfish chuckle as he lightly touches his own sooty face to get enough dirt on to mark Anna's other plump cheek too, until she resembled the porcelain baby doll he once saw in the general store that he wanted to buy for her, but didn't have enough money for.

_I''ll get you that dolly someday, Baby._

Kristoff then turns all serious and sets his sights back on the battle at the Gler he promised to return to.

"Stay with your folks, Anna!" Concerned husband Kristoff halfheartedly offers over his departing shoulder as he mounts Sven in one bounding leap. He knew he was whistling in the wind. But the Wind Whisperer had to try.

"You are NOT leaving me behind, Mister! Remember all that ''til death do you part' at the wedding?! Both of them?! It was only one week ago! When I catch you, Kristoff _Bjorgman_, I'm going to smack you so hard–" An exhilarated, basely derisive and mocking Anna reprimands her pigheaded, stubborn guy as playfully she and Svala take off from the shore on Sven's proverbial tail.

"I like the sound of that, Baby." Kristoff affords his new wife a little honeymoon flirt as he reaches out one big hand to cover his Anna's little reciprocating palm from where she was soon scooted up to fly beside Sven on Svala's back.

And the pair of stubbornly-in-love lovebirds, hand-in-hand, secure as long as the other half of them was near, soar back towards where the Gler was spiraling into a terrifying Moskenstraumen maelstrom.

* * *

"That Lillebror of mine sure is an over-achiever, ain't he? An altruistic bit of a stiff maybe, that show-off. But a good egg, all in all. What say you, Onkel Agdar? Are we going down there to see if he left any glory-seeking for us two old and shabby married men?" Eugene's brash voice calls back from the driver's seat up front beside Rapunzel and Pascal to the still awed and floored speechless King of Norway.

"Speak for yourself, young man."

Finding it tough to tear his intrigued eyes away from the compelling scene on the Gler 6'o'clock ahead and below, the touch narcissistic Agdar, especially in dapper days of youth gone by to concede ever being 'old and shabby,' displays the renewed vitality of a 42-year-young man who had the advantage of possessing the power the ice flowing through his veins to challenge any man of his worth.

In his right palm, conjured snowflakes in the form of icy ships flicker between his fingers as even in his left hand the holy royal sceptre of St. Olaf begins to gleam with a frosted glow.

The matching holy relic illuminated in his icy offspring's hand bonds with her father's ostentatious flaunt that coaxes a smile to adorn Elsa's lovely pale features up at him. She momentarily steals her glance away from her similarly mesmerized stare down at Prince Hans' positively incredible feat against the vile beast threatening their nation's people, land and sea.

"At your command, my Snow Angel." King Agdar recognized that he was not only sharing the crown with his beautiful and intelligent daughter, but also the purpose of their lives' inner strength as seen in the urgent necessity of the orb and sceptre used in tandem as both were grasped in either of their cold, opposite hands' icy grips.

Queen Idun adds her healing touch by securing both her husband and child's remaining cool palms in her warm ones for stability.

"Thank you, Papa, Mama." Elsa smiles at her Papa and her Mama behind as they were instilling such belief in her. She lovingly squeezes both of her beloved parents hands entwined in hers, praising God for the ability to hold onto one another's warmth and strength that she had not done in years without the fear of freezing them at last.

_Just as I have learned that God holds us all in the Palm of His Hand. Even more so now, together, as a family._

Shy, reticent Elsa Bernadotte, the once introverted, inhibited Queen of Arendelle blossoms from her crystalline chrysalis almost fully with the power of her dear parents and her darling little sister's devotion and affectionate bolstering her at her side with their Godly unconditional love, too.

Although her ostensibly fragile heart and mind knew the blessing of God's love, and now understood familial love at last too, Queen Elsa's puzzle was still not yet complete.

Now, as for that final piece…

A cold chill was frosting over it, almost past that point of no return…

And while Elsa had finally uncovered the true warmth of her family's love, a certain young man, who never felt any sentiment of that magnitude showered upon him by another living soul, had just given the last of his strength, the bulk of his constitution and the final strands of resistance left after he had selflessly laid down it all for this exceptional young woman he loved.

With valiant sword still drawn, a balanced against the violently swirling maelstrom Hans Westergaard stands debonair, tall and triumphant atop the greatest victory of his life. Although, inside his despondent stricken-with-cold mind that was yet caught up on still being counted as useless excess, last in line for anything, and made aware to be unwanted since the beginning.

It was then the first frost began, when a forlorn, friendless outcast boy strived to be somebody more, become a man to prove to his earthly father his life meant something. After it had been drilled in his brain for so long by so many that he was unworthy, unimportant, and unloved, Prince Hans felt completely alone in this world and utterly empty and devoid of any of warmth's gentle pleasures. The simple kindnesses in a human life where a single smile could've changed a lonely child's heart to love...

But this day, both victor and victim would be lost to the ultimate titan of the devil's raging ebony maelstrom that was about to sink them both forever to the bottom of the cold sea in Davy Jones' locker, where nobody was ever declared a winner.

And, his final mission complete, this one mislaid soul was now about to be buried beneath the snowy mountain avalanche of past regrets, failed endeavors and unachieved aspirations represented by the thick verglas ice coating his own, by now, almost completely frozen heart.

As alone, a frigidly statuesque Hans-some Prince, bearing the noble sword he wielded in life so proudly over his enemy, no longer had the fight in him, nor needed to even hopelessly dare to dream for love from someone so perfect beyond his unworthy reach any more, as he finally succumbs to the cold lifeless freeze, body, heart and soul...

**_CLNKK CLLKK CLNKKK…_**

* * *

Sjoforsvaret - _Royal Norwegian Navy_

Menig- _Junior Seaman in Sjoforsvaret_

Visekonstabel- _Seaman in Sjoforsvaret_

Konstabel- _Leading Seaman in Sjoforsvaret_

Fenrik -_Sub-lieutenant in Sjoforsvaret_

Løytnant- _Lieutenant in Sjoforsvaret_

Kapteinløytnant- _First Officer/_ _Lieutenant Commander in Sjoforsvaret_

Onkel – _Uncle in Prussian Germanic_

* * *

_February greetings, dear Frozen friends!_

_I do hope you are all keeping warm and snug in these wintry months! (Unlike poor Hans! :)_

_Please review this battling escapade as we really enter into the final few chapters of this huge adventure!_

_Maybe Valentine's Day will be the finale!_

_God bless! _

_HarukaKou_


	59. Chapter 58 - Listen with Your Heart

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act IV**

**Chapter 58**

**"Listen with Your Heart"**

67.8° North  
12.833° East

This pair of bone chilling numbered indicators was the most feared latitude and longitude coordinates of the open seas, signaling to laymen and seasoned sailor alike the five mile wide most inexplicable enigma of the marine world. The treacherous spinning vortex of devouring waves amplified as its hypnotic rotations spin towards its building top turbulence known as the Moskenstraumen.

Princess Anna of Arendelle's curious blue-green eyes widen and strain in dizzying turns as she is almost mesmerized by the legendary whirlpool's eerily screeching bellowed cry. The closer she approaches aboard Svala, it was as if the circulating bleakness that was the Moskenstraum maelstrom had put a mystic spell on the young girl. Its dark swirling streams gyrate and spin endlessly into an ebony funneled pit that would suck unsuspecting travelers into the dark depths of the subterranean sea, so how much more a curious young woman's entranced mind.

"Anna! Snap out of it! That blasted whirlpool's been known to spellbind sailors who are way more experienced than you!" Staunchly constant Kristoff's profound words and stablizing hand reach over to touch her arm and ground Anna back to pressing reality.

"Whaa-att?! Ohh, my head! Thanks Kristly!" Blinking several times, the dizzy girl shakes her zoned-out self back to her senses with a nod at her husband. Anna then grits her teeth with a deep breath, her eyes now only focusing on the prize of the descending ship sinking purposely into the heart of the maelstrom quickly below their airborne speeding reindeers.

But the glinting sight against the aggravated waves that Anna spies down there on the ship's deck makes her shudder even more than the awesome frightening ocean darkly surrounding them within its eerie, dank and clammy ambiance.

"I think we've got a big problem down there." Confirming her suspicions, Kristoff's calm and cautiously hushed voice had more than a tone of instinctive alarm in it. Sven begins to dive low nearer the Gler as the controlled vessel tailspins down and around the outer rings of the vortex.

Paying no never mind to the motionless, stabbed through and pinned down monstrosity of the green gooey pile of algal ooze on the ship's main deck, gutsy Anna blindly leaps from Svala's saddle right onto the evil-secreting creature's be-stilled chest. She impulsively trips and hops over its montage of formerly wriggling black and garish algal stipes without a shred of fear.

At least not fear for herself.

"Hans?" The orangey braided Princess stumbles across the Draugen's pockmarked, sword punished chest replete with its phalanx of immobilized algal tendrils and protracted, flopped over seaweed haptera strands. She anxiously rushes towards her former fiancé with not one shred of anger or disparaging witty repartee that had up to now, passed per se between the uncomfortable ginger and red duo.

Cocking a shocked head quizzically, a sudden sadness overwhelms Anna as she stares in utter disbelief at the frosted-over frozen in place figure of the man whom she once hoped to own her heart.

The bluish-white, almost translucent statuesque Prince's depressed, dismissed, disinherited and disavowed heart was all but an icicle now. The verglas hoarfrost coating over his pale white eyes was so clouded it covered his once so effusively emotive green pools that held her in such high regard in the past—his pretty boy eyes that were now inscrutably distant.

"How can I help you, Hans?" With a stunned and petrified tear behind her horrified vision, in the smallest squeak of a thin voice, Anna of Arendelle looks up and down the man standing chivalrously, sword still clutched in hand, before her.

Pressing a hand to his subzero temperature chest, Anna reaches an almost too-frightened-to-touch palm to lightly brush against Hans' icy chilled cheek.

Though there had been times the spicy, jilted, perturbed girl could think this a fitting punishment for the redheaded scum, right now, Anna desperately wondered if there was anything she could do to instead save this traitorous enemy who once broke and betrayed her own frozen heart.

Tears spring to Princess Anna's emotional eyes as she was face to face again with the cruel cold reality of a justice this truly kindhearted girl would never wish anyone to suffer.

Beyond the refused kiss that he never gave several years ago, that, in retrospect, would not have worked anyway since they were minus the magic of true love, all sweet Anna could think now was if there was possibly anything on earth she could do to prevent Hans Westergaard's heart from freezing up completely.

"Princess Anna..." Amazingly, through his thoroughly purplish blue, non-moving lips that were practically frozen over, Hans' strong force of will manages to whisper in a just about audible undertone, especially above the crashing wails of the tumultuous sea encasing them in.

"Hans?!" Anna moves her face closer to his icy mouth to catch his hard effort's choked out, sparse words.

_"Huff-huff_…I am glad you're here, Princess. _Huff-huff._ Of all people, _Huff-huff_…I can think of no one I would trust more_…Huff-huff_…to fulfill my last wishes…_Huff-huff…_"

"Wow. That's a first." Anna, despite her momentous, convoluted emotions, smirks at Hans' suggestion of her oft questionable, not generally sought after discretionary judgment.

"You must let me go down with this ship–_huff-_to both destroy this creature's menace once and for all, and also to…spare Elsa from ever knowing what really happened to me. You and I both are acquainted with–_huff-_how she'd react to my untimely demise in this fashion. And we both care for her too much to allow that unnecessary burden on her tender heart_. You must **never **tell her of this._" Hans unloads his deepest, sincere trepidation to a growing more frantic, hand-wringing Anna at his side.

"But, Hans!" The contrary young woman, who had an independent, rebellious head on her shoulders, protests every one of Hans' disagreeable – albeit arguably truthful - proposals.

"_Huff-huff…_Please, just let Elsa know I went down with the ship and it was **not** her fault in any way. Make her understand that this was entirely my choice as an officer of her fine Navy…_Huff-huff…_ My responsibility to your kingdom…_Huff-huff…_ to make some small recompense for my past wrongs to the pair of you…_Huff-huff…_ wonderful sisters. It's better…this way." Hans' normally strong tenor was so thin and fragile that it sounded almost as if it would shatter like glass as he attempts to finish his fragmented sentences between his forced struggling breaths.

"Please…_Huff-huff-huff…_ I realize it doesn't mean much, but…_huff-huff…_ Could you find in your heart to forgive me, Anna?" His plaintive words in between the cold huffs of cool water vapor breath fog, plainly showed how important it was to the repentant Dane to hear her forgiveness before it was too late.

"Hans, don't." Unable to cogently answer his plea due to her own distress at his increasing ice-gripped pain, Anna was in genuine tears.

"Please, don't let Elsa ever be sad. Please don't allow that beautiful diamond's precious shine…_huff-huff…huff-huff… cough_!" It was becoming progressively more and more difficult a feat for the brilliantly resourceful young man to continue to astoundingly communicate the most weighty sentiment of his self-condemned frozen heart.

"…To ever be left alone." Hans' unselfish words still ring in her reddened ear that was pressed close to his now totally frozen over chilly lips. Anna was just about able to make out the last sentient thought of this isolated young man— who recently discovered what true loneliness meant… against the glow of a love he could never attain…

His mission to rid this beautiful untouched land of this destructive evil beast almost accomplished, with a final gasp, his frost-encrusted eyes at last surrender along with the remainder of his ice-tortured body. As Hans' eyelashes flutter closed, scattered snowflakes fall across the bleak landscape of his frozen heart…

**_Whooshh…_**

And that yearning soul who only longed for an unreachable, unapproachable, inconceivable love to fill the aching gap of solitude in his empty heart for the whole of his life, now, at the end of it all, _had_ found what he searched far and wide for in a pair of exotic icy blue eyes as Queen Elsa of Arendelle's delicate lovely face is the last thing he sees in his mind's clouding over fog...

But Prince Hans of the Southern Isles, with absolute certainty that the only woman who could absolve and occupy that vacant vast hole in his heart, was also the one and only woman who could never – should never – lower her high position, degrade her high morals to reciprocate that treasure of love for someone such as this meager, wholly inadequate and forever stained man he felt he had become.

Plainly, hers was a love he didn't deserve to be recipient of. Even if his Snowflake Queen cared for him, as keen Hans was growing more cognizant of late, he could not accept it on principle for her greater happiness. She deserved so much better.

Hans' last viable breath, offered in tender consideration of her beloved sister in hopes for Elsa's future contentment, hits Anna unexpectedly close to the heart. All of a sudden she opens her big heart to listen for once and see that this misunderstood young man may not have entirely been the villain of the fairytale that her angered mind made him out to be.

"Hans?! Hans! You crazy boy! Don't you dare ignore me when I'm talking to you, you stupid, stupid jerk! Don't you DARE break my Elsie's heart, you terrible, silly, beautiful Red! No one has to die! We **will** find another way!_" _Anna lands several smacking fist pounds against Hans' hard frozen unresponsive chest.

The feisty princess loudly levels her fire at the man whom she, despite her own personal vendetta and petulant mistrust for her former enemy, had come to some begrudging conclusions. Her shy sister had definitely and obviously been harboring some hidden, forbidden emotion, just on the verge of being ready to be stoked to full emblazoned flame, along this journey for this daring Prince Hans.

_No accounting for taste, Elsa…But I should talk, ugh! That man and his dreamy eyes…_Anna inexplicably couldn't stop the unbidden tears from running down her hot cheeks.

After all, this was the very same man the lied to girl was sure had no room in his cold heart for love, once upon a time. The very man, who, nonetheless, Anna felt oddly sure this time, may just honestly share in the feelings of genuinely self-sacrificial, dutifully committed and spiritually devoted love for Elsa.

And the stubborn inflexible dam holding back the forgiveness Hans was so soulfully seeking from this energetic spicy-tongued girl, who loved as passionately as she lived the fullness of God's green world blossomed under sunshine, finally bursts to overflow with Christ-like heartfelt mercy…

_'Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you_. Ephesians 4:31-32'

Her dear Mama's Sunday school sermon echoes in her little child's soul, with holy wisdom from the Good Book that knew no earthly bounds even all these years later.

Despite her anxious worry, Princess Anna's heavy, resentful heart is lifted up to the heavens and lightened of their burden, set free at last of all those obstreperous thoughts as they are carried away by the Lord's mighty wings of forgiveness…

* * *

With doleful eyes and a tender sympathetic moan, Svala meanders over the lifeless Draugen's chest to nuzzle against Anna's quivering shoulders. The sweet girl was shedding many hot tears upon the frozen statue of the lost Danish Prince she once reviled as Svala watches Anna unreservedly embrace Hans.

Meanwhile, after he and Kristoff had clear the blocked companionway steps, Sven had bravely forged below to gather the pair of sailors whose voices were vaguely calling after being buried and injured down in the hull's cargo hold opening the hatches to scuttle this tossed asunder ship at their leader's deliberated instruction.

Staying up on deck to monitor the Draugen while Anna was tending to Hans, conscientious Kristoff carefully inspects the impassive monster on the main deck of the ship revolving down the maelstrom.

The creature appeared to be neither alive, nor would pragmatic Kristoff believe it fully dead—even if there was a forty foot beam of thick, solid conifer impaled straight through to the deck through its immobilized torso where a heart should have beat. However, this mystical sea creature's regenerative abilities, though unclear if even they could survive such a brutal frontal assault, the instinctive Wind Whisperer had the suspicious forethought could kick into gear at any given moment.

"How can I tell if you're just playing possum?" After a critical eye makes several rounds around the inert dark mass nailed to the imperiled Gler's deck, with yet another light kick of his curly-toed boot to the gargantuan monster's motionless side, Kristoff sighs.

_Is this thing bigger since last time? I thought we got it shrinking?!_

"And how are we going to dump you off this ship into that abyss down there and still get this ship to survive while escaping the maelstrom?" Kristoff pauses in his assessing circumference of the downed sea monster pinned to the deck of the circling naval schooner. Strategy was never his strong point, he was more the direct type of man who'd use his ample muscles for something basic like pushing unwanted detritus off the edge first and leave the brainy stuff for later. But with much apprehension on his knit brow, Kristoff was enough of a realist to recognize his own limitations as he looks over the prone Draugen's over one hundred and fifty foot monstrous form that Westergaard had intrepidly, and quite ruthlessly, impaled to nail down to the ship deck.

_I gotta admit. That guy may not look it with all those fancy words and snobby airs. But he's got real ba—_

{"Muittasit, Muohta Gonagasbardni!"} (_Remember, Snow Prince!_}

"Whoa!" Kristoff stumbles as his own thoughts are interrupted by a scratchy elderly voice speaking a foreign tongue that somehow The Wind Whisperer's brain had automatically translated.

{"Okta giella ii leat goaaege doarvai…"} _(One language is never enough._} The indistinct enigmatic words swirling around Kristoff's muddled mind, over and over repeating, are overlaid by a calming yet commanding other speaker in his perceptive head.

{"Listen with your heart, boy! Only then will you understand."}

Taken aback by the intensity of the multiple communicative tones in his brain, Kristoff immediately jumps up to his feet from where he was kneeling at the dank Draugen's slimy, scaly side, assessing its almost-dead condition.

{"Bahanikkan!"} (_The evil spirit!) _Just then, that ancient female voice reverberating in his mind increases in volume to warn sharply.

{"Beware, Kristoff! It awakens!"} The secondary deep voice, that Kristoff all at once knew all too well the owner of, rings urgently inside of the Ice Harvester's head.

"Anna! Get down from there! Now!" Immediately yelling out to his love above, the blond mountaineer swivels on his heel and strong-arm scales the prone monster with his powerfully displayed muscles to climb up to retrieve his little wife, for the danger signals in his heart and warning voices in his head.

But after the well-built mountain man propelled himself upward in amazing haste, Kristoff is shocked to find that his Anna – who was only supposed to be checking out the unfortunate status of their frostbitten fellow adventurer – was bodily attempting to drag frozen Prince Hans' tall statuesque sword-confiscated-form from its placement on the laid out Draugen's seaweed-y upper abdomen.

"Anna! Svala! What are you two doing!? This thing is about to wake up!" Chiding her tardiness to react to his forewarning due to Anna's unpredictable crazy behavior, and quite shocked that Ragi's usually reliable reindeer companion was assisting her in doing it, Kristoff urgently eggs his gal to get a scrambling move on.

Kristoff hardly expected to climb up there to see his wife and her reindeer friend trying to maneuver and lift his former rival's stiff ice laden form to balance the awkward six foot statue somehow on Svala's slender Rangifer back.

"I'm going—_argh_!—to get—_oof_!—this Hans— _Golly, he's heavier than he looks_!—off this blinkin', bleedin' monster—_ergh_!—if it's the last thing I do!" The perky, perspicacious, piquant Princess, who had obviously been around the mountain men's camp way too much to pick up their cursing lingo, was indeed ardent in her unrelenting travails to save the perhaps irretrievable life of her sworn enemy.

Frozen or not, too heavy and awkwardly elongated for her small frame to lift, though she would never give up trying, determined Anna and Svala were undertaking the shouldered task, come hell or high water.

Or in this rancorous evil sea monster's case, probably both.

"I do, Hans… I do forgive you. Elsa unfroze my heart with the power of our sisterly love for each other. Is there no one out there who loves you like that?" Breathlessly, the energy spent girl leans her head to the frozen figure, trying to imagine someone in his life, a family member, a friend perhaps, who ever showed the lonely Prince real love, though she only draws a blank. Anna pauses to regain her strength to continue on as she whispers the pardon she couldn't choke out before. The forthright girl sheds one more tear for the redheaded man she once thought the world of, until that world came crashing down.

Yet now again it was too late to make amends. But it wasn't this fallen world that taught a heart how to love, nor how to forgive.

Unpretentious Kristoff, without a shred of jealousy, empathizes with his life partner's expressed needs. Whether or not he fully understood his bounteous Anna's sudden shift in mercy concerning Hans Westergaard, Kristoff knew that his un-remitting stubborn girl also was mistress of an uncommonly magnificent heart that lived implausibly and loved inconceivably beyond belief.

Her fair and forbearing mate was glad for the bounty of forgiveness that he was sure was better for his spirited Anna's eternal soul than the sour vengeance she'd been holding.

For the loving heart inside of Anna of Arendelle never realized how painful would be the thought of actually losing Hans Westergaard. Even after all the convolutions of mistrust and betrayal mixed with heroism and genuine aid in the twists and turns of their ill at ease amity…

Especially now, that Elsa's welfare was part of the equation… Anna sobs helplessly against the tall man in naval uniform's frozen chest.

"Hold on, Baby. I'm coming." Seeing her exhausted and frustrated, forlorn tears, Kristoff smiles, despite being harried and tense for the imminent threat of the quaking to life reawakening sea monster beneath their feet.

The big mountain man carefully tries not to stomp too hard across the algal surface so as not to disturb the sleeping giant below as Kristoff proceeds gingerly over to where Anna was. Again, Anna none too delicately endeavors to load that rigid inflexible stiff, slippery customer of her ex-fiancé onto her reindeer doe's helpful back.

"You do realize that you are a blame fool, right? My beautiful, angelic, marvelous fool." Kristoff regards his nutty, adorable, perfect bride with proud, approving eyes. His admonishment is softened by a loving tone and tender eyes as he easily lifts the cold block of densely supercooled ice that went by the name of '_Hans'_ as if he were weightless.

"We'll get him help." Kristoff comforts his wife in his reassuring voice, gently stroking her tearful cheek with his big opposable thumb, though he himself was unsure if anything could be done.

**_Whew-whew!_**

"Sven!" Kristoff's sharp whistle call for the intuitive reindeer was unnecessary. Sven was already on his way up from the lower deck levels where he located not only the two marginally injured sailors, but the Snow Queen's flying white horse as well. The in-charge reindeer ordered, with expressive grunts, the men and the last two sailors from the ship they had just scuttled, under their Captain's implicit command, to join the rest of the crew already while the flying white mare soars to Mosken island to be evacuated with them.

When Sven carefully alights onto the Draugen's stomach abdomen area, the experienced Ice Harvester, who was well accustomed to picking up solid chunks of frozen water much heavier than this skinny streak of nothing, once known as the Prince of the Southern Isles, hefts frozen Hans onto Sven's back.

"Anna, get on Sven and high tail it off this sinking boat to that island with your fragile package!" He harnesses the human ice sculpture to his bigger, wider shouldered strong reindeer's sturdy shoulders. He purposely plunks Anna to sit behind stabilize expertly roped in frozen Prince.

"Ex-cuuse me?!" Anna retorts, her pride wounded.

"Anna! Please, listen for once! I can handle this! All we have left to do is to convince that kid on the bridge to come with us before this thing wakes up!" Kristoff, half talking to himself, informs Anna of his plan when his eyes glance to the forecastle of the schooner.

"I'll catch up on Svala once I get that kid inside that wheelhouse unblocked. There's no time to waste!" After situating and tying Hans to Sven, Kristoff hurriedly loads his most precious cargo—his best girl—onto his best friend's back behind the stiffly frigid Dane.

"You had better, you big lug! Or I promise, **I'll **find some way kill you!" Pliable bodied Anna wildly leans down from her saddle seat to plant a big wet kiss on her worried, thought-provoked husband's surprised lips that react with just as much tongue-lashing passion action that three precious seconds of liplock could allow.

It was the kind of kiss that neither would ever get enough of the other, leaving both begging for more. But Kristoff manfully forces himself pull away from Anna's pleased delirious smile, her tears all but vanished.

"Beat it, Sven!" Kristoff whacks his Rangifer's rear end, assured that his roping would be sufficient to keep the tall erect figure firmly attached to Sven's normalized-for-awkward-ice-hauling sturdy shoulders.

"Homn-homn, Homn!" {"Good luck, Buddy!"} Kristoff's cloven-hoofed lifelong friend trustingly transmits through their special bond. Balancing himself, Sven starts to prepare to take off from the Draugen's prone chest torso with a fiery Anna and a chilly Hans as his converse duo of passengers.

**_"SC-CREE-CCHHH!"_** But before the flying reindeer was able to ascend very far, that terrible scream erupts from the now fully awake and infuriated sea monster beneath their startled feet.

"Whoa-oa!" Kristoff and Anna both drop their jaws and try not to fall off the wobbling surly green lump of the Draugen's exponentially increasing stomach. Skittering to keep their footholds, our heroes watch in terror as the desperate creature not only begins to pulsate and grow to a rising mound right under the shocked and rocked couple and their reindeer, but it snaps open all ten pair of its squiggling eyes to glare down at them venomously.

Its eerie caterwauling sends poor Sven off kilter as the irksome sound waves pummel his ears so close in vicinity that the furry reindeer's ears were bleeding. As all along the shaky disorderly take off, Anna holds on to Hans thin pair of icy legs for dear life.

"Anna! Sven! Steady on!" Kristoff watches his beloveds tumble across the Draugen's now jerking to life chest. He steadies himself on the rolling waves of the monster's palpitating energy and rows of ilky haptera surging beneath him.

A dizzied, wild eyed Kristoff is relieved momentarily to see his quadruped land upon the deck of the Gler after skidding down the increasingly mountainous creature's right side until Sven and his passengers disappear around the now frighteningly undulating monster's dark mass.

So that meant Kristoff's job was to keep the vengeful Draugen's attention on him until the others got away.

Although selfless, valiant and brave Kristoff's worry should have been more for himself than for the others now that the vicious sea creature had him in its grudge recalled sights as main target.

{"Snow Prince!"} Svala's sultry voice turns imperatively anxious as she luckily intercepts between the Draugen's thick chest haptera vines that suddenly strike out to attack Kristoff standing near its impaled upper chest section.

The slimy black benthic algal extensor thickly snaps the life out of the thin air where Kristoff was previously standing. Vengeful and enraged, it struggles to break free of the large solid wood mizzenmast Hans had cleverly nailed it to the deck with.

{"Thanks, Svala."} Kristoff mentally says after his stolen breath returns. The tawny-tan female reindeer nods as she deftly avoids the monster's continually lashed out incoming vines and feral stipes all aimed with its multiple eyed sockets at target number one: Kristoff.

{"Sii Riegadrit galle lea Luonddu tat Jiekna." ("Child born of Nature and Ice.") That elderly woman's voice again breaks through Kristoff's conscious unwittingly.

{"Valmmastallat dii vaibmu vuotit."} ("Please prepare your heart for victory.") The Uralic language of the Saami elders he met with earlier in their journey returns to be heard perfectly clear in Kristoff's translated mind, when those three old Saami predicted that he would be the one—their legendary 'Christ-bearer' to vanquish their dreaded '_Bielgomai'_.

Suddenly, against the pounding crash of the thrashing waves and the whipping winds surrounding amidst the chaotic maelstrom, all becomes silent save for one singular voice.

**_"It has already been pierced."_**

Kristoff sharply sucks in air to his lungs, as all abruptly makes sense with Ragi's profoundly prophetic words echoing in every one of his six senses.

The young man trusts Svala to guide him safely, as his whirring mind tries to comprehend all the new information processing his head.

As the swirling gale force winds cease, fresh gentle sea breezes wash over him.

Clearing his mind of any other worldly clutter, Kristoff focuses on what the Spirit of the Wind was instructing him to defeat this otherworldly abomination to the nature that he was now so integrally part of.

_'One language is never enough_.' In retrospect, the old woman had looked so deeply penetrating into Kristoff's eyes, he thought she must've had some psychic, spiritual abilities as well. Now that he had channeled into his soulfully mental receiving and transmitting capabilities, perhaps his adopted Saami grandmother had somehow tapped into his receptive open senses.

"One language…? Huh? What language other than Norwegian should I be speaking?" Kristoff murmurs to himself, thinking in the literal sense of the phrase's words more in the metaphysical realm that the practical, unaffected boy rarely delved into.

{"Gullagoahtit datat Dudno váibmu, don áddegoahtit."} ("Listen with your heart, you will understand.") That sing-songy voice of an old, old lady repeats to resound through the young blond's very soul. Kristoff closes his eyes, letting the wind pass through him to make their encouraging mark on his conscience that needed support for the next task ahead. He must immerse his whole self, mine, heart, body and soul. These mysteries revealed were unraveling at this pertinent moment to help their 'Christ bearer' accomplish his destiny's greatest goal.

The painful screeching of the sea monster added to the ghostly sounds of the yelling maelstrom screaming against and thrashing the assaulted Gler's reinforced iron bottom hull as if its convulsing waves were a hungry predator, hungry to tear the ship apart stem to stern.

But unaffected, as he is engrossed in his own world, Snow Prince/Ice Harvester/Mountainman Kristoff Bjorgman heeds the voice of the winds whispering through him.

Svala encircles around the violently thrashing dark funnel of the maelstrom while flailing extensors writhing their effusive thrashing and battery along the Gler's top deck, as the monster madly struggles to be free.

Kristoff's powerfully muscular arms involuntarily reach around his sturdy back towards that special quiver that those enigmatic old Saami elders and shaman had bequeathed him.

Unable to control his automatic responses as his cleared mind recognizes his one and only impressive objective, Kristoff loads his Saami longbow with the honed stone arrow head at the end of its shaft. The archer focuses his squinted-eyed sights through the arrow's nock point on a certain area of the creature…

**_GR-ROOWWLL!_**

But as if the nearly 175 foot gargantuan monster somehow sensed the danger, the Draugen ferociously growls and swipes its sharpened black claws out at Svala and Kristoff who were flying airborne mere meters above its glaring up head.

The swift as the wind reindeer who had been groomed by the former Wind Whisperer, continually compensates to avoid the evil monster's untamed attacks.

Extracting his preserved arrows from beneath his charcoal black cloak cape as he balances on Svala's back, our mountain man fully draws his Saami longbow and levels it downwards at the prone, back-laid out Draugen.

The creature, amidst the chaotic clockwise turbulence of the quickly spiraling ship about to be ripped apart by the depths of the abyss imminently below, had gotten so angry, so livid in its self-preservation's frenzied fury to escape the Moskenstraumen's destructive vortex, that its increased mass somehow manages to sit straight up from the deck.

The Draugen skewers itself even further, as its earsplitting ominous shrieks and screams were enough to make a human, never mind sensitive eared reindeer and horses, reflexively drawback in an auditory perdition.

Kristoff, covering his own ringing ears with his surprisingly impenetrable cloak's hood, extends the bottom of his same material cape to shield Svala's vulnerable head, suddenly had the terrible sinking notion that his Anna had not obeyed his previous instruction to get to safety.

{"Anna! If you are still on board, you crazy woman! Cover your ears and Sven's!"} The loving husband in Kristoff still felt the responsibility as he pauses in his drawn arrow's attack to broadcast the anxious warning to his smart cookie gal.

Always ready for any situation, inside the thankfully muffled wheelhouse, Anna had already geared up herself by using some of Sven's durable leather pouches attached to his saddle straps to create makeshift reindeer earmuff protective headgear to tie around herself and Sven's tender ears that were indeed bloody from the earsplitting screech's first impact.

The self-sufficient Princess had not only preserved herself and Sven from the deafening monster's screaming roar, but she had tied her favorite bright yellow and green scarf around Hans' head too, like a blindfold just in case his frozen solid noggin beneath that dapper Captain's hat couldn't take the earsplitting rancor and just explode or something else insalubrious.

Previous to this, Anna had utilized Sven's antler leverage and strong leg quarters to pry open the jammed door of the wheelhouse where she and the reindeer had found themselves sliding down the side of.

Once inside, Anna and Sven had found Ensign Jan on the bridge floor, already unconscious from that first screech attack when he had peeked out the door to see if his Kommander required any help.

_No wonder the ship was floundering! There's not been a pilot at the helm! Good thing I never get seasick!_

After roughly tugging off the helmsman's Navy blue jacket and square-knot securing its sleeve arms around his head to shield Jan's poor hemorrhaged ears from further damage as well, Anna looks from an equally confused Sven, whom she had pulled to also stumble inside the ship's bridge, to the vacant spinning listlessly navigation wheel of the HmNos Gler.

The baleful eyed reindeer bull moans at her with a shrug.

**_Gulp._**

"Scuttle! You know all about ships! What lever do I pull? Which buttons to push?!" Her hands flying over the multiple instrumentation on the bridge's control panel, rash Anna begs for some nautical assistance from the purportedly qualified at anything of the sea seagull who just flew in the window, being the only creature crazy enough – or stupid enough – to head out in the maelstrom, especially when it was in its summer equinox full force.

"Maybe give a tug to that dinglehopper over there?" The birdbrain offers by feathering a smoking pipe that one of the men left on the control panel table

"Argh…Looks like it's up to me to steer this crazy ship. Good thing I'm my father's daughter!" After giving Scuttle a dirty looked grumble, Anna declares as she brash and boldly grabs hold of the out of control, spinning circular steering wheel.

The frozen solid to ice Captain of the ship, its Kommander Westergaard, can only look on over her shoulder snow-blindly.

On deck, the incensed Draugen was symbiotically growing with the fearful energies caught up by all the lost souls in the Moskenstraumen's centuries of terror as the scuttled sinking ship was on a death spiral course down to join them.

The unwilling to give up the fight sea monster was perhaps just moments away from, with renewed accumulated strength before unseen, prying itself up. Even if it meant tearing its regenerating body, along with the Gler as well, apart painfully in its instinctive innate urge not to be pinned to the deck of a ship being sucked down into the legendary Moskenstraumen maelstrom itself. And now, its increased size made its imminent escape possible, as the dark ilky monster starts to overwhelm the entire ship…

* * *

**_Moments ago…_**

"What is that fool Dane officer playing at, practically broaching a death roll with the Gler into that turbulent vortex? Was he not trained on how to steer a ship properly in the Søofficerskolen of the Søværnet_?"_The Admiral the Sjoforsvaret had no idea that the current helmsman of the HmNos Gler was not the audacious new Kommander/Vise Admiral he had left in charge of the vessel, now a sail-shredded poor shadow of the fine naval craft it formerly was.

It was in actuality, his little sprite of a ginger girl at the Gler's steering, even as it was spiraling down the ebony whirlpool, virtually in a chaotically dangerous broach reach.

"That officer is sincerely intending to scuttle my Navy's ship…" The Admiral of the fleet's awestruck soft-whispered words were somewhat dumbfounded at the enormity of watching one of his beloved Navy vessels be purposely set to list out of control.

The small figure of that blond youth was also there hovering over that sable blackish green sea creature pinned to the Gler on his flying reindeer. Kristoff was steadying his balance to stand upon Svala's back where the agile reindeer alighted on the Gler's topsail yard, as the mountainman continued to aim his choice arrow. Although, it appeared he could barely get a clear shot out, for the vicious thrashing haptera and algal stipes continual strikes out at the blond man.

"A Saami bow and arrow is hardly applicable to take down that two hundred foot plus abomination of the sea. Is that boy mad as well?" In his low baritone of protracted incredulously, King Agdar criticizes and faults both of his daughter's young men with an astonished scoffing.

From where cool and collected King Agdar was peering out from the window of the flying Brougham carriage, his icy blue eyes were inquisitive to discover what Anna's working-class mountainman was up to with that interesting bow and arrow upon his flying reindeer.

_Flying reindeer dashing across the skies; this incredible sea monster spawned from that decrepit excuse for a peglegged pirate; And a mere peasant boy who turns out to be the Snow Queen's only child, thusly a Prince to outdo them all– What was this world coming to?_

The prestigious Ice King hmphs, his own majestic frozen powers honed since his birth so second nature that he takes them for granted as an uncanny wonder of nature anymore.

"You must give those gallant young gentlemen some acknowledgment of praise, my love. For ingenuity and bravery in the face of danger, at least." With a becalming hand to his mildly truculent and dismissive comments concerning the tactical decisions of either young whippersnapper wooing his little girls, Queen Idun murmurs some tranquility in her husband's condescending aristocratic ear.

His sagacious wife knew her husband well enough to be certain that his disapproving fatherly natural display for Anna's ruggedly handsome Mister Bjorgman and his growing unease for Elsa's dashingly polished Master Westergaard was driving his harsh observances for their actions.

Idun had been paying special attention to the way Elsa, after that boost of familial spirit and love that left the pale girl smiling, to view her now, was frowning in disheartened worry for the Danish Prince on board the sinking ship ahead.

"Ahem, yes. I suppose I must. Perhaps your young men have exhibited far more gumption than I had given either credit for." Agdar clears his throat as he turns to the window to gaze upon his cool, reserved, icy daughter, who, even he must admit, that Dane had shown uncommon gallantry and undoubtable desire in courting. Even after being fully aware of her… uniqueness…even when most other men were too shamed or too frightened to take her on as a regular woman.

"Are you not too… chilly… simply wearing your…underclothes… In public… My dear Snow Angel?" The old-fashioned King, considering how that young man may look upon his innocent little girl, gives a small amount of contemplation on his little Elsa's rather risqué style of dress that definitely did not conform to the Victorian era of moral compunction of the day.

But a blushing Elsa doesn't get the chance to respond, for it was just this time that Eugene pops his head down to update his passengers.

"Does that vote of confidence count for your friendly _handsome_ cab driver? Ha! Get it? Hansom? Handsome? Whoa-oh!" Flynn Rider starts to put on the schmooze as he again listens in on the saccharinely sweet family banter that he, as an outcast orphan, always was curious to overhear. This family's affectionate, caring through trials, clothing choices, and young men, father/daughter relationship such as his uncle and cousin below were sharing before his hungry soul was of much interest to this loner who was, in approximately 6 months time or so, may start to find these examples to come in handy.

_Unless, of course, my bouncing babe turns out to be a no-good little snotter of a boy like me._

_I prefer girls, anytime, myself… As a Daddy I'll get to shower her with dollies and toys and she'll pick flowers and cook for me. And love me to read her bedtime stories… Who wants to go outside and get sweaty playing football or catching bugs and most definitely break appendages on a regular basis, anyway? Not my first choice._

During all his meandering mind wanderings of his child's gender punctuated by an intimate thieving hand stolen to land on his lady love Rapunzel's upper leg squeezed snugly beside him on the carriage driver's bench.

"Eugene!" Rapunzel was part embarrassed, part pleased, as Pascal blushes a fuchsia pink at the out in the open air of her lover's blunt advances.

In that quick flash of the two seconds of reverie, Flynn returns back to the here and now pressing problem.

"— We've got a situation up ahead, Onk! That big ugly ball of slimy green Mit Borretsch salad is waking up! And it looks mighty perturbed for being the victim of being flushed down the ocean drain!" Rattling off his fast-paced spitfire account of the Draugen that Kristoff was in a one on one match of wills with, Eugene was sure he viewed in his periphery that pixie Anna and her reindeer…Blitzen?… doing a dance with his stiff statue lillebror off the surging back alive mound of wriggling algae goo.

"Elsa, are you ready for this? If not, Papa will go it alone. It may be a more difficult road, my darling, however I can—" King Agdar reads the sudden rush of uncertainty creeping along his daughter's face, as every delicate female had the tender right of—

"The two of you together will surely succeed. I have no doubt. Because the Lord brought us together again. For it is written:**'**_Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his fellow._' Ecclesiastes 4:9-12," Queen Idun's healing warm soprano seems to sing enlightened optimism to both of her frozen fragile frosties in the carriage coach. Idun's motherly hand squeezes Elsa's dainty slender palm to place into her Papa's large strong one and she smiles encouraging the faith that was hiding in fear behind her child's wide distressed eyes. The platinum beauty smiles back gratefully into her Mama's petting hand to her pale caressed cheek.

"I was born ready." Answering her Papa's previous question in her absent sibling's place, Elsa confidently responds as she has heard her dearest spunky Anna cry out that self-assured bravado that her timid elder sister so admired.

"Yes, my Snow Angel. Since the day you were born, your mother and I always believed you and your sister were perfect." Visualizing his energetic younger girl's zest for life and Elsa's repeated words that had lit up her glowing eyes, King Agdar stifles always tears to hear both of his children's combined love impressed upon one another's hearts with strength and forbearance that made them into the fine capable young women they are today.

Because Elsa and Anna were together at last, as they always should have been.

From the content tears spilling from her approval starved eyes again with a profound feeling of acceptance, Elsa lifts in her no longer trembling hand the legendary holy orb of Saint Olaf that her father had entrusted her with.

As King Agdar too raises his country's patron Saint's holy sceptre towards Elsa's proffered globular century-old relic in her palm, each of the pair of monarchs of Arendelle will their God-given abilities to flow through their pair of holy relics.

The orb and sceptre begin to glow with blue-and-white phenomenally resplendent luminosity for all the ice diamond gemstone refracting the light from within. The intermingled mix of palest azure blue and glittery platinum white beams that shoot up from the Snow Queen's carriage was a brilliant sight to behold. Far more extraordinary and beautiful now that they were together, lifting the other up, as the Holy Word envisaged, as each listens to one another's heart at last…

* * *

Kristoff raises his exquisitely crafted, passed down from generation to generation in hopes for each lad's '_Juoska'_ – the path to maturity by way of the sought-after longbow—to take precise particular aim at the roaring to life Draugen. Kristoff's large fingers tighten their grip around the bow's compressed spruce wood of birch and goat willow.

Each time Svala makes a pass some twenty to thirty feet up from where the writhing Draugen lay on the deck, Kristoff had made a judgment about the time gap between when the ferocious monster nailed to the Gler's deck would be unleashed from the mast spur that had been driven through its chest.

Amidst the maelstrom's fully impacted section of turbulent violence that would rip the ship and anything on it to shreds, the vicious monster attempting to escape would probably be just enough to sink them all.

But the practical down-to-earth young entrepreneur mountainman/ part-time tracker in Kristoff Bjorgman was not one to take chances. Especially not when his dearest Anna was putting her gutsy life on the line.

And not only to protect her nation and family from this wicked creature either.

No, Anna was willing to risk it all to try and save the life of the traitor and adversary who once toyed with her innocent heart, even to the more demoralizing point of striking out at her frightened sister in Elsa's time of distress and need.

_Did I say adversary?_

Every adventurous step, every dire trouble, every hardship's trials, even every anxious pain along this journey–Prince Hans of the Southern Isles had to share his part in pulling his own weight and then some whenever he was needed, and even when he was not. All through the danger and duty during this incredible past fortnight, Hans overperformed, time and time again.

All for the love of this beautiful country's safety and welfare.

Or maybe for another cause Kristoff considered just as, or perhaps far more, worthy.

Although his piquant, often hotheaded ginger wife had a rough time coming to grips with this unwelcomed thought, Anna was not the type to ever leave anyone to feel so abandoned to die alone, even if the self-sacrifice was noble and valiant.

The mountain man who had only recently discovered his affiliation for this heretofore unknown subject of archery, flexes his bowstring draw weight with his own massively flexing muscles to precise optimized tension. The leather arm bracer Hans had outfitted him with, along with more than a few pointers on the art of shooting a proper arrow, was strapped to his left arm's wrist. And it proved to be stiff yet supple as a necessary stabilizing brace.

_"No one has to die! We will find another way!"_ His vivacious girl's fervently positive words of pure sunshine that Kristoff had overheard in his head, ring true in his recent memory's ears.

So, even though this dizzying darkness of crashing wave after wave against the ebony wall of the driving dreary gray, colorless funnel wall was blinding him with a dark fog, he couldn't help but be illuminated by Anna's pure indomitable sunshine breaking through.

Princess Anna of Arendelle's bright brilliant ray of sunlight was enough to give Kristoff Bjorgman all the radiant glow the special young man needed to zero in on is exact target—if just to make the beautiful dream of her unsinkable words come true –

_So this is the language I need to speak! The language of confident hope and faith beyond sight and true love… Anna knew it all along!_

And as young Kristoff reaches deep within his own heart full of promising and true love's unequivocal language, his narrowed brown eyes, squinting through the Saami longbow's sight window adapting to the prevailing dim light, close when the wind whispers to his mind and soul. It blows resolute skill through his tousled blond hair as the Wind Whisperer pulls back his golden shaft's arrow to its full draw length dead-on aim and—

**_T-CCHI!_**

The direction of his extreme Nock point center-on arrowhead flies in full measured compensation for the wind torrents, the spray of the whirlpool and gravity's rotations of the downward spiraling Gler.

_**SSPL-UURRTT!**_

With the wind-willed occur, the arrow flies straight and true to its intended destination of the Draugen's right palm's exact center – the precise location that was the catalyst of this evil creature's first incarnation. When Captain Houtebeen was still in his human form, the Wind Whisperer's golden shafted stone-tipped arrowhead had pierced the black hearted pirate's appendage. And there, the first spillage of brackish green black blood that stemmed from his foul black soul replaced the red blood of a human and would serve as multiplying endlessly vines of algal seaweed. It was then that the sea monster took shape from that point on, growing increasingly with every evil iniquitous vile thought that the depraved Houtebeen ever schemed.

_'It already has been pierced.' _Kristoff once again hears his mentor Ragi's final words all makes sense now in his head.

Where the creature on the deck was still temporarily immobilized, its pierced straight through original entrance wound causes the monster unspeakable pain and it viciously lashes out, though no longer able to increase its size for the Wind Whisperer's launched Saami golden arrow's mystical staunching of any further regeneration.

_**GRROWWLL! SCCR—EECCHH!**_

The malevolent creature's dastardly, most pained and tormented screech pulsates particularly intensely in the devoid of atmosphere condition vortex funnel at this depth's level. The roaring reverberation within the five mile wide watery tempest echoes vibrations heavy enough to buffet poor Svala, instantly rendering her unconscious. Anna is thrown off balance, her head spinning, as Kristoff, from his stable perch on the horizontal topsail yard, is about to plummet to a death of being smacked and thrashed to unrecognizable ribbons at the current velocity's high speed turbulent whirlpool.

Nature's Snow Prince/ Wind Whisperer and his faithful Rangifer freefall to the mercy of the forceful impetuous maelstrom's violent mastery of the ocean's unforgiving dank and desolate shelf. Towards the seabed floor some 1600 nautical feet down beneath crashing waves swells where none but bottom feeders frolicked in the chaos within the disintegrated ruins of the black hole.

This was where the seas' collection of cracked up bulwarks, splinters of broken spars and fractured masts were all remnants of unfortunate fishing vessels that had ever dared to cross the Moskenstraumen.

When the storm surge tides were at their fiercest and deadliest in the tumultuous summer months, all seamen far and wide knew to steer clear of this vector of the Norwegian sea. If not for the measured logic, merely from the sheer fear of being pulled down into the chastising maelstrom's dark vortex of violent, unmatched, conflicting and colliding turbulence.

Of all the experienced and daring sailors that went down, never a one was credited with making it back to the surface to rise from the dizzying mists of this most dangerous part of the ocean's descent.

And none were ever seen in one piece again.

Rather, not even a single piece of them had ever returned from the ravenous sea's most enigmatic mystery to tell the tale…

* * *

_Mit Borretch - _German salad made of shredded radishes, arugula, red onions, watercrests and chopped Borage leaves served with a white wine and walnut oil dressing

_Søofficerskolen –_familiar name for the Royal Danish Naval Academy

* * *

_Greetings, Frozen friends! Whew! Hans is officially 'FROZEN: AGAIN!" It's looking pretty bleak for our handsome Prince!_

_What did you think of Anna's reaction? She's a sweet and forgiving Disney Princess at last! (It only took our stubborn ginger gal 58 chapters to open her heart to her enemy, now her friend, as we are as good Christians to do! But time heals all broken hearts with God's love...eventually ^_^)_

_How's that for a Valentine's Day card greeting? :)_

_Now! What's to become of that ship spiraling down the maelstrom with Anna at the wheel?! Will Queen Elsa &amp; King Agdar, with Flynn, Rapunzel, Queen Idun and Job's help, be able to stop this villainous pirate with brave Kristoff, now that the Wind Whisperer's stopped it from being able to regenerate, once and for all?! Stay tuned for the next (at least) 2 more chapters for the climactic ending!_

_Will an act of love heal another Frozen heart?_

_Thanks for reading and please do review! Have a loved and Happy Valentine's Day, Frozen friends!_

_HarukaKou_


	60. Chapter 59 - No Greater Love

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act IV**

**Chapter 59**

**"No Greater Love"**

* * *

_'There is no greater love than for a man to lay down his life for his friends_.' John 15:13

* * *

**_GGRRWWLLL! R-RROOARR!_**

The terrible sound of the malignant beast's obvious pain cries out as the Draugen ferally rips itself up from the mizzenmast spur tacking it to the deck that the sea monster was violently thrashing against, smashing craterous holes into the polished strakes and bulwark of the newly commissioned craft.

The background noise didn't do much to bolster the frayed nerves of the orangey caramel haired sprite who was tight-knuckled at the wheel of the HmNos Gler.

"Ooh! Be quiet you noisy thing!" Jittery Anna yells in frustration, pulling one too many of the confusing levers and switches at the control panel all at once in her discombobulated state.

Anna sees the terrifying, gut-wrenching scene through Scuttle's expressive description as the big-eyed seagull peers over the wheelhouse to communicate through the small porthole window the frightening happenings without.

All alone in the bridge's cockpit with one temporarily unconscious coxswain and another higher up in authority sailor whose consciousness may never return at all, Anna, out of her mind with worry, veers the steering wheel around rowdily.

The Gler makes a sudden shifting broach in some wild attempt (at Scuttle's dizzy direction) to intercept her doomed true love from being ripped apart limb from limb by the full-speed, spinning at high amplitude tidal currents below.

Anna flinches at the awful thought of never seeing her handsome mountain man's face again. She shudders at the idea of never again being held in her true love's powerful arms, reviles the suggestion to never be wrapped against the gentle rhythm of his warm chest's tender embrace. Anna's heart screams out at the revolting notion of never waking up to hear her guy's mellow velvety voice singing to her, as beside her, her hunky hero pulls her close to his big heart that pounded for her and her alone—

**_NOT HAPPENING! NEVER!_**

_I'm coming, Kristly!_Anna projects through their soul link, the yellow troll crystals around her neck a twinkling with her fierce loving glow.

So, inexperienced sailor Anna spins the wheel so hard and fast and firm she ignores all the station indicators giving her useless warnings she didn't understand anyway.

She takes evasive action and maneuvers the Gler's steering mechanisms so sharp and unruly in a 160 degree dead-run against the gale force winds and fifty knot turbulence, the tremulous vessel is rocked against the high wave amplitude hitting the heavily angled ship's rudder. She loses all control of the broached schooner vessel to try to catch her plummeting man from plunging to the dark abyss hundreds of fathoms below…

But the ship's stem she had wildly spun in his direction just wasn't long enough to prevent Kristoff's fall.

Although, Anna needn't have reacted so desperately, for her other, more attentive and less emotionally chaotic half, her stable trusted rock of a best friend, her dearest companion of an eternal sister, had Anna's back.

"Kristoff!" Witnessing the struggle between courageous mountain man and foul sea monster as the Snow Queen's carriage moves in closer in towards the imperiled Gler, Ice Queen Elsa sends an intricate volley of delicately woven ice reams across the shredded masts.

Even though she herself was just being introduced to the wonders of love, Elsa already understood how precious one life, that might never have known the other if not for the grace of God, could make the other empty heart feel so complete. Like how the pieces of an intricate puzzle fit together hand in glove.

**_Chik Chik Chik Chk._**

As she elegantly glides alongside her Father on his ice slide traveling downwards, Elsa's dazzling ice catches and halts the mountain man's descent to the bottomless abyss.

The powerful young woman's hand-directed ice skills are able to cryokinetically raise Kristoff Bjorgman over the bulwark railing of the Gler to land him firmly on the ship deck on the opposite side of the livid and dangerous Draugen.

Her impressed Papa follows Elsa's lead and gives the unconscious tan reindeer doe a boost up to the deck as well with his own easily manipulated ice magic.

**_SNA-PPP!_**

As it spits out that sticky black goo from the double rowed mouth, it covers the entire wheelhouse near the now stuck shut door of the bridge. The vicious Draugen's angry vines slash at the ice wielders' incoming ice slide.

**_SHAT-TER-RR!_**

The untamed vindictive creature just then breaks free to crack in half the mast sticking through its eviscerated form to have one of its gigantic arms pulverize the remainder of the hanging mid-air slide. King Agdar rapidly throws up a thick verglas shield over their heads as the shattered ice pieces mercilessly crash down from the swirling dark sky.

"Eek!" Anna lets out a squeal as those ice shards rain down like pelting hail on the wheelhouse bridge's roof in thumping loud cacophony, causing the girl to hug Hans' ice statue form.

"Hee, hee, hee. Sorry for glomping your space, Red." Chatterbox Anna continues to talk to her silent, stoic companion as if he were still able to hear her.

Maybe he was. Maybe he wasn't. Anna only remembered mumbled voices too indistinct to decipher when she was a frozen statue like this.

_Okay, maybe I wouldn't look as right in an exhibit at the Smithsonian like this pompous Navy officer. But I bet I was cuter!_

The wandering minded young woman leans her pounding head to her cool friend's shoulder with a responsible sigh as she stares at his silent ice carved jaw face querulously.

"Ow!" But instead of the desired 'true love's kiss' effect Bulda and the other trolls extolled, that Anna, on pang of conscience even as she was going through the motions (and feeling really stupid kissing a statue, although…many of the Masters' paintings at home had chocolate mouthed practice smoochy marks over her teenage yearning years) didn't put much stock in, especially since her own true love was _certainly_ not this stick of a Dane. And though Hans had negatively capitulated '_if only someone loved he_r' then with his withdrawn kiss, generous, always positive Anna was hoping maybe even a sisterly love's kiss might do the trick. And consequently, the only result of this rash idea was clumsy Anna's cute little nose being poked by Hans' celestially extra ice-sharp one.

"Ooh! You and that stupid pointy nose, Cyrano!" Anna rubs her sore nose with a few more acerbic grumbles until her calming eyes land again upon his last forlorn facial expression to soften hers into a sigh.

_Oh, Hans, what am I going to do with you? Won't you just unfreeze? Ple-ase?_

All Anna knew was that she must somehow keep to her promise to this man from her past that Elsa still couldn't know what became of him, even when all this lunacy was over.

* * *

**_SZZTTT!_**

King Agdar meanwhile was busy blasting back the Draugen's evil stipe after wriggling haptera had creeped around both sides of the bridge wheelhouse at the center of the schooner's deck. The seaweed tendrils were hungrily lashing out to suck his raw energy source dry so the monster could attempt an escape.

The Ice King protectively covers his daughter's back as Elsa tends to pulling in closer Svala and Kristoff so the algal vines couldn't reach the passed out pair. But on second thought, she artistically flips him over with her ice powers so his nose wouldn't be flattened to the deck in her rush.

"Elsa! With the increased speed of the maelstrom, and this scuttled ship's descent forthwith, I do not believe we have much time left to act if we are to salvage this vessel." Diligent King Agdar informs his daughter as he holds up the still glowing holy sceptre in his hand.

Even against the backdrop of the terror of the Moskenstraumen's howling screams and the frightening abomination that had used her before, Queen Elsa of Arendelle takes a deep stabilizing breath.

"I'm ready, Papa." The slinky dressed blonde puts on her best warrior face as she takes a rigid battle stance to stand back to back with her ice zapping father. She immediately joins in his targeting of the flash frozen seaweed tendrils that seemed to endlessly slither around the wheelhouse. The evil symbiont sensed both of their emotional signatures from its acquaintance with either Elsa or Agdar previously, and was ravenous to feed.

_But never again!_ Elsa's violated mind screams with indignant resolution that showed on her dogged features.

'_Good girl_.' King Agdar mouths. The smile curling beneath his debonair mustache was soft and encouraging to her, as it was determined and cunning to this opponent ahead.

"'Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death—'" As the sinking Gler lurches and spirals down towards the Moskenstraumen's black abyss, with so much confidence King Agdar fearlessly begins to speak the Psalmist's words of strength in adversity.

"'I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me.'" Her powers charge with every profound phrase that father and daughter spoke in each other's eyes, as Elsa wraps up the Biblical verse. Majestic Ice King and elegant Ice Queen each raise St. Olaf's individual, yet conjoined, relic in their hand up to the other, as that bluish white light intensifies with the desired reaction.

With a steely nod of shared ice blue eyes and a deep intake of a salty cool breath against the whipping wind of the dark ebony circulating sea, Agdar and Elsa ascend upwards as if in an ice danced choreography.

Up through the air they rise to rejoin their ice paths around the front of the wheelhouse to stare down the monstrous creature weighing down the sinking ship.

Amid the dizzying dark funnel, shy, self-possessed Elsa, with St. Olaf's glowing outlined cerulean, white golden holy orb in her right palm, reaches out for her Papa's hand with her left empty one, until it was soon no longer empty. Agdar squeezes his little girl's extended palm again, just as he did last when she was a tiny little girl, before the fear of herself overtook her.

_Together, like Mama said. Together we will be strong._ Elsa feels the delicious ripples of ice tingle through her veins as she first felt the excitement as a tiny child, when her dashing Papa was teaching her stories of their nation's history and the riveting poems of St. Olaf as she began her journey into her own exciting new world of unique twinkling snowflakes and glittering mesmerizing ice…

Elsa, with no fear anymore, squeezes her Papa's hand tight, feeling the innate power of his ice flowing in his veins, the same as the cryokinetics flowing through hers.

As the Draugen growls and stalks the Gler's top deck as best as it could and still keep its balance in the gyrating swirls of the maelstrom, it looks around with a bloodthirsty multitude of glassy ebony eyes.

From the hovering Brougham carriage that the King, on the icy heels of his daughter, had left the express orders to stay back from the dangerous skirmish the powerful royal monarchs were heading into the maelstrom for, Flynn Rider lets out a low whistle.

"Damn! This is gonna be good, folks! And we've got front row seats! You Norwegians sure know how to put on a show!" The garrulous thief can't help but let slip out the enthusiastic comment to a pale faced Queen Idun in the coach as he and the others in the carriage look on in awe. For all the glimmering and glowing of the shining holy relics he himself had a sticky-fingered hand in getting here, literally, that now were being used to dare to face down an enormous attacking sea monster, to the sparkling aura of the crystalline ice illuminating the sable dark of the spinning Moskenstraumen maelstrom, it was quite a thrilling show indeed.

All aglow with a radiant light from within her loving heart, mirrored in her proud Papa's genuine brow full of care, Elsa feels the golden globular orb that she had focused to channel her ice magic through, start to tremble and shiver until she was sure it was at its maximum capacity.

"Papa?" An awestruck by the enormity of the moment Elsa mouths to her father who squeezes his likewise fully powered icy hand one more time tightly around hers. The fine-looking middle-aged King who spent his lonely youth absorbing every word of every tome and ancient saga set to rhyme because his noble heart loved his country so, senses the Invisible Hand that made his nation great, draw near.

_'How strange the web and woof of life;__  
_to is not in our human power to fashion it.__

_But His alone Who rules above men's strife.'_Saga of Saint Olaf vs.141

And King Agdar of Arendelle touches the holy sceptre in his icy blue hand to the orb's golden Cross that stood as pinnacle with a blue ice diamond jewel embedded as the tip of the relic in Elsa's frosted fingers.

**_G-GG-LLEAMM!_**

Together father and daughter's blessed special abilities come into play with the sheer brilliance of the exploding display of light. The emanating sparkle proved to Agdar that all who were witnessed to the Truth must believe that his entreaty was answered by an Almighty power greater than any other earthly sway.

"_And the great dragon was cast out — that serpent of old called the Devil and Satan, who deceiveth the whole world. He was cast out onto the earth, and his angels were cast out with him_." Revelation 12:9

Elsa recalls her Papa reciting this particular Sunday morning Scripture concerning the beast as she looks over to watch with pride how her brave Father raises his fully charged sceptre in tandem with her ice powered orb. Icy hand in icy hand, Elsa never felt more invincible.

The growling Draugen's already panting, injured, and unable-to-regenerate, now reduced and shriveling body lets out a horrifying screech that was exacerbated tenfold with every inflamed tendril of seaweed in algal haptera torture. Each seaweed strand burns with an inexplicable torment that sends the confused and tortured creature and all of its wriggling wild algal vines slashing big gape holes into the top deck of the poor razed Gler.

The creature goes on a rampage to break free of the unseen power that was fueling its twitching and convulsing massive dark green algal body with twisting gnarled pain. The Draugen is repulsed to its knees on the ship's deck with a resounding **_thud_** that causes the already unstable craft to crash hard against the waves of the swirling Moskenstraumen, sinking even lower for the creatures vast weight.

**_GRR—SC-RR-EECHH!_**

As the monster lets out another one of its deafening screeches, Elsa intelligently fashions iced snowmound earmuffs for herself and her Papa's ears as the frigid duo move down together closer to the frontline screeching sea monster's earsplitting screams. As one, Agdar and Elsa move towards the ship that was almost too late to save from being swallowed up fully by the destructive maelstrom.

_"'Be not afraid or discouraged because of this great multitude; for the battle is not yours, but God's.'_" 2 Chronicles 20:15

The experienced man who still knew his Bible and his ship's schematics inside and out now in his brilliant naval mind, Admiral Bernadotte mentally plugs up the open hatch valves of the ship's lower hull bottom. In doing so, he prevent the vessel's further sinking at the rapid rate of the pounding unnerving billowed roils of the spewing dark sea.

"Anna! We have to get her out of there!" Elsa calls out over the roaring sea tide and growling monster as her foremost thought was for her baby sister's safety, her anxious heart sure that courageous Prince Hans and that young blond Ice Harvester who shared a miraculous love with Anna would both be there defending her to the death, too.

But the evil monster was thrashing against the Gler's deck, bodily blocking the path to opening the door to the wheelhouse that was numerous times on the verge of being smashed to smithereens with the livid creature's crashing mendacious violence.

"Once I give you the signal, my Snow Angel, you go inside and fetch your little sister, like my brave girl! I'll stave off this wounded beast to clear your way!" Her strategic father orders her as his ice platform glides over the shrinking, convulsing form of writhing Draugen on the deck.

The Ice King swiftly encases its large mass while keeping up the rest of his blast of pure ice energy to prevent the sea monster's vines and venomous parts neither escape nor capture of his ship. The Admiral attempts to maneuver the beast away from that vulnerable wheelhouse right in the middle of the deck where his Anna was still trying to steer the doomed ship.

But before Elsa has the chance to do much more than ice the jammed door of the bridge wheelhouse so subzero cold it would practically shatter for a first single forceful hit that Kristoff surely could supply.

However, the incensed shrinking Draugen, somehow in his crazed insane intent, ignores the gnawing pain to jump to its lessened hundred foot tall height and lash out its most powerful chest haptera and sorus clustered spikes.

But not downward at a ready to defend to King Agdar at its raging feet, nor at an ice armor shield prepared Elsa who was rushing to get Kristoff to help her open the door and let Anna out at the Gler's deck –

No, the unpredictably malignant creature of pure hatred and destruction, despite its irrevocable demise as it continues to be condensed in size and volume by the reversed spell by the power of their channeled ice diamond within the holy relics, was still completely compelled by its latent spite and disdain.

Even in its final hour, its appetite to strike out at this archenemy King who ruled over this pure untouched land was yet unsatisfied. For the evil heart of the Draugen was still stemmed from the pirate who wished nothing more than to take down every one of King Agdar's most precious treasures that the vindictive old warped seadog coveted most.

And if he couldn't steal it from him, if the Draugen was go down into the maelstrom, the dark soul that was Captain Jol AKA. the evil and feared pegleg Houtebeen, would take King Agdar of Norway's beloved family along with him to this raging fury's watery grave –

**_S-SLL-ASSHH! SPP-LLUNKK! CR-RASHHH!_**

Next comes the creature's last potent spurt of evil vengeful energy that erupts in several of the wicked monster's haptera vines and longest stipes thrashed out to the ebony gray skies above. There, the Snow Queen's ice carriage had been hovering around the sinking Gler watching the action show below.

Two of the three flying horses are torn apart from their harnessed attachment, leaving poor Eugene Fitzherbert with not a prayer to do a thing about it. The perforated carriage, just as it starts to plummet under its own weight, is violently grabbed and skewered in its airborne position to be haplessly flung to and fro through the sky, rocked and bashed around the vortex's outer dark wall of the crushing Moskenstraumen's unforgiving turbulent amplitude. Then the beleaguered vehicle is ultimately tossed down by the vicious Draugen at high velocity, like so much rubbish.

At first impact when the horses are severed, like a ragdoll, Rapunzel, with Pascal on her shoulder, is flung from the front elevated coachmen's bench seat beside Flynn who was trying desperately to hold onto and futilely make a grab for the loosed flying equines' dangled reins.

"**RAPUNZEL!""** Flynn Rider sees his entire life flash before his maddened eyes as the precious gem he treasured most in this world, the beautiful light of his life that he had found in his Princess Rapunzel is ripped away from his useless hands. Eugene's heart-wrenched scream cries out to rival the maelstrom's deafening squalls as he lunges for her flailing hands. But the brown-haired beauty falls helplessly kicking and screaming for her husband through the open air, their fingers just missing catching one another's…

Without a second thought of self, Eugene chases his lost dream straight down into the eerie depths of the nightmare as he dives down the elongated funnel towards the black pool of crashing water below.

The royal coach is so tumulted by the spinning vortex's undulating waves that parts of it disintegrate immediately on contact. Shreds of fine woods and etched glass, velvet upholstery seating and freshly lacquered panels are bashed to its core. Right down to the sleigh runners themselves along with fancy doors are ripped out to smack hard against the wild chaos of the maelstrom.

Queen Idun, with Job protecting her frail form from the destruction best he could, were still inside the torn apart carriage until even they are flung out of it, to be plunged into the dark cold water spew of the Moskenstraumen's devouring, circulating, downward abyss of nothingness…

**"IDUNNN!"** King Agdar's deep baritone comes out more as a gut-wrenched sound of utter pain. The angry King sends a punishing sortie of subzero frost that totally freezes the, by now, obviously shrinking to a vastly shortened fifty foot tall Draugen solid for at least a few moments of silence from the beast's cacophony.

The roughly weaving, spiraling down ship causes the gargantuan monster to crash face down to the deck, unable to move for the stiff ice coating its form. Agdar cares not for himself as he zooms on his ice to surf across the incapacitated monster and over the edge of the ship's bulwark railing to rescue the whirlpool thrashed, drowning in terror love of his life.

But the dark funnel's nonexistent eerie dim light made a visual search all but impossible. The overwrought, frenzied King, even on his ice slide's vehement hunt just above the fifty mile an hour circulating, crashing waves, could not find a trace of his love's intense inner light for all the swirling chaos and turbulence of this anomalous stretch of dark waters.

"No! Dear Lord! Please! I refuse to let her go!" Agdar pleads and announces in sheer defiance and utter love as his logic realizes that his vast prowess of ice cryokinetics was wholly useless in such a situation where a delicate human life hung in the balance.

But his inspired heart also had the audacity to dream of revolutionary unconventional dreams to prevent just that.

Wielding the now activated sceptre still clenched tightly in his frozen hands to full power application, though his passions were ungovernable, the power of his love was resolute. Agdar calls upon all of his faculties, mental, physical, and even metaphysical to tap into resources never before sanctioned.

In his youth, Agdar had memorized and read extensively all the chronicles and tomes and legends of the ancestors of their soaring daring battles who had used this holy sceptre for warfare and defeat over their wicked enemies. This sceptre signified the power and dominion over all the land of their beloved country.

But deep thinking, deep souled King Agdar saw into that statement, far more.

What was warfare and victory without the love of your mate to defend it all for? A family she would give you to make everything worthwhile?

Perhaps it was the sheer force of his will and absolute trust and belief in his ideals that God would lavish His guidance to make this idea into reality too, as the devout man offers a prayer to the Almighty to make things all work for the good of those who love Him.

**"URGHHH!"** Calling up every ounce of his mind's focus and spirit's energy as he is unconsciously kept afloat on his ice ramp by practiced rote, Ice King Agdar, with a grunt, extends the fully charged royal holy sceptre of St. Olaf to spread a wide girth over the raging sea.

Focusing all of his vast mental powers, energy enhanced by his accumulated ice, Agdar forces the wild tempest that was swallowing up his precious Queen Idun, the better half of him, into its dark cool jaws, to bend to his will and be stilled.

After a few seconds more of the untamed violent maelstrom's churning, spinning at several corybantic clockwise nautical knots a minute they all suddenly pause and start to turn counterclockwise to unfurl. The legendary, fearsome, unconstrained potency named in full appellation by the title designation of 'Moskenstraumen' maelstrom, begins to spin in the opposite direction. It slows the surging spirals of its violent turbulence as like a spinning top of a child's toy, peacefully unwinds until it abruptly ceases its violent convulsions,

The mighty maelstrom is reduced to gentle ocean waves and soft flowing swells under the dominion of the driven King of Arendelle.

As his distraught, fraught eyes frenetically scan the calmed, no longer harshly tossed waves of the Norwegian sea, despondent Agdar still could see nothing.

And his overspent body and mind and soul all are rattled in tremulous devastation as he continues his fruitless mad search, weaving his ice sled almost drunkenly.

**"MAMA! PAPA!"**

It was Elsa who dashes up to the ship rail to feverishly examine and seek out her beloved parents. She strains her exotic eyes through the now thankfully quieting waves after they had been so dreadfully pounding when her mother and the other vulnerable passengers of the ill-fated flying carriage were launched into the maelstrom, like so much flotsam.

Elsa's shrill anguished cry goes out further than her piercing vocal cord's normal auditory range broadcast. Far beyond her energy drained Papa, desperately seeking Idun, and perhaps even beyond the just springing to awaken to life Kristoff who had focused his muscle to smash in the doors to the bridge into icy/shards.

The mountain man explodes into the bridge wheelhouse that had kept his potently hugging Anna and a panting happy Sven to see him inside as the unwitting captives all through that intense struggle with the onboard sea monster are set free.

Eugene, Rapunzel and Job were also on the missing list, disappeared beneath the dark funnel that was now reduced to reverse. But how far had they already sunk down?

The dizzy stream of the converse Moskenstraumen had obeyed the dominion of her Papa's heart's command at the sceptre's culmination, but the overcast sky made the rippling swells still too dark to navigate.

But the orb in Elsa's hand that started it all begins to glow with an iridescent light, as if in response to tearful Elsa's panic prayer for her endangered mother and overburdened father. Closing her eyes, Elsa wishes for a hero to save her distressed, devastated heart from breaking. Her trembling heart longed for her Prince in shining armor to come and rescue her and make everything right as he had done so many times in her dreams. And now in reality, along this incredible journey as well, he had given her cause to believe he **could**do all that, and more…

A heretofore new melody of unheard music blossoms inside of Elsa Bernadotte's heart. At first, starting slow and faint in soft strains of pianissamo, then building forte to fortississimo, with warmth glowing in every phrase, the silent music begins to play a triumphant orchestral arrangement of a hard-won trust through forgiveness.

And in this moment, through a soulful gossamer mist, her lonely empty soul denied of love for so long cries out to be welcomed to the safe refuge home of another heart's embrace.

Along this journey, two lonely yearning souls that once upon a time, each excessively lost their way, had found it again, together on the wings of young love set to music. A blossoming love like the strident right hand joined by the timid left in a perfect piano accompaniment of one another's soaring melody that mysteriously called out for consonant harmony of the other in times of discordant need…

And one heart's verse heard the other soul's responding refrain to compose a beautiful new duet for the love of her life who understood her so well.

Because Elsa had always heard the singular soft tone his voice and forever would long for it, forever yield to it…

_'Love can't be denied, love must have its way__  
_Once it gets inside, love is there to stay.__

_Once you let your heart awaken, love can be denied, it must be taken!__  
_Try to run and hide. Try to slam the door.__

_Love can't be denied, love keeps wanting more.__  
_Love lets itself be shaken. No matter how I tried.__

_It flows through my veins__  
_It burns beneath my skin_  
_It calls my name says: 'You fool, give in!'__

_Love can't be kept out. Love can't be denied.__  
_Let yourself be overtaken like being swept before the tide_  
_Fear is inside the doubt, cast away your pride.__

_Love the only thing no one is above__  
_Love's the only thing where no one's alone,__

_I can love that I know love can't be denied.'_

And inside that trapped wheelhouse, Elsa's undeniable song for love is answered. Before Princess Anna's shocked eyes, that frozen statue of a man – _no_, _a handsome Prince, who sought redemption and found it in the forgiving arms of this new love_ – named Hans Westergaard is illuminated in the sparkling silver rays of God's light, as silent poignant music plays in the background.

Emanating first from the music she conveyed to his heart that starts the thaw at that spot on his chest over his heart to slowly awash color back to his entire ice glazed over body,

A heart that had finally learned what it meant to love palpitates back to life. For this one frozen cold hearted Prince of Southern Isles' act of true love to thaw his frozen heart came in that moment he sacrificed the one thing he esteemed most in the world, the only thing he actually ever owned in it – himself….

That moment came when Prince Hans so willingly and selflessly—after single-handedly being so heroic and courageous—not only saved the day by using his daring ingenuity to pin that foul beast Draugen down to accompany him to the depths of the destructive maelstrom's ultimate death—

But his selfless act of true love culminated when the proud Dane, who longed for acceptance and recognition his entire life, Prince Hans Westergaard, begged sister Anna to spare Elsa by never letting her know of his frozen fate at the Ice Queen's own unintentional hand.

And though the clever boy and expert naval seaman could not likely have figured another way but this to rid the world of this wicked Draugen and still have the Gler escape with Anna and Kristoff and their dutiful reindeer alive, Hans preferred to die, unseen, uncomplaining—and alone.

He chose to be forgotten in the mists of the sea rather than harm the fragile yet strong, delicate yet powerful, psyche of the woman he loved. Nor risk her tender heart with his tainted, unworthy love. He was content to bring down the monster threatening her country, once and for all.

A beautifully touching act of true love of unselfishly laying down one's life, that could not be more laudable of unconditional love's second chances in the Lord's eyes with no audience further necessary than the great I Am…

* * *

**_C-RASHH!_**

In the few seconds it took for Queen Elsa to collect her distraught thoughts and find the strength inside herself to be able to construct her ice to follow her weakened father's fervent search for her lost mother, just as Kristoff had demolished this sticky bestial spit shut frozen bridge doorway, a dashing svelte flash of a figure with sleek form and pumping long legs emerges in leaps and bounds to race across the cracked and pock-holed ship deck.

Elsa lets out a stifled gasp when the rushing past figure pauses to gently touch her shuddering shoulder and caress her trembling cheek with a tender warm hand. The man removes his Captain's broad-rimmed hat to reveal that vibrant shock of titian red hair that she adored, to place it upon her own platinum tresses. Elsa and Hans' enraptured blue and green eager eyes melt into one another in that eternal song's moment of love's understanding of hope and trust.

In the next second, wordlessly, Hans' agile, wiry, and completely un-frozen body now back to full functioning condition propels his limber self over the Gler's rail in a superbly executed fearless dive as he immediately knew what needed to be done.

Elsa grips her heaving chest as she watches the Danish Prince courageously dive and swim away with steady panache as he utilizes every one of his sinewy muscles to launch himself around the radius of the choppy waves of the slowly dying down maelstrom that King Agdar was regulating.

And suddenly she believed with all her heart, it would all turn out all right in the end.

For Queen Elsa of Arendelle was now ready to accept, at last, that she had a champion of her own to rely upon.

* * *

**_Harrowing moments ago…_**

"Blondie! Blondie! Blondie! Don't you dare walk out on me! That's my job!" Flynn Rider never felt so keenly on the verge of tears as he was in this terrible moment. Amid the crashing waves of the dreaded maelstrom, the thief's most precious stolen booty had slipped beneath the roiling water's amplified turbulence.

For several wild maddened minutes of diving and resurfacing, sucking in air then plunging under the fierce waves again, Flynn used every swim stroke at his freestyle command. He damns the pain in his bullet-ridden freshly patched-up right bicep to keep going at rapid unyielding pace.

"Lass mich nicht allein, Liebling!" (_Don't leave me, darling!)_

"Come on! We've got a baby to raise together! A life! You promised me! You dragged me down to that altar! Don't you dare leave me! This is all MY DAMN FAULT!" After the cajoling, then the pleading, then the begging doesn't work, swearing at himself kicks in. Eugene pounds the water with his fists in a resounding painful splash as he recklessly, without direction, swims about.

And Eugene Fitzherbert, a man who had never shed a tear in his life, openly begins to weep for his lost love.

Even when the surge of waves in this soaring whirlpool suddenly ceases his malevolent spiral down, Flynn still couldn't see his chocolate brown haired cutie of a forever mate anywhere in this dizzying horizon, though the unashamed tears that ran down the stumbling thief's guilty, heart-wrenched face were clouding his vision.

"Oh, God! Take me instead of her! I deserve it! Don't take someone so good, so bleeding-heart kind who gave a fool like me a place to go, a place to love. And now that I finally found my way out of that blindness…" Flynn's feverish mind demands of that Creator of the universe whom the irreverent orphan at oftentimes questioned the existence of in low epochs of his outcast unwanted life.

And never did Eugene Fitzherbert ever feel so derelict and helpless as right now.

But just then, Eugene's new little brother Hans, so full of verve and gusto and determination, with love evident riding on his lofty brow, swims past at an incredible speed and obvious indomitable spirit that shames Eugene back to not let his own self recriminations obscure his drive to keep the search on.

"Hey!" Eugene is then splattered in the face by a splash of water as the man is almost whacked on the head by Scuttle the seagull's dizzy wingspan when the orange beaked white winged fowl had valiantly plucked Pascal from the waters where Scuttle had spotted the almost drowned chameleon amidst the crashing waves and swooped down to pick up the green lizard. The mid flight bird pokes at Pascal's bloated tummy until he spit up the swallowed water right in Eugene's face as the pair happen to pass by.

But that little shot of spit-up cold water in his face is just what the doctor ordered at the choice moment for our disheartened thief to clear his head, and his vision in a particular direction, too.

Flynn suddenly glances up to see a dark massive floating debris in his periphery not too far to the left of his flailing desperate body was not merely shredded and splintered ship parts, nor carriage exploded and torn asunder salvage.

No, it was not a dark piece of the carriage wreckage nor strake or rafter of the ship that he had seen bobbing up and down on the slowly quieting waves. Eugene squints his eyes as he starts to do a double take and a quick doggie paddle to swim over in suspicious curiosity.

That dark brown and black piece of flotsam was concealing something beneath its folds. And all at once Eugene wanted to shriek with joy that that special something hidden within the tightly wrapped arm of that big massive Caribbean man named Job was none but his cherished girl.

"Rapunzel!" Eugene whispers more than shouts as he rapidly approaches where Job had been keeping up his legs treading all this while as he had been keeping Princess Rapunzel of Corona safe above the water's surface in his strong muscleman arms.

"Little gurl be trying to save dis sheep when I's found her." Job's low Island accented voice speaks when Eugene paddles up behind the trio. Indeed, the dark man's knit brow motions towards Rapunzel's full arms that were still hugging around her 'Lambykins'.

"But when I found her, looks more like da little floating sheep be dead saving the girl '" Job's dark hand motions towards the unmoving, unbreathing little Lamb that was pressed against Rapunzel's thankfully heaving full chest beneath that trademark corset.

The wooly creature was so soaked to the bone, that it no longer had a fluffy form, but was still buoyant enough to keep a Rapunzel clinging to it afloat as she refused to let go of her new dear pet when the big wrestler took them both under his wing.

"Thank you, man. Really, thank you –" Eugene gathered a dizzied, slowly waking Rapunzel and the appreciated non-responsive lamb chop that she was stubbornly refusing to let go even in her scrunched-face unconsciousness. He was unable to express his feelings into more words of gratitude.

That's when Eugene spots a long dark red strand that led to a pool of fresh blood bubbling to the surface of the water, staining both the lamb and Rapunzel's shirt. A freaked out Eugene follows the blood's trail, and was glad, after a rough quick inspection of her familiar body beneath the waters, to find that the blood was not coming out of either girl or sheep.

The smiling Rapunzel, blinking up in pleased surprise at his awakening touch, nor the bloodless slicked wool deceased form of the lamb in her arms was the source of the continually streaming blood.

"Urgh." The big bodied former pro-wrestler, well-built Caribbean man grunts as he passes Rapunzel over to her husband, causing even further blood to ooze from his deep wound to the water's crimson red soaked crests.

There was so much blood involved, that it was quite fortunate that sharks so feared the Moskenstraumen that they rarely circled these treacherous waters, for they certainly would have come now that it was calm.

"Where?" Eugene asks the succinct man-to-man query.

"Guts." Comes Job's just as direct reply.

"Oh." An expressive eyed Eugene lets out a soft utterance that showed his humane concern and sad shock for the dark Islander's unpleasant eventual outcome.

"Let's get you back to the ship." Eugene offers by draping Rapunzel's compliant arms over his shoulders and around his neck, where they usually ended up being, anyway, whenever this good wife wished to strangle a man like him.

Then he grabs Job's one arm to start tugging the big hulking man in their floating choo-choo train along too.

"No, t'ief! You can't be saddled with this big lunk of a man, too. Ye gots yer little girl and dat baby on da way to t'ink of. Job be going home soon."

"You know about the baby, too. Sheesh! I must be getting dense of my old age! Guess I'm the only one who didn't see it coming…" Deciding if he should argue or just let the big man choose his own death sentence, Flynn Rider chides himself, not wanting to think about the last part of the deeply faithful Guatemalan Caribbean's deeper meaning as he watches Job work gut-wrenchingly hard to reach into his pants pocket to pull out a certain precious item.

"Fool man never did finish dis for his Muma." As he kisses his carved wooden crucifix to his lips, there were regretful tears of love in Job"s dark eyes for his long-passed, dear mother. Although, he wasn't too sure if his evil meddling with villains in this fallen world would allow him to be seeing her again, now in the end.

"Hey… I never put much stock in the whole of my life for that happy bowing and scraping religious stuff that goes on in those big 'ole churches for those starched collar stiffs. But if the Good Man who sacrificed His life to die on the tree to take away all the sins of this good-for-nothing thief—numerous as my crimes may be, too— the least I could do is believe in Him who unselfishly offered me the chance for an eternity with the girl who loves me, despite my failings."

Eugene, for the first time in his life admits his wrongs, and searches deep in the heart and soul to find that he had more faith than the blasé man ever gave himself credit for. He had picked up here and there along life's way, especially for the fine example of Christian mercy that 'ole Fritz and Arianna splurged on him in their open hearts for Rapunzel to shower the two-bit crook with as much love as a real son.

And when the grand scheme of life was over, Eugene Fitzherbert was realizing that there was a Higher Someone pulling all the strings that he could turn to when the chips were down. Someone whose greater power was in charge of this crazy nutty universe, and that thought gave the jaded man hope for tomorrow, too.

Rapunzel was awake long enough to overhear her husband—who slept-in every Sunday and rarely even attended church services with her and her faith-based family back in Corona –as she was already joyfully weeping that her Eugene's soul was secured too in Jesus' loving arms. Rapunzel reaches up to kiss his surprised, not at all boastful, stubbly cheek.

"And look, I'm no artist like you, and I never knew my own Muma—_though she sounded like a fine lady according to my new little brother_ – I'll finish this for you, Big Guy." Eugene shows his true heart was deeper than any of us believed, as the former thief puts his deft fingers around a faint Job's big fingers curled around his most treasured earthly item, cherished for its unearthly significance.

Job sheds a tear with a grateful smile up at Eugene as he lets his still roughly hewn wooden crucifix pass between their two-toned fingers.

"And you know what? We're gonna name our baby 'Job' if he turns out to be a healthy strapping boy in your honor, big guy." Eugene continues on, finding the spirit of brotherly love for this reformed ex-pirate easily. He saw much of himself in Job's criminally honest large shoes once upon a time.

"And what if she's a girl?" Piping up as she wipes a compassionate tear from her eyes gazing at the mortally wounded dark man, the expectant mother, who knew best, Rapunzel joins in the conversation. She reveled in Eugene's unique ability to make her laugh and smile through her tears that she was openly shedding for this stranger who had touched both their hearts.

"That… is always a possibility, Liebling! One I actually kind of prefer, to tell you the truth. Boys are high upkeep." Flynn Rider smirks back at his loving bride as he points at his own stuck-out tongue face.

"I know! If our bouncing babe turns out to be a bubbly, pretty little baby girl – what is the name of that wonderful Muma you keep telling me about, Big Guy?" Eugene offers personably with a toothy grin at the distressed dark man.

"Anxelin. Me Muma's name be Anxelin." With a big dreamy smile on his face the likes of which no one had ever before seen, pirate first mate Job murmurs proudly in between his painful grunts.

"Oo-kay! Maybe it'll be a boy." The drolly spoken blindsided thief is caught offguard by the decidedly original name – _it's just plain weird_ – for a female he hardly expected

"_Anxelin_' is a beautiful name. We'd be honored." After pinching her jaw-dropped husband's neck, good wife Rapunzel picks up for her rude slack-jawed hubby's obvious remark. She leans over to kiss Job on his sweaty dark cheek with the promise to bestow honor on his hallowed mother or himself in the naming of their first child.

With tears running down her emotional pink cheeks, Rapunzel warmly pets her lost little lamb, that had sacrificed its life in place of hers, one more time on its wooly un-breathing brow goodbye as she finally lets the poor creature's dead weightless form float beside the fatally wounded Job.

Pulling in a piece of floating wreckage for Job to hang onto in the meanwhile, with a salute wth the wooden Cross in his hand, Eugene then starts to swim his tearful eyed wife back to the Gler, leaving a smiling Job alone with his mother's constant love.

"Ye hear that Muma? Gonna be a new baby girl wit yer name…"

* * *

After nearly crashing into a frantic Eugene, who was yet wild with craze, repeatedly diving under to find Rapunzel for the third time in his admirable refusal to give up, Hans' keen eyes scan the dark sky reflected ocean, desperately searching for Elsa's drowning Queen mother.

And Hans would not have found her, save for one speck of guiding light of which Idun's tiara was reflected by the glimmering silvery glacier of bobbing up and down ice where she was sheltered beneath the rounded roof panel of the splintered coach. There, Hans' eyes catch sight of where Queen Idun's tiny frail soaked and fainted body lay preserved on a safe bed of ice her husband had mentally created for her.

_Even through all of this chaos of his hard fought battle to quell the Moskenstraumen, King Agdar was still able to provide for you, even though he didn't know exactly where you were._

Hans' freshly unfrozen heart was tenderly impressed at the admirable depth of love that Elsa and Anna's parents still had for each other. The royal couple's connection was so close that the energy drained King facing the enormity of the maelstrom, would still be able on some small level to quietly create a safe zone for his beloved.

"True love can't be denied." Hans whispers to himself in awe of the displayed perfect fairytale romance his own young yearning heart only dreamt naïve fantasies of.

The kind that lived only in storybooks, never to exist in this cold harsh reality as the relationship between his own parents and so many other royal couples was the only examples shown him in his young life.

_No, a love like this has more truth in it than reality…_

Hans swims a swift side-stroke back to the listing Gler's edge, holding Queen Idun's unconscious yet breathing and alive body in his firm arms.

"Here! Hans! Climb up!" Grateful Hans grabs hold of the rope that Anna had tossed down from the winch above. The brightly smiling girl calls, so very pleased in him that he had found her beloved Mama amidst the roiling sea.

Wind Whisperer Kristoff was using all of his mental powers to becalm the howling winds of the maelstrom to help Elsa cryokinetically elevate her father from rolling off his ice platform that was melting into the ocean that the Norwegian monarch had just be-stilled. Elsa and Kristoff work together to bring Agdar up to the relative safety of the Gler's smashed, yet still afloat deck.

So that left Anna and helpful Sven to struggle at working the winch, using leverage of the roping around the reindeer's powerful neck as Hans uses some of his own muscle to help climb himself up most of the way while still managing to hold tight to the rescued Queen.

Hans gives Anna a genuine smile as he passes her groggily coming-to mother onto the joyously smiling ginger girl's welcoming arms.

"You never give up on people, do you, Princess? Not even a lost cause like me. I thank you for that, Anna." Hans surprises Anna by kissing the back of her palm as he was squeezes it with meaning, as if he knew and heard all that transpired when he was frozen before when Anna cared for him.

"Yeah, well –" A blushing Anna, after yanking her hand back from his lips – that were blessedly warm again! _Yeah! I mean, yuck!_– Reaches up from their knelt position on the deck to peck Hans' sideburned cheek with a quick kiss.

"Maybe because you're not so lost anymore. Thanks for saving my Mama." The equally crimson faced ginger and red share a genuine smile as Anna begrudgingly admits her gratitude to the young man who she no longer found it in her heart to consider an enemy.

* * *

"Ughh...Erghh… Idun… Hold on, my elskling..my darling…"

Now, on the other side of the deck of the Gler, Elsa and Kristoff, strenuously had just finished collecting and pulling up the energy-drained King Agdar aboard to be laid out on the deck strakes.

But there was something terribly wrong with the Arendelle monarch, that neither Elsa nor Kristoff could explain.

Not only was King Agdar deliriously unconscious, after using too much of his own power to accomplish the three-pronged offensive—reversing the Draugen's healing magic, ceasing the raging maelstrom, and saving his missing wife with all the power in his body all at once.

Now, the hyperventilating man was almost on that point of hallucination as physiological consequence.

For nearly half of his body, his entire left side of his leg and his arm to be exact, had turned an eerily translucent icy white.

The capable, rigid Admiral had trained himself and so much control, but he never lost his restraint all through the fierce battle and subsequent raging tempest being subdued. With the ability to be severe with his emotions, King Agdar had coolly retained his strict hard line that he unbendingly fought so hard for control of all these years.

And because of it, just as he warned his Elsa against, the intractable King had crossed the line. Agdar of Arendelle this day gained a greater percentage of ice in his weakened left side than his human body could almost handle.

So with the magic of the reality-altering sceptre that reflected the true heart of a man still clutched tight in his hand, Agdar's previously broken body was slowly morphing and un-morphing in fluctuating prisms of back and forth phased warm malleable flesh and solid cold inflexible ice.

"Papa?" With anxiety in her cracking voice, Elsa asks in utter fretful worry, knowing exactly how terribly demanding and controlling that uncontained overwhelming ice could feel.

But he had made a hard pact with himself to never put anyone else to harm for his ice magic, and the changes convulsing in her father's physical body was causing his overtaxed and pained mind's impulses to slowly start to shut down.

"Mama! Anna! Help!" Elsa cries out in terror for her brave strong Papa losing his limbs again. Unlike her former reclusive, autonomous hidden self of yesteryear, Elsa had been revived under Anna's sunshine enough for these past two years to reach out for help from the ones who loved her in her time of need.

Anna immediately starts to run towards Elsa, leaving Hans to carry their mother and rush over to where Kristoff had laid out their delirious and obviously in pain Papa to sit up against some barrels and cargo containers.

"Papa?" Anna buries her face in Kristoff's strong shirtless chest after she sees the fluctuating translucent icy whiteness of Papa's face and permanently pallid, frosty greyish stiff hand.

"Agdar!" The moment Hans places the impatient woman down, Idun drops to her knees with no fearful hesitation as she runs her hands up and down her impaired husband's pulsating ice and flesh limbs that she knew every broken line and pained tendon of so very well after four years of living hell through it.

Overcome by emotion, though resigned to the ultimate decision from Above of what we had been given that could be taken away again by Divine wisdom, brave Queen Idun clings to her beloved's unsettled chest.

Taking her mother and sister's example, Elsa unabashedly throws herself to Hans' shoulder, her cool tears cascading down his once again warm neck as she lets her pent-up tears go.

"Shhh, Snowflake, Shhhh,,," Hysterical Elsa feels Hans' warm arms fully wrap around her distressed body. At just his simple touch, she feels that warm calming effect on her soul like no other could do as she flings her once non-tactile body around his fully for support.

Just then, the sudden sounds of staccato applause crackles through the sky, accompanied by vibrant reds, electric yellows, and swirling purple violets with the wisps of ethereal greens intermix through the dusky sky as the Aurora Borealis melts its stunning radiance over the relinquishing Midnight Sun.

The Northern Lights' glorious, uncanny and elusive streaks of colorful rainbows dance upon the mirror of the sky hanging over this portion of the Norwegian sea.

The summertime's midnight sun made the Northern Lights in the Arctic circle in this region normally difficult to see, But this night, God seemed intent to impress its special glow over the sea quite vividly this midnight hour in late July.

It was almost as if the spirit of Nature willed its most breathtaking lightshow on earth to speak to someone in particular. As the Aurora Borealis' most vibrant light focuses into a silvery white beam, it projects down over where small framed Queen Idun was embracing her love. Too overcome and weak herself from being wave tossed in the maelstrom for a brief time, the petite dark brown haired Queen Mother suddenly opens her eyes wide and starts with a gasp.

Letting her embraced husband down gently to lean against kneeling Anna's stabilizing shoulder with a caress to his locks of mussed bangs, Idun stands to her full five foot two height to face a taken aback Kristoff Bjorgman.

As his troll necklace crystals began to jitter with a living vibration as if in response the spectacular sky that was also eerily alight in the eyes of Queen Idun standing before him, Kristoff glances at Anna whose matching troll crystal necklace too was tinkling with unearthly vivacity, all crystals pointing towards her mother.

"My son. It is I." All eyes were on Queen Idun as the spirit of the Snow Queen from the far North channels her overlaid voice's consciousness through Idun's body.

"My poor Windchime boy should never have taken on the mighty maelstrom. It was too much for him to continue to fight one of nature's most powerful forces. With his defenses down, the cold ice is feeding off his weak point now." The Snow Queen's operatic voice overlays atop Idun's comparatively sweet lyrical tones as the bright wide-eyed Swedish woman's plaintiff indigo pools lighten to the palest white blue of the Queen of the North's elegantly sophisticated lowered eyelids.

"But he's done it already!" Unafraid to speak rashly, even when everyone else was awestruck to be in the legendary Snow Queen's presence, honest Anna answers her mother-ergh- Kristoff's mother – or whoever's mother she was right now!—with the frustrated outcry.

"He is still doing it right now with the power of his sacrificing love to protect his family and his country, sunshine child of my wonderful, silly Windchime boy." The wise, age-old Snow Queen runs Idun's now chilled hand along Agdar's proud jawline and Anna's matching set jaw with her other hand as she calmly corrects the vibrant girl with the ginger hair. Anna reminded the Snow Queen so much of that tiny prince with the curious eyes who called to the solitary Ruler of the Winter once upon a time before her ice changed his life irrevocably.

"So how can we stop Papa, if he won't wake up, your Majesty?" Elsa was both fearful and awestruck to meet the great woman who was revered in all of Scandinavia for her Majesty over the snow and winter that so ruled the lands. But this journey had taught Elsa to face her fears with calm dignity.

Elsa turns from clinging to Hans' chest to address the Snow Queen's spirit projected onto her Mama's lovely body. The current Arendelle monarch looks from her fainted father to the gently rolling, still quieted Moskenstraumen below thought-provokingly.

"It falls upon you to persuade Nature to listen, my Small Wind Whisperer." The double Queen turns her attention back to Kristoff, who swallows hard as a large Adam's apple bobs up and down under his mother—_I'm actually talking to my Mother?!—_ with the icy, penetrating gaze.

"M-Me?" Kristoff's confident voice breaks here as he resorts to clearing his throat. After all, meeting with and speaking to, for the first time, Anna's believed deceased Mother was one thing. Having a conversation with his super mysterious, uber powerful own birth Mother was another. And right now he was getting the package deal on the doubled discomfited subject the orphan boy felt way out of his depth to address properly.

"It is you who has been told in legends of old to bring all of unsettled Nature's disturbance back into order." The Snow Queen says enigmatically, causing Kristoff to scratch at the back of his blond head, as was his habit in times of self-conscious doubt.

"Only then can you free this exceptional Norwegian King of his self prison so he can release his hold." As a good mother, the normally terse Snow Queen tries to help her son with further explanation along with a kind, almost…warm smile.

"Right." The down-to-earth pragmatic Ice Harvester wasn't quite sure what he should do again, but as the mountains call his name, the ocean begs his audience, and the wind whispers to the cockles of his mind, this man of Nature, the Snow Prince, was starting to roll with it as he wisely closes his eyes to listen to all their voices. Feeling Ragi's composed, supportive presence in his heart, not too far away, Kristoff quietly heeds their words.

The big tousled blond mountain man nods to Elsa and Anna with assurance as he leans over King Agdar's writhing, half frozen body and carefully wrenches the sceptre out of the King's tightly gripped hand.

After he sees Eugene bring up Rapunzel from over the side of the ship to lumber all soaking wet aboard ship with a pair of long faces, Kristoff reaches a decision.

"Hans, steer us north, clear of this thing." Kristoff looks to the other man he had come to rely on unquestioningly as he stands up, cool, collected as he holds St. Olaf's holy sceptre with the order to the Kommander the Gler to remove the ship from the currently still waters where the Moskenstraumen was meant to flow its raging tempest of colliding currents and intersecting seas that ingenious King Agdar had circumvented with his holy sceptre's dominion reversing power.

* * *

So now, Hans Westergaard, as a good officer, dutifully complies to Kristoff's relegated instruction to directly inform Helmsman Jan his new heading for the vessel. The Vise Admiral of this proud Sjoforsvaret enters the empty bridge with plans to shift the badly damaged, yet hopefully still functional Gler. The brilliant young Danish mariner had already determined how he must set sail to compensate even under the rather devastatingly reduced sail and far overfilled water ballast in the hull below, due to his previous attempted scuttling.

Upon arrival finding young Ensign Jan still knocked out cold from the Draugen's ear-shattering mind-numbing screechings on the ground, as an experienced helmsman himself, despite groomed to be an officer, as all royals of Denmark are automatically inducted to be, Kommander Prince Hans Westergaard meticulously inspects all of the way off controls, mis-pressed buttons and incorrect series of off-kilter levers himself. The amused young man clicks and pulls each one back to the proper alignment of the control panel with a chuckle at the state Anna had left the Gler's proud steering in.

But what the soaking wet young naval officer didn't notice, obscured in the far corners the shadows of the wheelhouse, would probably kill him.

"So zat lovely Queen wiz ze come-hizzer smile made ye her Kommander, eh, cabin boy?" Hans is startled by the gravelly voice he hardly expected ever to hear taunt him again coming from somewhere in the shadows of the darkened bridge behind him.

As the drama had been going on in the main deck, and everyone's attention was on the ailing fluctuating between flesh and ice King, the back to warped 'normality' piece of human garbage AKA the underhanded peglegged pirate named 'Captain Houtebeen', had, unnoticed, awakened from the reversed enchantment to sneak inside the vacant bridge wheelhouse.

There, Captain Houtebeen had scurried to hide in the shadows, unseen to lie in wait before making his next limited option.

Just as Hans set the ship to hard left rudder to speedily depart this dangerous ocean vector, that same drippingly evil tone he thought he'd heard the last of was adjoined with that pungent odor of something rotten intermingled with pipe tobacco and rum, its disgusting cold wet slimy feeling suddenly pervades his every sense as the handsome redhead's stunned head begins to turn around.

"Proves that doe-eyed young meisje prefers a pretty boy face and a fine limber body to toy with." Captain Houtebeen looks his former slave-boy, now wearing the Naval uniform of a Kommander, up and down with his one still workable eye on his hideous mangled face.

**_STABBB!_**

Before an aghast, appalled and astonished Hans has the opportunity to utter neither the alarm nor words of indignant reprimand for speaking with insinuations so out of turn to a proper lady such as genteel Queen Elsa, he feels a sudden sharp pain twist in his back's upper rib cage section.

In numbed wide-eyed shock, Hans realizes that he had been unduly stabbed in the back by a thick a jagged metal blade that had been cruelly ripped out to inflict the most damage to his chest, stomach and intestines. Hans doubles over in abject pain of his eviscerated guts inside as a cackling Captain Cornelius Jol III, AKA Captain Houtebeen, coldly drags his even more badly injured pegleg over to the Gler's steering command center to glare down at Hans' destabilized groaning form leaning to the panel's ledge for support.

"Now ye know how it feels like to be impaled by a _loyal_ fellow seaman." Viciously spat out from the Captain to the cabin boy who once served on the pegleg's Pearl lady as 'trusted crew," The vengeful old man's patched eye, as Hans looks deeper into it, showed scars that weren't there previously.

From the splintered piece of that broken mass still plunged in gory greenish black blood stained chest beneath the pirate shirt he openly displays, to the ghostly man's right palm pierced by Kristoff's golden arrow, his gruesome wounds were now an undead horror. It was as if on his mangled face there were newly formed various deeply indented scars and virulent scabs, where algal tendrils and haptera seaweed vines had been arrow targeted and sword cut off where the wounds inflicted on the Draugen he had become. And the remnants of the scars the monster had endured then were still present on the decrepit old man he had devolved back into now.

"'Tis a shame none of ye will be good for many pleasures after I run zis fine Navy ship aground up into zat Lofoten Island's rocky shoals to the north! Har Har! Zat blond rascal out zere did say ve be should be heading up zat vey, didn't he?" The heavily Dutch accented last pirate was an especially evil one at that, wanting to go down by crashing this ship to create as much destruction and devastation as absolutely possible. Captain Houtebeen, the vengeful peg leg, cackles with maddened eyes that were every bit as evil and malignant as his monstrous Draugen form.

Overhearing the entire conversation earlier, if Houtebeen's nemesis Agdar of Arendelle and his beloved **beautiful** family were still alive, what good – what _justice_ – would his own already impending death have, if he didn't take the Royal family down with him to Davy Jones locker, and raze the King's precious land as much as he could, revenge wouldn't taste so sweet and proper like, would it?

Yes, the vengefully decrepit old peg leg pirate was on death's door. The man was so bedraggled, and broken down, fatally stabbed straight through his sternum that it was an amazement he could even slither, nevermind stumbling walk. But the near death pirate was just holding on for one last vengeance upon this bright world…

"I will not allow you to harm my Elsa or a single member of her wonderful family, or her fair land!" With strength that comes out of nowhere, Hans growls as he blindly rushes the peg leg on pure raw adrenaline despite the in-shock trauma serrated knifed wound that just missed penetrating his vital chest organs.

Namely Hans' imperiled heart.

Hans focuses all of his remaining energy to draw his naval sword and knock Houtebeen away from the ship's controls where the madman was intending to maroon and sink to the craggly rock inlet of the populated fishing villages on the coast with the already distressed, tested ship.

The surprisingly fast and wily old pirate blocks with his own knife the incoming attack, a sneer on his ugly wrinkled old face as he sees Hans about to call out for assistance in warning.

"Ye and me both be ze walking undead, ye traitorous scabbardous dog! But 'ole Houtebeen is za real Captain on any ship he hobbles upon! Har Har Har! So, ye shut yer trap, Cabin Boy!" With guttural spite as the Gler roars to life under the peg leg's plotting hand, the wicked raucous pirate's raw knuckled hand vehemently lands a square punch to Hans' abdomen. The Danish Prince sees stars as he is essentially silenced, the wind knocked right out of his tenuous lungs.

Hans, short of breath, with unqualified pain in the ribcage middle section of his torso near his lungs, watches the dastardly pegleg reach again his gnarled mangled fingers for the controls. Captain Cornelius Jol AKA '_Houtebeen_' causes the Gler to rail and speed at full knots to Lofoten's coordinates and go into a full broached rudder snap with tremendous angling towards unsuspecting innocent Lofoten, just to the north of the churning back to power Moskenstramen…

There, nature whisperer Snow Prince Kristoff had already started to call upon all of Nature to will the whirlpool back to life so the King could cease his control over it, as the winter spirit called the Snow Queen looked on with regal perturbation.

With his exquisite Elsa's delicate face weeping hot tears for her family in the back of Hans' mind, with great love in his heart that was never to be frozen cold or alone again, Prince Hans was sure he must push himself just a little more to do as the Good Lord commanded—

And lay down his life for his new friends…

* * *

_Liebling_ – Darling in Germanic Prussian

_elskling_ \- My Darling in Norwegian

_meisje_\- Little girl in Dutch

* * *

_Just a little side note, Frozen friends:_

_The music of 'Love can't be Denied' that played in the background in Elsa and Hans' hearts when she called out for him and he was un-freezing, was actually set to the lyrics and melody of a song that was written for the original "Frozen" movie by the great composer Alan Menken. The song was ultimately not used for the Disney movie, so we injected it here! It works perfectly in this pivotal romantic Helsa moment, don't you think? It has a really beautiful melody and stirring words that suit Elsa and Hans at this point in their awakening love story._

_So, Please drop me a review of this soulfully action-packed, yet oft times emotionally driven, really long Valentine chapter, Frozen friends! What was your favorite part? There was so much going on for all the characters today in this exciting installment!_

_Happy belated Valentine's Day! And have a Happy Presidents' Day, too!_

_God bless,_

_HarukaKou_


	61. Chapter 60 - Fix This Fixer-Upper

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act IV**

**Chapter 60**

**"Fix This Fixer Upper"**

With his dark Saami cape flowing in the heavy, stirring winds, Kristoff Bjorgman mounts his flying rangifer with determination in his brown eyes. As Kristoff prepares to ascend, the Snow Queen uses Queen Idun's cold hand to touch his bare forearm, halting her son.

"You will not be alone." The once solitary being of winter's vast snows speaks with wisdom through Idun's lips up to Kristoff. She then turns to where Elsa was knelt to the deck with Anna, attending their father, whose thermo-phased peach flesh turned cryo-white and icy, in fluctuating quickly worsening condition.

"Little Snow Angel. You hold the key to unlocking this enigma in your hands to save this good man." The woman who herself was a great mystery to the doe-eyed pale girl-who had only seen the great Snow Queen in reverent stories her Papa and Mama told through their imaginations when she and Anna were young—offers Elsa her motherly, yet chilled, hand to bring the young Queen up to her high heeled feet.

"I do?" Ice Queen Elsa felt so small and insignificant as she gazes deeply into the overwhelming profound eyes of the ancient elemental wielder. But her anxiety is softened as the Snow Queen's magnificent presence is seen through her own lovely Mama's indigo pools that had an aura of icy blue all about them.

"By heredity, this beautiful kingdom is yours, Elsa. But you have also inherited a gift. A rare, precious gift, that is so much more than just a responsibility." The Snow Queen's frosty hand through Idun's touches Elsa's cool cheek with wisdom behind her unfathomable eyes.

"God has chosen you to be caretaker of this land. He will not fail you, if you do not allow your fear to fail Him. Beware of the enemy who is always close by." The Snow Queen says, profoundly inscrutable, as she looks from Elsa's startled face to Agdar's unconscious one and then to Anna's curious one in between.

"'The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusted in him, and I am helped: Therefore my heart greatly rejoices; and with my song will I praise him.'_ " Psalm 28:7_

Quoting the inspiring Bible verse to pronounce her brave resolve, Elsa declares the warmth of her heart with a shared smile and a squeeze to both of Anna's hands, in silent understanding. Without a word, Elsa relegates her duty as eldest child to watch over their dear parents to her little sister. Then the sleek beauty steadies her feet and glides on the wings of her controlled ice over to Sven.

Elsa alights onto the reindeer's not so surprised back behind the mentally preparing Kristoff, who nods down at their shared mother and then back over his shoulder at Elsa.

"We will protect the ones we love." The platinum blonde young Queen speaks into his eyes as she fondly scans over her immediate family before her. Then her heart, pondering its newly awakened love, and her eyes wander over the wheelhouse on the midst of the Gler's deck, towards a certain comely young Naval officer, performing his duty on the ship's bridge to bring them to safety.

"Together." With one word that expressed it all, Kristoff smiles gratefully at his sister-in-law, glad for her powerful company. He waves a big handed thumbs-up down to his bright-eyed, hope-springs-eternal Anna as the pair departs on Sven's surefooted flying back.

"Together." Anna repeats as she watches her two blonde best friends take off from the ship's deck into the dusky sky. There, veiled streaks of greens, purples, and yellows of the Aurora Borealis were trying their best to break through this thick and misty, disturbed natural world of late July…

* * *

With a dauntless strength befitting a swashbuckling hero in all the storybooks he read as a kid, soaked-to-the-bone Flynn Rider carries, with finesse, his lady fair up that rope Anna had draped over the ship's aft edge bulwark to Hans earlier.

His ripped abs were amply displayed in the wet clinging clothing plastered to his fit form as the agile bandit launches himself and Rapunzel over the ledge to land to the questionable safety of the schooner's listing rear deck.

"You good, Liebling?" Craning his neck down to take a glimpse of his little woman's forlorn face, the couple shares a mutually understanding look of sadness. Even though the supposed careless thief was thoroughly exhausted—his injured biceps overtaxed from the one-armed climb and tensor thigh muscles and quadriceps in his legs pumped from swimming at an incredible pace through the chaotic waves of the tumultuous maelstrom—the burned out adventurer/hero/husband still can offer his love's depressed face a determined smile.

"As soon as I see that everything's all right here, I'm going back out to get the big guy, Blondie. Don't you worry your pretty little head –" While he was petting the drenched brown locks of her hair empathetically, Eugene Fitzherbert was already formulating a plan in his quick-thinking brain for the effort of retrieving that valorous man named Job whom they left bleeding to death out there, afloat in the middle of the waning maelstrom.

Flynn's keen eyes scan over the deck to note the troubled scene of his distressed cousins and their downed half-frozen Dad. With Muscles' furrowed blond brow looking rather preoccupied at the moment over the troublesome seascape ahead, Eugene decides to turn to his usual ace in the hole.

"I'll be right out with my intrepid sailor of an erudite little brother. Who, no doubt, will have a multisyllablic rescue excursion in mind. One where that sesquipedalian skinny twit will try to show his big bro up, no doubt." He flashes her a droll smile as Flynn deposits Rapunzel on a ledge near the quarterdeck.

But on his way to the bridge, the thief with nine lives feels the hackles of his neck stand straight up in warning.

_Hey~something smells fishy in there. And I don't mean the catch of the day…_

Eugene pauses stock-still in his own verbose vocabulary as the sopping wet man trails seawater all over the deck strakes on his way to the central bridge wheelhouse.

"Stay here, Blondie." With a quieting finger to his apprehensive lips, Eugene doesn't even turn his head to hiss at his best girl.

Not only did Flynn Rider's innate sense of danger prick up every sodden hair on the back of his wet nape, but his unappreciative keen ears are greeted by the gravelly sound of an all-too-familiar raspy voice that he given up for dead.

_Guess that proves a bad pfennig keeps on turning up…_

The cunning cat burglar stealthily peers through the porthole window to peek into the bridge he was approaching.

But what he sees inside was not at all inviting.

"Dammit Lillebror! Always gotta get you out of scrapes!" Relishing in his station, Big brother Eugene mutters the frustration softly under his breath as his widening eyes take in the savagely brutal prospect of that despicable old pirate punching Hans in the gut and knocking the staggered Dane to the corner of the room.

The Prince falls to his knees gasping for considerably choked air, after who knows what punishment already passed between the handsome young redhead and his ugly peglegged nemesis.

But with no time to waste, Flynn Rider would rise to the occasion for his kid brother.

Literally.

Fully throwing himself into the role of bailing-out-big-bro, and unafraid of teetering heights— though the Gler's sudden rudder thrust hard left almost launched Eugene to awkwardly pitch and roll off into the deep sea, had not his quick reflexes caught himself— the sly cat burglar almost inaudibly climbs his sneaky long limbs up the aft stern facing section of the schooner's wheelhouse.

Once atop, Eugene silently balances himself on the out-of–control vessel to unlatch and slide the pilot top hatch located on the roof of the bridge.

Peering cautiously down inside, Eugene exchanges a nod with the observant redhead below who continues his heavy breathing coughing even more loudly persistent to cover up Flynn Rider's furtive joining of the party, with his agile legs dangling down.

"Ye zound not too long fer zis world, Cabin boy. Ye zhould have remained in ze kitchen rather zen having zat shapely young Queen turn yer mutinous head away from yer old Captain…Hehehe…" Houtebeen chortles cruelly at Hans behind his unturned back from the old sea demon's grudge-holding black heart.

The worn, now disfigured and distorted eared old pirate wasn't able to pick up stealthy Flynn's infiltration into the bridge above Hans' insistent cover of coughing spells from the corner where the Danish Prince was slouched to the floor.

Nor did he sense the ably modulated tone of volume when a staggered, injured Hans improbably rises to his feet after that knife-gutting blow, that many other men would already have succumbed to.

Houtebeen did not notice, until it was too late and the pair of good-looking conspirators dually converge upon the unsuspecting villain from above and behind.

**_ROLL!_**

With much excruciating effort, Hans extracts the ship's magnetic compass' iron correcting sphere from its binnacle to send the vivid blue heavy rounded metal ball object rolling in the precise direction to strike with enough impact to knock the peglegged pirate off his balanced wooden pin in a perfectly bowled—

**_STRIKE!_**

Taking up where his younger tag team combatant left off, after his motivated eager eyes adjust to the darkened pilothouse's view, the swashbuckling action hero under the fictional adventurer Flynnigan Rider's tutelage, makes his own valiant entrance.

**_KICKK!_**

After mercilessly kicking the contemptible peg leg's remaining other appendage right out from under the old decrepit miscreant, Eugene consequentially pulls Houtebeen away from the ship's wheel that the depraved old man was stubbornly hanging onto.

But even as Eugene bats him away again, the vengeful pegleg clumsily stumbles across the control panel. In his attempts to level himself up, the flailing pirate accidentally sends the misdirected vessel on a new even more dangerous course, spinning the beleaguered ship wildly on an unmanageable course setting.

"Hans! Set the ship right!" In the middle of a bare-knuckle clinch with the erstwhile pirate, a head spinning Eugene unnecessarily barks out to his younger sibling because the responsible naval man was already on it, grabbing onto the cavitate bell for stability when the ship heaves fiercely as they are both pitched to and fro.

But primed to commandeer his own ship, Hans Westergaard was purposely dogged in dragging his tall booted form over to the swaying Gler's navigation deck controls. Hans fights his own failing body as well to single-handedly steer the violently set off course vessel in disarray from its doomed broached death roll the malignant pirate had designed to destructively hit landfall to the Lofoten North.

"Argh! Verdomme! Ye stommekut scabbardous hellfire gemeneriken scoundrels! I vill bring zis vessel down wiz all of ye, if it be ze last zing I do, ye slechteriken !" The off-balance, flying Dutchman angrily spits out his venom when he catches his foul breath enough to swear fowl expletives that his handsome attackers' coordinated two front attack as hideous Houtebeen projects his repulsive deformed face to glare directly into Eugene's taken aback one.

"Eww! What happened to him? Yuck! Have you seen a mirror lately, pal? Better not— you would probably break it!" Eugene didn't mean to taunt, but the vainglorious man couldn't help himself when he gets a full gander at the distorted pirate's pockmarked, scarred up face.

"A face not even a mother could lo— KNIFE! Why **in hell** didn't you warn me there was a knife involved, Lillebror!" In a high pitched voice, Flynn squeals like a girl then berates his tersely preoccupied, usual bantering compadre in a more masculine angry tone.

Eugene backs up from the armed and dangerous pirate to the bridge wall, as an incensed Houtebeen, well beyond the restraints of pain, takes the offensive.

"Watch the sharp object, One-eye! I heard of cutting down your waistline, but this is too drastic a weight-loss plan for me!" The especially garrulous in the face of danger former thief gulps as he dodges and weaves to concave his deftly sucked-in well-formed abs to avoid the slashing steel of the deformed pirate's readily wielded knife.

"Just look at me. I have a perfect physique. Unlike _you_." As he continually feints and jabs the slower opponent, Eugene just couldn't rein in the vain goad, angering the pirate to the nth degree, until Houtebeen sees red.

"Houtebeen should have done away wiz ye dirty zieving accursed pile of refuse, long ago!" The incensed pirate spits out right in Eugene's face as the pegleg rushes our tall stubbly rogue into a rough fast tackle with unbelievable strength for an elderly man with one missing appendage.

"Well, at least—_ergh_!— this— _dare I say gorgeous?—_pile of refuse—_argh_!— doesn't have the stinking breath of month-old fish and rotten seaweed! God, pass him a breath mint! Eh, Lillebror?" As the pair struggle for the sharp jagged knife that Houtebeen would not relinquish from his stubborn hand no matter how hard his challenger tried to disarm him, Eugene just then notices the fact that Hans—who was normally a fount of commensurate wit and raucous raillery that passed between the two clever, competent and, at times waggish, comrades— had been unduly silent thus far.

"You okay, kid?" Eugene, amidst his skylarking assault and scuffled fracas with the peglegged blade-slashing pirate, finally detected that something was amiss with his serious knit-browed younger sibling.

Hans had been soundlessly maneuvering the craft as if it took all of his strength to just bring Gler to a halting 'dead slow ahead stop'.

_That should've been a piece of cake for you, Handsome…_

It was then in that terrifying moment that Eugene noticed the red stain of fresh blood oozing down the stiffly rigid, unresponsive younger man's white tight pant leg in a thick crimson streaked stain.

_Not you too, Sideburns! Not my new little brother… Not before we got a chance to really know each other…_

_"_What have you done to him, you rotten bastard?!" The anger builds for the sake of the younger man whom Flynn had forged a close bond with over this wild adventure in familial ways he never imagined before.

And with a new focused ferocity of purpose he rarely displayed, Eugene Fitzherbert lashes out at the wicked harbinger of all this pain and suffering that he himself, as a stupid man, unwittingly had a larcenous hand in introducing to everyone.

Confronting the wicked monster who was once again a man, with a punched thrust to the old ocean marauder's own gut, Eugene pulls the battered ancient seaman up in a stranglehold around the scruff of Houtebeen's dirty wretched neck.

Flynn Rider again wallops Captain Houtebeen with a powerful fist so hard and intense with fury that the deformed old pirate loses his last few yellowed front teeth to the raw power of Flynn Rider's bloody knuckled assault. As if he were no more than a rag doll, the heinous pegleg pirate is sent flying to crash straight through the front doorway of the wheelhouse.

* * *

**_"_**_'See gentle patience smile on pain; _

_See dying hope revive again_

_Hope wipes the tear from sorrow's eye; _

_While Faith points upward to the sky…'"_

For all the rocking and rolling of the tattered ship that was suddenly set to pitch back-and-forth in sickening lurches, Princess Anna hugs her dear parents to her close. The young girl was doing her best to keep her vulnerable, infirmed father and weak mother maintained to stay on board the wildly shifting and seesawing vessel. Industrious Anna scurries to gather some of the fallen ratlines as she and Mama work together to tie Papa to the Gler's railing near the bowsprit to stabilize his lying prone body on the deck.

Her Kristoff had already mounted his flying reindeer buddy Sven with Elsa earlier to stop the absent maelstrom from consuming her poor father's energy before it drained out entirely. The brave pair had traveled over the open seas to the maelstrom's coordinates in an urgent intent to put Nature back to right for the sake of the weakened and ice burgeoned Norwegian King.

And now, with Scuttle and the revived Pascal at her side, it was up to Anna, whom Elsa left in charge, here onboard ship to chew out Hans for his shockingly inept incompetence at sailing this not so sail-worthy, albeit in a sad state of disrepair, vessel -_ that Mr. Super Sailor was purported to be able to handle!_

_I think I'll enjoy taking your nautical skills down a peg!_ Anna smiles at the fun thought of ribbing the previously too-impeccable-he-made-her-ill young seaman, since her sentiments towards Hans Westergaard were not entirely sour anymore.

But before Anna and her entourage, holding onto each other for stability on the dizzying, swaying deck, were just about to open the door to confront the Gler's Kommander for his poor driving skills, the door of the bridge comes crashing outward in a mass of exploded, shattered splinters all over her.

Rapunzel, who was just trying to keep from up-chucking in her fragile seasick stomach's condition due to the roiling and quaking bilious ship, ignores her nausea to rush over and kneel down to see if her cousin, buried in the wooden door's debris, was hurt by the human projectile rocket.

And generous, compassionate, unsuspecting Princess Rapunzel of Corona is roughly grabbed by the sadistic fiend. Captain Houtebeen's large knife immediately is drawn at the poor girl's throat before she has the chance to get away.

"Eugene!" The brown haired Prussian young lady squeals out for her love's protection as the pirate pulls her in to him.

"Rapunzel!" If Eugene's angry vitriol at the abducting pirate could be doubled, it just tripled as he crashes straight through the remainder of the wheelhouse doorway recklessly to glower at the evil pirate, his fists both raised and poised to strike back.

"You let my wife go, sea scum, or I'll _personally_ rip your **gutless** **bowels** **out** and then **tear** your other leg off to match that worthless other one!" With a pair of fearsome dark eyes, Eugene forebodingly threatens the ruthless pirate with unequivocal animus and antipathy spat out at the villain in verbally aggressive vulgar terms as he pursues the old man out to the deck's stern.

"Ha ha har! You zink you are scaring me with zat high-handed talk to a lowly pirate, zief? Get your filthy hands up in ze air on your way here. Slowly-like. Just remember, zat one slip of zis here knife and all ye be again is zat wastrel, homeless, unwanted criminal." It was Houtebeen's turn to cruelly taunt at a panic stricken Eugene who freezes in place on the deck.

A stunned, just shaking herself awake, head-bonked Anna looks on impuissantly, obscured behind the remnants of the bridge door as a terrified Rapunzel shakes her head down at the peppy youngest girl who was about to make her presence known. Intuitive Pascal responds by pulling his girl's younger cousin by the braid to stay out of sight.

"Now, put zese around your wrists, tight-like! No funny business zis time wiz my nearly-dead cabin boy, or else your little Missy be a goner!" Not noticing Anna amidst the rubble, the pirate Captain, all while keeping his knife to Rapunzel's gasping neck, digs into his tattered long coat's pocket to produce a pair of handcuffs that he tosses into Eugene's catching hands.

"Old Houtebeen's shaky hand might not be so inclined to slit her lovely neck, if ye and your blushing bride choose the walk the plank instead, Flynn Rider. And we all call our tenuous negotiations quits, once and for all. The Norwegian King and his Queen will not be so fortunate to escape my new ship's hospitality." The wily old one-eyed pirate, assessed that the vulnerable King and Queen near the stem of the Gler had been left behind by the departed young Queen and that big blond lug of a mountainman. So the royal couple would be at his mercy.

Which the evil-hearted odious pirate, so full of hate and vengeance, as we glimpsed in his demonic monstrous form, had none.

Especially with all the crew, save for that not-long-for-this-world cabin boy Kommander, abandoned of their ship, the insane Captain seemed quite at ease to throw a handcuffed Eugene and his wench overboard. Then there would be no one remaining alive to oppose him in his wicked soul's final vengeance on his arch nemesis King Agdar, who would not survive, even if it meant Houtebeen himself didn't either.

But the chauvinistic pirate was not aware that there was yet one more threat to be still wary of onboard the Gler…

Her helpless mind races at a million miles an hour for what she could do to help her endangered cousins as the orangey Princess picks her thankfully unbroken body, bruised and scratched up, from beneath the crashed-out shattered doorway.

"_Anna!"_ That's when she suddenly hears a soft tenor voice choking to whisper out her name. The shocked girl looks up from where she was hunkered down with Pascal and Scuttle near the wheelhouse's trashed opening on the swaying ship.

There, from inside the bridge's dim light, a long naval sword comes sliding along the wooden strakes from somewhere deep within to skitter to Anna's surprised feet.

The Arendelle Princess glances her big blue-green eyes into the darkness within where Hans' svelte, tall silhouette was leaning against the control deck's steering wheel without much movement. That, in itself, causes her whirring mind some inquiry.

But Anna had little time to ponder her qualms. Only to act.

"'_It is in the struggle that God makes us become strong, Anna."_ Princess Anna recalls her spiritual teacher and fencing mentor—her dear Papa's bolstering words in her heart as she pushes away her frightened tears to glance over at his ice and flesh battle where her Mama was cuddling him in a tender soft, songful embrace.

With a fortifying sniffle back, the caring girl compartmentalizes her worry and anxiety as the crystals around her neck glow with the aurora borealis that shines down from the heavens to spell out her unending belief that everything would turn out all right in the end.

Even though she was by herself, the sweet, trusting, faithful girl who was their optimistic ray of sunshine named 'Anna' which meant 'favored with grace' knew she never was alone because she had love in her heart.

She picks up the 32 inch long forged steel rapier's gold gilded hilt in her assured hand and stares at its shiny blade. In its reflection, Anna remembers how, as a young girl, while her Papa instructed precise-aim, dead-eye Elsa how to fire a revolver, he taught hands-on flutterbudget Anna (and the relieved palace statuary) to be more suited to the art of fencing.

_Oh, Papa. This one's for you._

She twists her braids over her head to secure them out of her eyes that had purpose in them. Anna's brain whirs as she reminisces of her currently jeopardized parent's steady hand in teaching her when she grasps tightly in her small palms the unsheathed blade of that suddenly appearing conferred Naval cutlass…

And with a huddled whisper to Pascal, and Scuttle, who takes off to the sky, Anna, as covertly as possible, scurries around the rear side of the wheelhouse.

As if on cue, Svala the reindeer chooses this moment to leave the Snow Queen's side where she and Queen Idun were serenading a shivering Agdar to wander over and join Anna, sensing her young charge was in need of her.

The female reindeer finds the gutsy gal fearlessly climbing over the ship's railing, daring to scale around the outside edge of the thankfully less heaving Gler until the plucky young woman, fearless of heights, trustingly leaps off to land on Svala's intercepted back.

Houtebeen, with Rapunzel as his hostage, moves toward the midsection of the schooner's emergency loading gangway plank. The pirate's one functioning eye was upon the handcuffed Eugene all the while as the thief cautiously follows the pair, biding his time in the quiet of his chaotic flawlessly disarrayed heart that was inwardly petitioning his first candid prayer.

_Oh God. If you're out there, Big Fella… please. You're the one who could move mountains, part oceans, walk on water, breathe fire and brimstone from the heavens, right? So how easy would it be to get this little lady of mine away from this sadistic bozo!? Doesn't sound like much for a powerful guy like you. But it'd mean a damn lot to me. Pardon the cursing. But that's how damn much I love her. Like no man's never loved another woman before. Though that Adam guy must have had it bad for his gal and her big juicy apple. That's a different can of snakes. But I digress. Sorry for the wandering mind, but you put it in, right?_

_Please, send out one of your angels or smite down something already to keep my dream alive_. Eugene prayed the only way he knew how—from the most sincere depths of the heart in that plain conversational, bargaining cajoling phrase—in simple terms that he naturally spoke in.

And perhaps that was the favorite kind of straightforward honest prayer the Lord longed to hear from modest unpretentious people's hearts.

Because His genuine 'angels' came in all shapes and sizes.

Even some in caramel orangey braids.

As Rapunzel was nearing the edge of the ship's loading gangway plank in the midst of the deck with that knife still tightly pressed to her gulping, gasping neck, her supplicant husband was about to make his move. Eugene was giving the mighty power of God's miracle a thirty second more deadline before the mortal man would strike out on his own.

But He only required ten of those seconds before making His presence known.

**_WHOOSH!_**

Who else could send a heavenly angel lunging from the sky, binding and parrying a deadly sharp sabre at her devilish enemy below like an expert fencer?

**_S-SLA-ASSHH!_**

As white feathers flutter down over the opening wide eyes of the man who was starting his walk of faith, on invisible wings, a pixie named Anna of Arendelle could look no more angelic in Flynn Rider's sight.

But the flash of white feathers weren't exactly of the angel soft variety heralding from Heaven's pearly gates.

Captain Houtebeen certainly wouldn't consider Scuttle the seagull all that heaven-sent, when the big beaked bird snaps his powerful sharp jaws bravely down onto the evil pegleg's gnarled fingers.

**_SS-SNAPP!_**

The pirate's red fingers shrink back from holding that jagged knife to Rapunzel's throat as a result, and the pain-stricken man pushes the dizzily spun Prussian cutie closer towards the plank as he continues to grasp her bloodless arm tightly.

**_S-SPLA-ATT!_**

Simultaneously in the assault, a certain russet camouflage-colored-to-match-the-deck's-brown-strakes chameleon rapidly ferrets up the pirate's one pant leg. The self-sacrificing lizard extends his little green body to cover Houtebeen's hideous, wretched one eye, so he could not see straight.

"En garde, Ugly!" In the proper fencing form her Papa taught her, one hand immediately held outward for balance, sword blade extended straight line in the other, the feisty girl recklessly dive leaps with a giggle down from Svala's tan back in the sky above to land onto the lowered plank in between Rapunzel and Houtebeen.

Her sidestepping footwork was impressive, Anna only tripping over the raised planks one or two times, but Svala was luckily there to steady her from tipping over the edge entirely.

**_CLANG! CLANG! DING! CLANGG!_**

When the pirate's metal dagger clashes against Anna's steel-bladed sabre, Eugene uses the chaotic moment to rescue Rapunzel away from the stunned pirate. He pulls his wobbly pregnant wife to the safety of the wheelhouse before the swarthy rogue turns back to the skirmish.

While aiming off Princess Anna's fierce thrust blows, Houtebeen manages to pluck the sticky Pascal suctioned to his ferally seething and scowling face. With disgust, the pegleg tosses the poor, squeezed senseless reptile hard through the air like a missile towards the churning sea below.

"Gotcha! You bug eyed shell-less deep sea turtle flasher you!" Scuttle was as dense as he was colorblind as he mistakes the chameleon for a naked oceanic amphibian. But he saved Pascal nonetheless.

His plans thwarted, dastardly Captain Houtebeen, driven by spite and hatred, desperately moves quick-paced to slash off the precariously still partway hanging staysail and outer jib dangling over the unprotected royal couple near the Gler's front stem to crush them both.

**_DIVE!_**

Just able to rip one raw hand and dislocated wrist bone free of his cursed handcuff iron handicap, Eugene intercepts the falling outer jib's flailling canvas by grabbing hold with a strenuous tug on the rigging and sail sheets. He uses all his ample muscle aptitude to redirect the descending booms and shrouds of the loosened jib staysail and its many metal turnbuckles and steel toggles from striking the vulnerable King and Queen below.

The snapping rat lines nearly send the Prussian man top over teakettle into the drink below himself. But the swift-footed man who '_didn't dance' _manages to waltz between the falling booms and gear of the enshrouded canvas' weighty sail and rigging until he was wrapped in it like a ball dress. After revolving around and around to ensure his aunt and uncle were safe, Eugene finally falls face down at the lizard's similarly dizzy feet to the wooden floor of the deck's aft section.

"Blondie's gonna think you and me have been out drinking one too many, Frog." A woozy Eugene rhetorically says to a heavy lidded Pascal, who dizzily smiles up at him in a pleasant shade of pretty bubble gum pink.

On the opposite end of the ship's stern, feisty Anna's more maneuverable body and length of drawn sword would certainly have given her an equalizing advantage, had the vicious pirate not been so desperately maniacal.

_He_ didn't adhere to the fencing rules of etiquette she was raised on, at all!

"You impossible child! I should have killed you and yer parents when I had ze chance!" The sour faced pirate cries out in a rasping voice to the little girl who dared to challenge him with her childish swordfare, as if the fearsome pirate of the high seas was not a dangerous force to be reckoned with.

No longer a mere child, Princess Anna was a quick-study scrapper and could rise to any occasion, if you got her riled enough. And with the pirate threatening her vulnerable parents, Boy!,was she riled up right now.

"You steer clear of my folks! Take that, peg leg!" Anna grunts out as she engages the pirate's dagger with her – _with Hans'—_tensed sabre blade. As she did, Anna couldn't resist the smirk on her lips at the idea that Red, of all people, entrusted her with such a dangerous weapon's task.

Fighting forte in blocking the old man's greater strength with the tenacity of her vitality of youth and drive, Anna spins out of their locked blade's bind to feint to the right in a successful textbook riposte move her Papa would have been so proud of, had he been able to see her in action.

_Ha! Did you see that, Papa?!…Oh, guess not…Elsa and Kristoff are working on it, Papa! You hold on with Mama's singing a little more!_

Distracted to glance over from the fierce battle to her parents and the ocean bound travelers beyond, Anna feverishly daydreams. But the sneering, disgusting one-eyed opportunist villain, who never dreamed, was just that close to getting the upper hand…

Positioning his thick, jagged knife high in the air, Houtebeen was about to strike the annoying willful little girl in her sidetracked attention down once and for all, even as Flynn Rider barrel rolls back across the ship to render his aid.

But Anna may have been just too far out of his reach to make that difference…

* * *

**_Minutes ago, a few hundred feet above the open, calm sea that should never be this still…_**

Kristoff closes his eyes tightly, trying to clear his mind of all extemporaneous factors. Although, his distracting nonstop thoughts of his Anna were hard to supplant.

_Come on! She was fine, just worried for her folks back there on the ship that Hans was heading to the safety of Lofoten._

Kristoff was the one heading into danger. Then why was the golden boy feeling so on edge at every tiny thought about her?

"Ouch!" Kristoff inexplicably feels pins and needles all over, like he'd been scratched by a slew of bird talons and smacked in the head by sharp rain at the same time. And then a fuzzy nothing.

Just about to reach out to communicate with his oddly radio-silent soul partner, the Wind Whisperer is cut off by the next statement that enters his superceded mind.

{"Snow Prince. The very ocean tingles with unease! Not only here, but across the seven seas, throughout the world! All waters have been touched by the tiny ripples of this unnatural stillness."} One echoing marine voice warns.

{"Hurry! Those unnatural cross currents and the unacceptable oceanic inclement patterns reaching to fathoms below, spell doom for all."} Another deeper voice intones.

{"Please help us, Snow Prince! We're scared here beneath the sea!" Unni the seal's frightened pitch enters Kristoff's mind via his new receptive mind link.

{"You must fix this!"} When the singular voices echo by the hundreds, if not thousands in a multitude of ocean dweller pleas in unison, Kristoff holds up a big hand to press over his aching flooded head's migraine.

The youthful Wind Whisperer groans audibly with the overwhelming amount of beseeching communication reverberating exponentially amidst his pounding brainwaves.

"Kristoff?" Elsa, from where she was sitting on Sven's back saddle-seat had been fighting off her own inner demons of self-doubt and fear to test her own limits, as she notices her brother-in-law's abrupt perturbation from behind him where she was holding onto his tensed shoulders.

"What if I don't know what I'm doing, Elsa?! So many voices! I want to help them all! But, what if I'm wrong? How am I I'm supposed to fix what I don't really understand?! I'm just a nobody orphan boy – not some legendary Snow Prince hero they are all crying out for!" The nagging uncertainty inside Kristoff cries out as the Devil danced in every heart, from the most devout to the least of people, planting seeds of self doubt to deter the good boy's resolve at this point when he needed it most.

Normally steady as a rock Kristoff Bjorgman now frightened a tentative Elsa with the ferocity of his normally mellow voice's erratic change of tenor. His entire body shivers with an insecure fear that the Arendelle Queen was quite surprised to find in the usually sure and reliable mountain man that Anna brought home one lucky day, two years ago.

{"Old buddy! Steady on!"} It was Sven's turn to calm down his overwrought best friend, but to little avail.

_What would Anna do if she were here?_

It only took Elsa a fraction of a second to pose that question in her mind for her heart to automatically respond with her sweet and loving little sister's assured reaction.

**_HUG!_**

Foregoing her own cool reserve with supportive sisterly warmth, Elsa embraces Kristoff's extrinsic wide muscular broad shouldered traps and delts beneath his flowing black cape in front of her.

The young woman who was, by nature herself, not normally a tactile 'hugger', as her vibrant Anna was, shares in that little ray of sunshine who embraced life and those she loved with every bit as much radiance as the solar star above, millions of miles away.

"_'Cast all your anxiety on him, because He cares for you._'" 1 Peter 5:7

And without a word, the poignant Scripture projected perceptibly from Elsa's mind softly passes between them, Kristoff finds in Elsa's faith in God and unspoken belief in him the encouraging strength to take a clarifying deep breath of the bracing salty sea air and expel all hobgoblin demons.

The motivated Norwegian mountain man grabs the Saami longbow strapped to his fibrous, sinewy chest with a nod. In his other hand, Kristoff lifts Arendelle's precious holy scepter that he had taken from the King and stares at it long and hard, closing his eyes with a single prayer.

"Lord, guide me." The troll crystals around Kristoff's neck suddenly begin to shiver to life when the spectacular aurora borealis hidden behind storm clouds peeks through a small clearing window with its delirium of vibrant violets, radical reds and giddy greens that penetrate straight through the Ice Harvester's fully uplifted heart.

The good man named Kristoff Bjorgman would give his utmost strength to fix up every fixer-upper for this troubled family that the handyman had been welcomed into. Steady and sure as the reflective stage of the aurora borealis streaks that are summoned by the troll crystals around the Wind Whisperer's neck, Kristoff's cogent thoughts spoke his need for putting back together the Moskenstraumen maelstrom.

{"You have completed your Juoska at last, my son. Your trust in the Almighty will give you the strength to become the Christ bearer, whom you have been named since your birth to fulfill."} Kristoff smiles as Ragi's – his father's – familiar comforting voice resumes in his mind to meld all of the multitudes of those sharp incessant communications pounding at Kristoff's tender heart into one gentle stream.

"Pabbie." Kristoff whispers, gladdened to hear Ragi's voice again inside of his heart. He was proud to recognize both of his Father's voices touching his soul as Kristoff resolves to be the stable hand that could fix up this tremendous challenge for the sake of every spirit of the earth–especially the spirited girl he loved.

{"Listen with your heart, my boy. And Christ Jesus will always open your eyes to the truth of God's love."} Old Ragi speaks with a wisdom and experience beyond the years this world never could teach a man.

_…Two parts of one whole… The secret locked inside whispers of enigmatic mysteries…_

_… Your reflection will show who you truly are inside, if you search deeply and honestly within…_

_…Fight for the Light in His holy name, Christ-bearer… when the moment is right…_

And as Kristoff's chocolate brown eyes open, there was an enlightened gleam in them that was lacking before, as if each of the multicolored rays of God's vast resounding lightshow known as the aurora borealis caught the fire of brilliance as one by one they were channeled into this new Wind Whisperer's soul.

The wind in the sky speaks the answer to his puzzled heart through the words he has heard uttered in his soul along this journey that has brought him to this point.

_… And his arrow will go forth like lightning… _Zechariah 9:14

And the holy Biblical words transmitted from Heaven punctuate the climax of the message echoing in Kristoff's accessible heart.

And suddenly all is understood…

"Elsa! Can you make St. Olaf's orb react to the scepter again?" With cogent thought burning in his senses, quivering in his heart, Kristoff urgently asks as Sven starts to approach the direct heart of the maelstrom they were circling over.

"Without Papa?" Now Elsa shivers inwardly at the thought of failing to power the holy relic again.

'_For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline._' 2 Timothy 1:7

Elsa hears her dear Papa's deep voice in her yearning head, pledging that God would be the One to provide the potency of the energy that she required. But as she closes her eyes to focus on his reassuring baritone, another's expression of God's power enters her soul as she believed no other ever could.

'_It is God who arms me with strength and makes my way perfect.' Isaiah 40:31_

Upon hearing with new resolve Hans Westergaard's beautiful voice in her secured heart too, repeating that verse in his soaring yet sweet lyrical tenor, the platinum blonde Queen nods with total pertinacity.

"I know I can." Abiding with their love by listening to the two most important, inspirational men in her life, her Papa and Prince Hans' gentle voices together, ring in her soul, quoting Scripture, touching her heart. Elsa smiles reassuringly to Kristoff as she resigns herself to the task at hand entirely under God's will.

Elsa gives the purity of her tranquil heart at last to Him fully and cups the round golden orb in her hands and holds it up to the sceptre in Kristoff's…

The Ice Queen channels her stored cryogenic energies into the orb as the Wind Whisperer reaches out with his other hand towards the sky's small cloudless window. There, the bright vibrant streams of the Northern Lights were channeled through Kristoff's entire body until he glows with holographic hues of luminescence as he calls upon all of nature to respond to his whispered need.

And the ocean, the air, the trees, the animals—the wind itself each lend their voices to His will…

As the man of nature holds Arendelle's holy sceptre up to meet Elsa's steadily glowing blue white orb, the Christ-bearer begs his sovereign namesake to shine inspiration's Light to reveal His truth to this dark world…

An elegant long-nailed hand gripped to her pallid throat, Elsa gasps as she opens her purple-shadowed eyes to watch, entranced, as the large ice blue diamond set in the center of the golden staff's metal forged crocus crown top rises upwards from its setting.

As Kristoff instinctively passes the empty golden sceptre over to Elsa, he holds out his massive empty palm where the magically air-loft ice blue diamond floats to rest within.

Immediately seizing the moment, the Wind Whisperer listens to every voice in his head begging him to right the upside down world that one evil heart had welcomed the hobgoblin devil himself to disrupt the peaceful course of God's nature.

So this special young man, who spoke gentle whispers to nature and listened to their small silent voices until together they became strident and strong, pulls out the 72 inch Saami longbow that was strapped to his impressive chest. The mountain man runs his large capable hands along the composite bow's converse Birchwood and goat Willow until he could sense every molecule of its lifeforce in him.

The carved living wood vibrates, as Kristoff holds the reflex bow at proper anchor point, with the conduit of the Wind Whisperer"s mastery of his raw genuine emotion. Every tendon of his thew tingles to pinpoint the exact location of the precise center where the stunted Moskenstraumen maelstrom once emanated.

He reaches into his quiver and lifts one of the specialized, unique arrows by its shaft's spine. Brushing his lips along the feathered stabilizing fletching vane at the arrow's end with a soft breath, Kristoff flexes the bowstring at its notched nocking point. The Snow Prince then places the cold, charged ice blue diamond at the arrow's sharpened stone tip and silently holds the jewel over his broad shoulder's powerful musculature to his fellow champion.

There, Ice Queen Elsa, feeling so as one with the natural landscape of her country, her proud kingdom, recognized how vital her role was in this incredible noble endeavor to accomplish this task, just as the legendary Snow Queen advised.

The pale beauty siphons her innate God-given powers to energize that age-old ice diamond crystal that had resided dormant in the holy relic for centuries. Her cryo-energies intricately focus to keep the ice-blue diamond to stay affixed in her dainty artistic style of snow crystal flakes to the honed sharp stone arrow tip head, charged with her pure ice energy…

Kristoff Bjorgman, the Wind Whisperer and Snow Prince, aloft his flying reindeer Sven alongside Ice Queen Elsa of Arendelle, raises the recurve limb of his legendary Saami longbow in his powerful biceps. The Ice Harvester, fearlessly as one with the wind, perches up high on Sven's back as he gazes through the site window through the longbow's riser as he evenly pulls the specially loaded arrow to the bowstring's perfect draw length…

_…This bow will speak the Spirit Whisperer's name…_

The ancient prophecy of this Saami longbow is fulfilled in the sharp breath of the wind carrying all of Nature to whistle throughout this special young man's every sense.

But this time, the diverse—loud and soft, high and low, clear and throaty, quick and slow—voices that spanned the Earth and all life upon it, neither overwhelmed nor alarmed the Snow Prince with their deafening roar.

No, they only strengthened him with their sustaining encouragement to restore God's grand design.

**_…Kristoff…Kristoff…_**

**_…Christ-bearer…_**

As his arrow sails straight and true through the sky with the precision clipped speed of a falcon and the focused aim of a spider, with the tenacity of a bear, Kristoff feels the aurora borealis splash its ethereal shine to bolster his vitality and purpose with its supernatural iridescent glow.

And with just a millisecond before he releases the projectile to fly, the Wind Whisperer senses his mentor, Ragi's invisible spiritual arms lay over his own. The original Wind Whisperer adds the wisdom of his fatherly strength in steadying his son's strong arm to launch the blessed arrow into the direct heart of the Moskenstraumen maelstrom in the hopeful prayer to 'fix it up' again…

**_P-PLINKK!_**

The flawless ice blue diamond which pure-hearted Ice Queen Elsa infused upon the legendary golden Saami arrowhead that righteous Snow Prince Kristoff injected into the center of the deadly whirlpool with perfect accuracy, had the same opposite reversal effect that the holy spring water once attested.

In the exact moment the refracted lights of the northern hemisphere begins to mingle with the reflecting ice blue diamond as it hits the center of the water's surface, the jewel sinks deeper into the heart of the maelstrom.

Elsa, Kristoff and Sven watch with wide eyes and withheld breath as the Norwegian sea begins to roil and roll when the rift in nature unravels and begins to close.

Bubbling and regurgitating from beneath as the unnaturally imbalanced ocean swallows whole their powerful peace offering, the waves begin to swirl and foam in their normal system of converging strong currents and tidal eddies that created the feared Moskenstraumen maelstrom.

The unblemished gemstone jewel exchanged with all the pleas of nature combined with the pure prayers of its majestic icy Queen dissolves into the heart of the reinstated ebony vortex's turbulent vacuum, never to be seen from again.

As she pants, heavily breathing with pure excitement, Elsa leans her pale blonde head down over the swirling sea to glimpse with wide blue eyes their combined handiwork.

Trembling all over with joy, the once uncertain, emotion concealed young ruler of the nation reacts with every bit as much decorum and manners as any other young girl in her kingdom would in such a triumphant situation.

"We did it! Yes! Oh, thank you, Lord! Oh! Kristoff! Oh! We really did it!" Her heart had never felt so light and free, with love filling her starved cardiovascular organ from every angle, and Elsa squeals right in her brother-in-law's ear. Elsa embraces the red-faced, embarrassed 23-year-old with the joyous belief that her Papa would be safe now, thanks to their blessed mission's successful effort in fixing the disturbance of nature.

"Calm down." Kristoff says gently even-toned his normal cooling-off phrase that feisty Anna required daily to her more stately and generally more serene older sibling with a pat to Elsa's hands she never would let him touch before. Kristoff, with a small chuckle at the blushing young woman's uncommon enthusiasm, nods to Anna's ecstatic sister as he leans his strapping body forward on Sven.

He gazes over the amplified whirlpool of semi-diurnal tides that induced the surface water ripples to create tall ridges. The swells encircle crests of the revitalized rushing waters of the maelstrom to surge to spinning life anew and result in returning the Moskenstraumen once again to the mighty force it was fashioned by its Creator to be.

The sky and mountainside melt together with the green, violet and yellow streaks of the fully revealed Northern Lights over the reflective mirror of this Norwegian ocean where the Moskenstraumen's mystery swirls again.

And a voice echoes through the skies clearly for any hopeful ear to hear.

{"Nature has returned to its true course again, thanks to you. You have fulfilled your destiny, my boy. And yours as well, Queen of the Ice. God in His heaven must be smiling down on you two special children for being the Heaven-sent answer to impossible dreams."}

Ragi actually makes his physical appearance known to be seen even by Elsa, with his faithful wolf Holger to ride alongside Sven upon one of the trio of white horses he was leading from the ocean depths he'd rescued them from after the Snow Queen's flying carriage went down.

"And Papa?" Shy Elsa was getting into the swing familiarity in her exuberance of expectation concerning her beloved endangered parent back on the Gler, not so far away.

"Although it may take some time and patience and the warmth of love the fortunate man indeed has surrounding him in his family, the King will recuperate, now that the reversing effect of the holy orb's rift has been bridged. Thanks, in large part, to the courage of his gifted and brave daughter, now that Nature has been righted and at peace."

Wise old Ragi had never seen, in his own long valorous life the greatness of a selfless sacrifice and love as he had glimpsed in this special Arendelle royal family.

But if his own precious Snow Queen had been touched by the young family of her special Windchime boy, of course they must be righteous in the sight of God, too. The spirit of this deep man of Nature extends a calming palm to ease the worry written on the pale ice Queen's anxious cheek.

"Thank God." A grateful tear still spills from Elsa's eyes openly as she presses her cool moisture of her praise-giving face to her new 'little' brother's bare back. That fond, familial action causes the audibly exhaling Kristoff to share in her praises and smiles.

"Let's get back down to the ship before it gets sucked into this crazy maelstrom vortex that we turned on again. Though Hans should have it all well in hand by now." Kristoff invokes the name of the man whom Elsa just happened to be thinking about at this relieved moment.

"Yes, we can trust Prince Hans." Elsa, in her thrilled, pleased state rambles about the young Dane who she had slowly come to the decision to give her heart to—from all she'd discovered of the fine man's character that had touched her to believe that perhaps love could happen for her, too.

Kristoff glances back over his shoulder at his obviously, 'deliriously in love' sister-in-law with skeptical humored eyes, and a soft practical chuckle at her, considering the irony of her choice and what Anna's doubtlessly remarkable reaction to it would be.

The same, down-to-earth young boy he always had been and always would be, even after this amazing feat of heralding back one of the most powerful natural forces on earth, was still the same – Snow Prince, Wind Whisperer, legendary Saami hero, Christ bearer – or not.

Looking around, Kristoff finds enigmatic Ragi had disappeared yet again, but his son was getting used to having a fly-by-night wandering spirit for a Dad who would always be there to rely on when he needed him most, like a good father should.

{"See you again, sometime, Ole Ragi."} Kristoff transmits the thought, knowing his soulful father would certainly receive his message, wherever the wind took him.

With a smile as his thoughts are bombarded by received communications of too many thanks and grateful creatures of the sea, land and air to count, Kristoff and Sven transport an anxious with hopeful excitement Queen Elsa—who was relieved for her reunited family and hungry for a happy ending of her own—back towards the ship.

But these weary warriors, who challenged the maelstrom and won, were wholly unsuspecting of the untold trouble below…

* * *

_You can fix this fixer-upper up with a little bit of love!_

* * *

_Pfennig - _Prussian coinage equivalent to a penny

_Verdomme_\- Damn it! -swearing in Dutch

_Stommekut_ – stupid men - swearing in Dutch

_Gemeneriken_ – scoundrels, nasty louts -swearing in Dutch

_s__lechteriken_ \- bastards - swearing in Dutch


	62. Chapter 61 - A Life for a Life

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act IV**

**Chapter 61**

**"****A Life for a Life****"**

_Back on the HmNoS Gler, whose tattered sails and ice-melted, patched-hull of the bilges taking on water made the ship struggle to regain its buoyancy versus the sweltering revived Moskenstraumen…_

* * *

Upon glimpsing her worried Mama's shaking head and cousin Eugene's incoming panic, Anna's gasping attention returned back to the devilishly sneering villain's murderous intentions. In the few seconds she looked away, the vexatious Captain Houtebeen's final fury of vengeance had wasted no time in raising his weapon to bring in for the kill…

**_SZZZT!_**

Although the residual effects of the reversed healing consequences of the holy orb had been taking its toll on King Agdar, the Ice King was slowly surging back to consciousness, now that Elsa and Kristoff had succeeded. When a volley of ice crystals comes pummeling from that direction, blasting the dagger from the pirate Houtebeen's clutching hand, Anna was sure it was her Papa's ice magic that just saved her.

Anna squints to peer over to the stem of the ship from where she had been pinned down on the deck.

And was quite surprised by what her eyes were telling her.

The nasty peg leg's jagged knife was pressing down to plunge into her chest, fiercely struggling for life, when Queen Idun/the Snow Queen taps into the semi-conscious King's icy firepower to spare their youngest child from the evil maniac's wrath.

_Mama's blasting off ice now too? Wow! Cool!_

The elemental spirit's own cryokinetic mental abilities had swept across the miles with motherly love to add to the sheer force of the snowy ice sleet that frosts over the pirate's eyes to blind him.

* * *

"Argh! Get **OFF** Me!" Trapped beneath the groping villain, Anna growls at the snow-blinded old man, pushing and shoving her way out from under the foul-stenched, bearded pegleg. His frostbitten fingers were nothing compared to the pain Anna just incurred on his kicked in –

"Mind if I cut into this _private_ conversation?" By now, in mid-run, limber lock pick Flynn Rider, once untangled from the sails and rigging, had removed those accursed handcuffs. He was bearing up against the excruciating pain of the hand he had, in haste, violently wrestled out into a mangled mess of raw, ripped and shredded skin. The master thief's dislocated right wrist bone was restricting his no longer very nimble fingers.

But still, they manage to quickly flex into a fist in his dire moment of need.

**_KA-POWWW!_**

Though many of his hand bones were dislocated, Eugene slams the already kicked in agony of the snow flurry stigmatized Captain Houtebeen with all the might his powerful left bicep and tricep had in them. The able-bodied man knocks the evil pirate back from where the old man had landed on the top of the squirming Anna.

But despite his face riddled rigidly stiff and verglas-frosted peg leg body, the resilient undaunted pirate still had enough nefarious drive to yet make an aimed, recoiled lunge for Anna's surprised neck. Houtebeen grabs his twisted knobby old fingers around Anna's choking throat as he returns to the kicking and screaming braided girl into a chokehold.

Here, Eugene assiduously perseveres, wrenching his cracked wrist and bloody scathed hands around Houtebeen's gnarled old hands. Eugene keeps the ice cold pirate's clammy fingers from snapping Anna's little neck despite the agonized pain of his own snarled and limp appendage that was, by now, almost immobile, save for the sheer will alone of this unlikely hero.

But the devil of a pirate was ruthlessly heartless enough to continue squeezing the life out of the vivacious daughter of the man he most hated. Anna's throat was dangerously constricted despite cousin Eugene's best attempts to free her thus far.

* * *

"ANNA!" Damning his empty quiver, Kristoff cries out to be heard over the screams of the vicious maelstrom down below his airborne ride. He was racing forward at lightning pace as his keen eyes and sensitive heart, feeling Anna's terror, strain through the wind he commanded to get Sven back to the ship faster.

As the flying reindeer approaches at an unreal rapid rate through the sky, Kristoff is startled to watch the girl seated behind him take to the swift waves of the air which he, as Wind Whisperer, was begging to swiftly carry him to rescue his girl.

But if Elsa's fearlessly highflying ice ballet, as she pirouettes across his enhanced windy sky to save her little sister, could get the gifted Ice Queen there faster than he and Sven, then so be it.

Kristoff Bjorgman was intelligent and down-to-earth enough to never need to prove himself to be the only hero in the group.

Practical, industrious Kristoff was gaining nature's wind with all the currents of the air that the savvy Snow Prince was also beginning to humidify as well to help speed Ice Queen Elsa's skybound race to the Gler.

"Let go of my sister, you filthy pirate!" The Queen of Arendelle shrieks out indignantly in her most commanding voice as Elsa's precise aim comes in handy. Riding upon the moisture laden clouds close by that man of nature Kristoff had willed to enter the atmosphere to assist the icy maiden's rescue track, Elsa blasts her force of subzero ice and pelted hail at the pirate's hunched over back facing her.

"Argh! Argh! Blast and damnation!" The heavily accented old pirate Houtebeen screeches out inpure unmitigated pain when the Arctic temperatures frost freeze at his spinal column. That sends the peg leg old man convulsing, his mangled body contorting across the already iced slippery deck strakes that her mother and father team-up had ice-coated moments before.

"_Cough! Cough! Inhale! Cough! Sputter_!" Her hands fly up to her bruised, yet thankfully unbroken, throat as Anna weakly sputters and chokes for the much-needed breath. So much was she deprived, the orange braided girl almost falls to her knees on the Gler's 45 degree steep-angled tilting deck.

The unfortunate girl would have perhaps gone over the side of the open plank into the swirling sea, but for her big, strapping Kristoff's strong muscular arms to lace around her torso.

The mountain man catches her descent as he completes an impressively dived leap from Sven's back in the sunsetting sky above in a single bounded leap.

"Anna?! Are you okay?" Kristoff cradles his little wife in his arms as she leans into him with a delirious look on her reddened from coughing and choking to death-by-strangulation-addled features.

"Uh-huh. Could you hold me close to those gorgeous pecs of yours, Mr. Bjorgman? Because your Mrs. Bjorgman is about to faint." Even in her weakened state of overtaxed physical body and mental mind, now in her love's safe and secure warmth, the nearly asphyxiated, starved for oxygen dizzy young woman still manages to give her new husband's bare chest its complimentary due.

The next moment Anna collapses against Kristoff, a smile pasted on her silly features as Hans' sword she had been clutching the hilt of tightly all the while, clatters to the deck at her feet.

Glancing oddly at the discarded weapon she had bestowed on another, shaking that pensively foreboding feeling off, Elsa looks on with a relieved smile. Pushing aside other excess thoughts, the Queen rushes to her beloved little sibling, who was thankfully well enough to flirt with her guy.

"My poor brave Baby." A cooing Kristoff forgoes his prestigious mantle of all-important courageous Wind Whisperer to cradle his amazingly awesome little feisty fighter against his massively muscled arms and chest just as the resting girl requested.

As Kristoff nods to Elsa to keep an eye over the enemy writhing on the ground, the Ice Harvester feels a sudden chilled presence at the touch of a hand upon his bare shoulder from behind.

"My golden Snow Prince…"

Queen Idun had made her way over to the ship's midsection. Kristoff looks around disoriented for the extraordinary operatic voice two tones deeper than the Swedish woman's normal sweet lilt as she lands a kiss on his surprised cheek.

Bulda's rock hard motherly kisses to his tough forehead were wholly different from the soft tender touch of human lips.

Kristoff Bjorgman's birth mother, the Snow Queen herself, shows off all the maternal affection and built-up love for her son that she had longed for all these long empty years since she had given him up for his own good.

"I am so very proud of you, my Christ bearer. You have saved not only all of God's Creation, but your father as well." The Snow Queen's eyes fill with genuine love as proud tears spill like icy jewels onto Idun's cheeks for the grown-up child of the 'Great White Woman of the North' in Saami legend, whom the Snow Queen bore two decades ago.

And here he was now, a comely righteous young man she could look to with pleased approval.

"Even though you were far from me, it was God Who has molded you to become the fine man you were always destined to be." Burying her face in his tousled golden hair, the Queen of the Winter hugs the by now blushing self-conscious young man closer, knowing, just like the snow, this ephemeral moment would not last forever.

_You are a good man who respects nature and whom nature respects back, just like your father…_

* * *

"Whoa–oh there, Frog! Ouchy!" Flynn hisses his broken wrist's pain back as he nonetheless heroically saves a flipping-through-the-air Pascal from careening over the edge of the open-ended bulwark near the midsection of the Gler as the ship starts to pick up its gyrations with the beckoning maelstrom's swings and jerks.

The iced hull hatches that the Ice King had been plugging up on the sinking ship's overfilled bilge earlier, were nearly melted in the summer's warm ocean temperatures. This causes the pull of the revitalized, powerful maelstrom to once again begin to suck them into its inexplicably wailing, ebony rift.

_Looks like someone's having some trouble in steering this fine vessel…Better go check up on my brotherly wounded warrior…_

As a cautious Eugene, who had the gut feeling he wouldn't like what he saw there, peeks inside the bridge wheelhouse's splintered excuse for a door- _I hope I'm not required to pay for shipboard damages! - _he could see why he was wary.

Inside, Eugene's own industrious Rapunzel was busily making herself useful, even if she was a virtual stranger to a Navy vessel's inner workings.

And that was because of the ship's Kommander, orphan Eugene's newly discovered brother Hans.

Even at Rapunzel's insistence, once she arrived in the wheelhouse before, the red-headed young man stubbornly refused to rest. Nor would he give up on his ship, although Kmdr. Westergaard was reduced to hanging onto the Gler's navigational control deck with one strained arm.

The other appendage appeared to be holding onto his gut where his maroon naval sash that Rapunzel had fashioned as a triage bandage was by now drenched with the deep crimson stain of his staunched knife wound. The crusty blood and bile dripping down had spilled over his pristine white pants that sported a sickening stripe of blood red vertically the length of his long left leg.

When Rapunzel's emerald green eyes connect with her husband's guarded, curious ones, her busy hands nor faltered voice needed to raise for her love to be beckoned by her unspoken call for help.

"Lillebror! As your lovely sister-in-law there was no doubt wisely instructing you - _perhaps in less colorful terms than I am about to lay you with _– What in hell do you think you're doing moving around with the wound like that?! You need to take it easy! I thought you were clever enough to know that!" From mumbling low to shouting loudly, Eugene quickly traverses the space from the ship's rail to the open mouth bridge entrance to plant Pascal down with a splurt on Rapunzel's seasick anxious shoulder.

The girl could sigh in relief now that her other half was here to talk some sense into the short-of-breath and low-on-energy redhaired boy–though Hans would admit to neither. For the past ten minutes or so that she'd been here, Hans spoke to her little more than of his refusals to quit, in spite of his serious stab wound's obvious pain.

"I… will not… _huff_… abandon…_huff…_ my mission to the Queen, _cough_, Storbror." Purposefully not turning to face neither his brother nor sister-in-law, Hans clears his burning throat. Biting back the pain, the Prince of the Southern Isles struggles to manfully toggle some levers that ingeniously give him more direct control of the Gler's modernized steering and steam engine controls in absence of a below deck engine crew.

"What good will you be to that beautiful blonde Queenie, if you drive yourself into the ground?! At least let us do the physical stuff, Kid! You just sit back barking orders like the proper high and mighty Captain of his ship should." Eugene offers to Hans, extending his broken right wrist and terribly scored and shredded skin-ripped left one to wiggle over some alien buttons and levers he was just itching to press and pull. But the shooting raw pain makes the older man flinch and seethe.

"Forgive me for saying, Storbror, but you neither possess the stamina of a stable hand – _huff_ \- nor the constancy of a steady arm, not to mention the ability of qualified nautical seamanship – _huff, huff_ – to steer the Gler away from the clutches of this incommodious maelstrom – _choke_\- that we are once again facing the ill influence of. _Cough cough! Wheezeee…_

"I, on the other hand, have been extensively trained to do just that." With a touch of male pride in his well learned and applied abilities, Hans swallows back the blood and bile he was starting to gag on with the haematemesis of the cruelly twisted blade's trauma to his profusely bleeding abdomen.

"Why don't you stop being so damn selfless, you little twit! Do you really want to break that girl's heart and crush her soul? I'm marching right out there to tell Elsa and her folks that we need to get you ASAP some medical –" A headshaking Eugene stands tall over his bent-over younger sibling with his familiar taunt and older-brother-knows-best threat.

"How could I '_break her heart' _as you so…_huff huff_…eloquently put it, Storbror? In what I have read of…_huff huff_… this tender subject in classical literature and _\- cough! - _the like in Shakespearean plays, to have one's heart truly tampered with, she would have to…_huff huff_…" Pausing at his struggle with the erstwhile controls, as well as his careful lexicons, Hans' diverted eyes trail off in a low whisper, as if placating himself more of the rational idea that lovely, regal, perfect and pure Queen Elsa and Arendelle could ever possibly –

"Of course Elsa loves you, Hans! I can see it in her eyes! I know you can too! So, you have to try to get better… For her…" Rapunzel takes Hans' one lifelessly pallid hand in her warm one. Her action causes the young Dane to pause from his frantic machinations at the ship's navigation controls to stare into the Prussian princess' large inviting eyes so full of conviction and caring for him. And Hans, for once, is struck speechless as their interwoven green eyes tremble in one another's beseeching, importune gaze…

"Wha-aa-at?! Kommander Westergaard! Ensign Jan, reporting for duty, Sir!" Just then, while the pair was talking delicate love matters, manly man Eugene had rather been engrossed in awakening the young helmsman who had been fainted on the floor for quite a long period of time, due to the Draugen's distastefully hysterical, deafening roar.

His own patient wife – _Blondie has to be the Angel of Patience, putting up with a lout like me all these years –_ was currently working on his ponderous younger brother's impervious resolve while he does.

After a few useless slaps from Eugene's hunched over form that made him more squeal with each aching hand movement than serve as sufficient wake-up call for the downed man, Pascal's good old tongue-in-ear trick seemed to serve the waxy purpose for the unconscious young coxswain to jump to his feet saluting his commanding officer immediately.

"Okay! Now that _this_ '**_extensively trained'_** young naval helmsman that you picked out by hand personally, mind you - can work his magic and relieve his _indispensable_ Captain from his compulsive moral imperative's obstinate responsibility, I can just march out there and inform their Royal Majesty's of his urgent medical necessity."

Condescending Eugene is about to turn on his high-handed heel after he gives Ensign Jan an encouraging shove in the direction of the ship's needy control panel until Hans' desperate sharp voice halts him from leaving the bridge.

"Stop!" The one single word spoken so authoritatively intense and loud, instantly halts the thief midstride. After exchanging a nod and grateful cold clammy hand placed on Jan's shoulder when the young helmsman takes over the ship's wheel with determination, the responsible Kommander of the Gler passes on his duty at the control as he sees that he can no longer perform in his weakened state properly to face the challenge of the maelstrom's demands.

"Please… Princess… Storbror. Please do not say a word to Queen Elsa about this. Please… After all the wrongs I did to her in the past … I could not endure having to sentence her to the agony of seeing me die now…"

Hans turns his head fully to reveal to Eugene and Rapunzel the blood dripping from the side of his mouth beneath his pale and clammy skin sweating. The uncomplaining valiant Prince gags on some blood that proved the severity of his badly knife-slashed and twisted peritoneum abdominal cavity beneath the Danish man's ruptured ribcage.

**"You are NOT going to die, kid! I won't let you**!" Wringing his overwrought bleeding digits, Eugene yells right in Hans' face, more upset at the distressing fatal outcome that his stoic l and rationally calm little brother seemed to be. Hans Westergaard's body may be weak, but his sagacious mind was yet strong in his convictions as a Rapunzel hugs Hans delirious head to her weeping chest. Pascal, the caring chameleon caringly pat dries the sweat off his brow with a handkerchief.

Grasping one surprisingly sturdy hand to Eugene's tense shoulder, Hans looks directly into the frightened thief's alarmed eyes.

"Once we had surpassed this mission's immediate danger …_huff huff_… I would have quietly disappeared somehow, faded into the background and hopefully forgotten after a time. But I fear **_time_** is not a luxury for me any longer, this wound is too grave." Hans tells of his soulful plight that the guilt-ridden man had been planning for his parting from the woman he had come to truly love for a while now, in rational terms.

"So now I must trust you, Storbror, Søster, to carry out my wishes …_huff huff_… I must **_beg_** of you both to use your discretion_…cough, cough…_Please, as my brother _and_ a gentleman_…huff huff_… I ask you to purvey me away from here before she witnesses me in this condition and any unwarranted guilt or unnecessary sorrow overwhelms her, Storbror…_huff huff_…" Hans pauses in this extraordinary request to the couple standing agape before the wounded man.

"And if my death ever does come out, Queen Elsa must be told this was not her fault. It was my choice and mine alone. You two are my witnesses before God. I chose this path and would walk it again for just a single one of her crystalline smiles." Waxing poetic, Hans gazes out the wheelhouse porthole window where he glimpses how Queen Elsa was already anxious for her family.

"She has the security of her family now. Queen Elsa does not require my nuisance to encumber her any further. Please, Brother. Take me away from here. I cannot do this to my precious Snowflake. I vowed I would never hurt her again…" His consciousness slipping away, the determined young man manages to utter his final plea.

"…I refuse to mar her snow white purity with the grime of my tarnished soul…" The Danish Prince's well tested stamina finally lets go and he collapses insensible at his weakened pulse's low blood pressure for his immense loss of the life-giving bodily fluid.

_This is for the best. God's grand design for we believers, after all. I know now that I never would have deserved you, Elsa. Perhaps, this is, at last, the Lord's just punishment for the selfishness of my inadequate life's iniquity of attempting to take your life. Now I gladly give my life for you. _

_And yet, in His infinite Grace, He gave me the chance to have glimpsed your unsurpassable beauty in every way - body, mind, heart and soul – blinding me even from afar._

_For you have given me a heart to love someone other than myself, my Queen. So I am so excessively grateful to have been granted this second chance to make amends for some of the wrongs I did to you especially. _

_But when I have departed, grieve not, my darling angel. And you, without fear, nor regret, please, you must go on and shine that dazzling light… my Snowflake… even though our paths may never cross again...I only want you to know, in some small corner of your heart, that someone loved you more than life itself…_ _Min kærlighed (my love)_

It already was unbelievably herculean that the man was standing for so long after such a terrible stabbing and twisted knife cruelty. Between his left rib cage under his lungs, miraculously missing all the arteries and major organs, was the jagged knife wound at Hans' left fourth intercoastal space. At its location in the muscle of his thoracic wall, the invasive injury para-sternally caused thoractic trauma under his diaphragm. And that made his breathing and circulation erratic enough to finally take away his consciousness entirely.

But not before one last final thought is conveyed with all of his final shreds of his concentrated, focused heart to his Queen, always her welfare first and foremost.—and perhaps even lastly, here at the end, to help lift her up to be strong one more time...

_Without fear now, my love. Please, embrace that pure Angel I know you are…_

_And please, sense somehow that my love goes with you, wherever you go…__ min Sne Engel_ _(my Snow Angel)…_

* * *

"My discretion…?" The loudmouth ex-criminal, not exactly famed for his subtle tongue's counsel, muses as he bites his indecisive tongue to share a significant gaze with his significant other—his wife, Rapunzel—and her expressive eyes.

"Liebling…?" Eugene softly says after a long pause of watching a dotingly humming Rapunzel caress back her new little brother-in-law's finally quieted knit brow, as the profusely compassionate loving girl sheds some gold gilt tears over his unbidden cheek. Even in his unconscious state, the deep-hearted young woman could sense the sacrificial love for her cousin in his expression.

"I trust you, too Eugene." The Prussian Princess shakes her brown head up down with a radiant believing smile up at her Eugene's widened amber hued eyes.

"And I trust you more than anyone in the universe to find a way to unlock a lonely heart from keeping itself hidden away forever." Princess Rapunzel of Corona speaks from the life-changing experience of owning a heart that benefited from Eugene Fitzherbert's inner goodness. She adored his impossible dreams that longed for the riches of love more than any other treasure, in the end. In so doing, he saved her from a lifetime of solitude hidden and locked away behind the towering walls he finally broke down for her.

"_Ich liebe dich_. I love you, Blondie." Flynn Rider whispers, catching her personalized adoring drift as the touched man's perplexed worried frown entirely smiles from deep inside in soulful appreciation for her encouragement.

After a long distracted gaze upward to the open hatch on the wheelhouse bridge roof and the sky beyond with a prayer, his second communication to the Creator above, just today – to help him make the decision of the tough choices facing him.

_Come on, God! I'm a newbie at this praying stuff! Give me a sign that this is the right thing or something!_

Just at the end of his pleading thought, an especially bright and verdant singular green band of polar light transforms as it dances violet to purple to blue to red to orange to yellow to a blinking pink at the base. The scattered light from the sun imparts a colorful prismatic effect through the suddenly formed rainbow's bend.

"Look, I know a guy who knows a guy who can fix a rainy day when it comes to knife wounds!"

Flynn, as if inspired by the refractive promise behind the lights in the sky, suddenly spurts out in one breath after a long pause the hopeful exclamation that brings a light of her own to his sweet frau's eyes.

"So, as per our sworn '_deathbed'_ instructions, you can't breathe a word until I get a message back on how it turned out for our valiant Prince to spill if he survived in any condition to return. Now, it may take a while…" Eugene trails off the indefinite amount of time such a furtive undertaking may entail. His expressive eyes and gritted teeth mouth in his bouncing head weigh how long this monumental task may take the attentive lonely husband away from his pregnant little wife in the days ahead she may need him most.

"But I swear, I – we – will come back to you, as soon as we can, Darlin'." Whispering in her ear manfully after he rushes to wrap his brown haired cutie up fiercely in his arms, Eugene damns the pain both physically and emotionally. With a hand over heart, Eugene pledges his solemn vow of love for the compliant wife who was secure enough in their abiding love, even in her full-with-child condition, to urge him to leave her.

As Eugene leans in to pick up Hans' fortunately slender body in his arms away from Rapunzel, he lands a whopping kiss on her lips that would hopefully last them the length of their separation.

"I know you'll bring him back to Elsa, Eugene." The selfless girl says, ready to give up her husband at a time when she knew she must find uncommon strength and turn to their deep love for one another, even if apart.

For now, Rapunzel loses herself in Eugene's passionate lip lock. But then the realization of not being near her beloved for a lengthy period of time was just starting to sink in as she bites her wobbly lip back. To which Eugene's large anxious eyes solve by him landing a second desperately passionate full mouthed and intense kiss shared with the love of his life until she was rendered utterly dazed, spellbound for one blissful everlasting moment.

And then the next second he and Hans both vanished in a blinked gust of whispered wind streaming from the roof's open hatch of the wheelhouse, facing the darkened Prussian blue Midnight Sun's ocean reflected skylight above.

"Please, dear God, let Hans get well soon. And please, please keep my Eugene safe." Rapunzel falls to her knees in prayer fervent beneath the dark sky's glass ceiling.

There were tears behind her eyes for her husband and his fatally wounded younger sibling that he was selflessly taking on the role of caring big brother from now on.

"Do you think Kommander Westergaard will be all right, ma'am? He is a mighty good commanding officer and I wouldn't want the Sjoforsvaret to lose him." Helmsman Jan, who had remained quiet thus far, intent in doing the duty he had promised his Kommander, glances out the side of his flustered busy eyes from the battered Gler's controls to inquire of the short chocolate haired Princess struck silent on the bridge.

"Yes. Yes. I know he will be, Jan. It's okay. We are all going to be just fine, someday soon." Hopeful Rapunzel bravely wipes the last stray tear from her faithful eyes as she stands up from the ground with a nodding in agreement Pascal on her shoulder.

"Then we'll beat this maelstrom in Kommander Westergaard's honor, Princess Rapunzel!" The coxswain answers with a new vigor. Helmsman Jan had been handpicked of all the volunteer sailors under Hans' leadership reason. The young man, though not even eighteen years of age, had a genius for steering and navigating the vessel in a clinch that many a more experienced helmsman would envy. And Kommander Westergaard cleverly recognized this slight of appearance fact.

"Here! Take this lever, ma'am! And pull hard back if it fights you, as hard as if brushing a pesky knot out of some long tangled hair!" Rapunzel giggles at the interesting analogy young Jan had opted to choose, she having more than a general acquaintance with brushing and brushing and brushing Tangled long hair.

She takes hold of the lever and pulls with all her might when the torrential ocean beneath tugs against her rudder stick. Helpful as ever, Pascal lends his tongue and ambidextrous four appendages as well to help the young helmsman. The chameleon's dexterous arms and legs aid the coxswain with a few more readily button pressing fingers in replacement for the more needed hands on deck of the undermanned bridge.

"Ooh! Yes, that's right! You can trust in Daddy, too, little one…" Rapunzel looks down to lightly touch her wriggling-with-adventure's-enthusiasm bulging stomach with a soft smile.

"Hold on tight, Princess Rapunzel! The vortex is yanking us around this bend mighty fierce!" Jan gives his all to defy gravity like a pro at the steam regulator and speed controls, like his Kommander Westergaard would do had he been here.

"Godspeed, Kommander." The kindhearted Ensign says aloud, as that white flash streaking through the sky above their heads moves further away from the dark ebony maelstrom of terror they were left to being sucked down into.

"Don't worry…Anxelin… Your Daddy will be back after he makes everything better. His magic hands could always shift the world and light it up to be a brighter place, you'll see." The sweet Corona Princess talks to the baby in her womb with all the unshakable trust and irrefutable love she had for the father of her child.

* * *

**_Meanwhile, moments ago, back to the deck of the pitched and tossed schooner on choppy revolving tides…_**

"Oh Papa, are you all right?!" Eyes fluttering open, Anna, after catching her own breath, leaves Kristoff to hug her mother – _his mother_ – when she sees her yet feeble father stumblingly approach them through unyielding determination alone. But although his phasing in and out arm and lower appendage were fully flesh again, thanks to Elsa and Kristoff, the King's strained physical form was not quite ready to walk on his own power.

"Young man, get me over to that wretched malcontent." King Agdar's underlying anger was evident in his even toned voice he aims down at Kristoff in a no-nonsense demeanor. As the young blond man scrambles to his feet, the loving father pets his worried little girl's forehead with a contrasted threatening look behind his pale ice blue eyes that dart over to where Elsa was keeping guard over the rascal pirate.

With a raised eyebrow look to Anna, as her father passes his little girl to her mother's cool embrace, the Ice Harvester attends to the stewing King, whom he slowly helps the hitherto healing older man stay on his unsteady feet.

* * *

"Papa! You're better!" So pleased to see her dear father stabilized enough to be walking the deck again, Elsa moves to embrace her weak, yet recuperating father. The platinum blonde Queen runs to hug her arms around King Agdar as he approached the aft deck with Kristoff's able-bodied assistance.

"Stand back, Elsa." But the King, although gratified to have his formerly non-tactile elder daughter's friendly warm wishes, gently pushes her back to a halt behind him from where the Ice Queen had been carefully monitoring as guard over the fallen pirate.

"So ye have come to gloat over ze broken down old sea Captain, o preferred of face, hallowed King? Does it make ye feel zo very more impressive and exultant zan zis lowly pegleg? Now zat ye had yer leg restored and not me, can ye proclaim rightful vengeance and now wish to finish me off, my eternal adversary?" From where he had been wriggling and writhing on the drippingly ice slicked strakes, Captain Houtebeen looks up to still taunt foully at King Agdar with that wicked sneering simper of pure hateful jealousy upon his decrepit dilapidated features.

After a few moments' tense pause, where Elsa's tremulous eyes stare at her father's handsome stern profile, the platinum blonde starts to tremble behind her righteously fuming Papa's indignant anger. Never relishing argumentative confrontations, Elsa silently awaits for Norway's King to stand in judgment over this evil blackhearted fiend.

The authoritative aristocrat looms tall over his crumpled up sworn enemy who tormented Agdar's family in so many malicious ways to this point. And the protective husband and father in him feels his renewed formidable powers already forming at his fingertips…

Feeling the weight of his wife's chastening gaze at his back and his older daughter's frightened yet questioningly attentive one at his side, the Ice King cools down his enraged hot temper at the detestable monster of a man under his rule's jurisdiction.

"_'Vengeance is mine'_, saith the Lord." Though it seemed to be a bit thorny for the all too mortal man to admit, the deeply scowling Ice King's distinguished low voice replies the holy edict of human judgment's limitations he would abide by nonetheless.

"You will stand trial for your numerous severe and grim crimes of kidnapping and willful captivity under violent threat, tortured incarceration and attempted murder, to name but a few, in a fair and just court. To be decided under the jurisdiction of the multiple countries and their national waters you have continually trespassed with your blatant criminal piracy." King Agdar says in his lordly majestic voice, though bereft of unrestrained emotion as he passed a more lenient sentence than his vindictively angry mind once imagined he would in the dark dank depths of that cavern's prison he and his poor wife had been held in for five long, tortured years robbed of them.

After a long, justified sigh, Agdar directs his icy gaze to meet Elsa's relieved and gratefully proud eyes where the two royal children of ice, who obeyed the Lord, share a tender smile.

So overcome with the fond emotions of contentment and peace with her respected and sagacious Papa whom she had almost just lost to the cold of body and soul, Elsa throws her arms around her stalwart Christian soldier of a Papa's neck freely unreserved.

"Oh, ha ha! I had forgotten how strong the hug you had, my girl. Papa has missed his little Snow Angel's hugs and kisses for far too long." Good father King Agdar, at first taken aback by the exhilarated proximity of his precious child's fond caresses, that she had not given either parent for years since her ice filled, unstable maturity, now ensconces himself in enjoying Elsa's rarely bestowed embraces as she had not done since she was a tiny child.

"Oh, Papa! I was so afraid we had lost you for a second time. And we love you both too much to let that happen ever again." The blonde Ice Queen weeps into her Papa's now wet with her chilly tears neck. She gives Kristoff, close by propping up her still weak father, a sisterly smile.

"There, there, my girl. Papa's here. Now take me to the bridge so I can direct the ship's helmsman on how to properly maneuver this vessel through these growingly treacherous tidal swells before it is too –"

But Norway's well-trained naval Admiral's assured declaration of escape is cut off by the ship suddenly jerking against a particularly powerful crested wave's increased amplitude. And the Gler begins to be sucked into the violent free vortex…

"With all haste, man!" His gentle tone to Elsa immediately switches roles from wise father to anxious leader. King Agdar impatiently orders Kristoff when the trio are rocked about on the raucously swaying deck. The quickly closing in maelstrom's deadly whipping whirlpool had once again become that inevitable force of nature to draw in many a more shipshape vessel in its damning wake.

All this time, quiet Wind Whisperer Kristoff had been advising the prevailing winds to billow their collected volume to fiercely push back at what was left of the Gler's sails and put up a mighty fight against the sea's amplified current that the tattered steamship was at the mercy of.

"Ye and yer blasted family are going down wiz me, Agdar! No one escapes ze devil's maelstrom! Har har har heeheehee!" The cackling crackpot of a selfish, vile brigand, who did not wish to die incarcerated in some blasted landlubber's prison cell, or worse—be at the business end of the hangman's noose— had been playing possum on the deck with his spine tingling where he lay injured in a melted icy pool.

There, the wily pirate, who had a fascination for deadly firearms of all shapes and sizes, found the prize of his latest new British invented 26.5 mm sub-nosed single shot emergency flare gun pistol he had ransacked from one of the shelves on the bridge and was now in the tufted folds of his shabby coat's hidden pocket…

**_BAAN—NGG!_**

The powerful recoil of the modern distress signaling firearm launched by Captain Houtebeen's ruthless deadly precise aim made for a faster rate of fire than the percussion cap pinfire ignition older type of guns that the wicked Dutch maurauder was accustomed to.

And the thrust back of the quickly fired off flare pistol sends the peg leg skittering back across the ice slippery deck after sending the swift moving projectile to make a direct hit on his prime target – King Agdar of Arendelle.

In hysterical panic, all Elsa could think was how to provide cover for her vulnerable targeted father as the fiery bullet that could doubtlessly slice through her ice, whizzes through the moisture filled air of the unsteady vessel in its split-second tossed asunder swaying…

_Without fear now, my love. Please, embrace that pure Angel I know you are…_

Riding on the subconscious bond of true love's promise, as the world stands still, Elsa hears the tender, yet decisive, tenor voice of Hans' final conscious thought echo in her heart and in her soul.

All of time and space seemed to pause for the platinum blonde beauty to listen to another soul encouraging her, as the warmth of his faith and love speaks to her openly receiving one.

Queen Elsa of Arendelle's innermost heart simply obeys his gentle tenor tones as she always did, so lucidly clear, to now fearlessly embrace her God-given gifts to the fullness of her ability.

**_FR-REEEE-ZZE!_**

As Ice Queen Elsa instinctively responds, her cerulean blue eyes come aglow with that ethereal white glow of ice frosting them that best signaled her evoked cryokinetic powers.

She spreads her elegant arms out wide, and just like an angel, snow flurried wings appear. Each softly dusted ice feather of which coats the spiraling gases of the air in the ship's port stern section with all the frozen moisture of the below freezing sea spray.

As the Ice Queen deftly focuses her cryokinetics to a pinpointed swath of air, her ingenious mind flash freezes to sublimate the pure cryoscopic content of the freezing point of water. With the wave of her graceful hand, Elsa instantly throws up an icy net shield between the fired flare and her targeted Papa's back.

With a flap of her snowy wings to ensure her father's safety by divesting the hot flare's strength, the Ice maiden evacuates the immediate area of its abundant, inert nitrogen, by freezing it in an incredible -200°C.

In doing so, she ensures that the flare gun's projectile would not only lose its extinguished firepower, but at that extreme low temperature, the flare bullet itself shatters into hundreds of tiny frozen fractals. The harmless shards instantly scatter through the sub-zero cold air, mere centimeters before the deadly explosive would have struck her vulnerable Papa in the back by the evil pirate's heartless, vengeful attack.

_Cough, cough, cough!_

"Agdar!"

"Kristoff!" From across the ship's deck, an alarmed Anna and her Mama cry out their men's respective names as they watch both of their husbands stumble to the deck.

Although the fired flare was blessedly transformed into harmless shattered shards by Elsa before it struck her father, when Kristoff, holding the King up, gets an unfulfilling whiff of a little bit too much of the disbanded H2O drifting his way on the winds he was skillfully commanding up to this point.

"I'm so sorry." An abashed Elsa, her glowing eyes flashing back to normal, her white snow wings dissipating in the sea mists of the violently raging maelstrom, skates on her created ice path to see that her father, who was cryo-immune, was safe and none too worse for wear for her incredible ice colligation.

Kristoff, on the other hand, who was far too sensitive to nature's surroundings, was not so lucky.

"I'll be fine. _Cough-cough_ Just winded." Tough Ice Harvester man Kristoff chokes out, trying to waylay all their female anxiety with his overtly masculine response.

But the wind blowing back the ship sails to keep the Gler from totally being devoured by the maelstrom, were no longer under the young Wind Whisperer's explicit control.

The shrunken sails are instantly overpowered by the breath he was robbed of by Elsa's lifesaving unleashed gelid miracle as a panting Kristoff kneels to the ground, unable to catch that breath back easily.

"Do not apologize, my Snow Angel. That was nothing short of amazing. Your powers have eclipsed even anything I imagined for you, my Elsa." Like music to Elsa's hungry ears after all these years, an impressed King Agdar congratulates daughter's wondrous new abilities taken to the next step by her creative ingenuity.

"While I see to the ship's navigation, you stay here with your mother and sister. I know I can trust you to stand careful watch over that crafty villain, my Ice Queen Elsa. Just keep a fair distance and have no compunction of freezing him solid, should that spiteful scoundrel attack again." Agdar gives his daughter credit for her vast cryo-abilities as he warns a caveat against the disabled, crooked Captain. With the honored respect for her status as Arendelle's leader, King Agdar steadies himself in his belief in his little girl, now a grown, responsible woman, as he makes his way quickly towards the pilothouse bridge.

_**SLA-AMMM! THR-RASHH! CR-RAS-SHH!**_

King Agdar's frail form is jolted back from the wheelhouse's broken door threshold he was almost about to cross, by a heavy tidal wave spew spilling over the uncontrolled wind tossed deck. The lifelong seaman, not unfamiliar with rough seas in the past, shakes himself to regain his bearings, waving a worried Elsa back to her position.

The windless furled sails of the Gler permit the ship to be sucked into the dark tumultuous abyss known as the Moskenstraumen. And the slowly jerked awake Snow Prince, try as he might to regain his dizzied askew focus, seemed to be still sadly impotent against.

{"Listen to my song, my darling boy."} The Snow Queen/Queen Idun begins to promptly sing a tune her only child had never heard his Móðir sing before. The age-old Snow Queen begins to sing a melody, in use of Idun's golden flower healing of his cold nitrogen induced lungs, with her soaring contralto in a haunting 13th century Icelandic lullaby.

"Heyr, himna smiður, - -Listen, smith of the heavens,  
hvers skáldið biður. - -What the poet asks.  
Komi mjúk til mín - -May softly come unto me  
miskunnin þín. - Your mercy.  
Því heit eg á þig, -So I call on thee,  
þú hefur skaptan mig. -For you have created me.  
Eg er þrællinn þinn, -I am thy servant,  
þú ert drottinn minn. -You are my Lord.

Guð, heit eg á þig, -God, I call on thee to heal me.  
að þú græðir mig. -Remember me, mild king.  
Minnst þú, mildingur, mín, -Most we need thee,  
mest þurfum þín. -Drive out, O king of suns  
Ryð þú, röðla gramur, -Generous and great,  
ríklyndur og framur,- Every human sorrow  
hölds hverri sorg- From the city  
úr hjartaborg.-of the heart.

Gæt þú, mildingur, mín, -Watch over me, mild king,  
mest þurfum þín, -Most we need thee,  
helzt hverja stund -Truly every moment  
á hölda grund. -In the world of men.  
Send þú, meyjar mögur, -Send us, Son of the virgin,  
málsefnin fögur, -Good causes,  
öll er hjálp af þér, -All aid is from Thee,  
í hjarta mér. -In my heart.

"Heyr himna smiður" - Kolbeinn Tumason 1208

The Snow Queen's soul shares Idun's vocal cords with all the tender softness motherhood unlocked within her own frozen heart the Queen of the north hums and sings her Icelandic lullaby to the lost baby boy on her lap.

The Snow Queen runs her cool hands through Kristoff's tousled blonde mass of hair tenderly where they were crouched together on the ship's dangerously shifting deck.

As Elsa passes, Anna pulls her in to listen to her Mama's extraordinary song that the Snow Queen was vocalizing through her. While keeping one eye on that despicable patch eyed pile of crumpled old bones her father entrusted her to monitor in his absence, Elsa hugs Anna close. They hold each other tight for both steadiness of mind and body on the heaving vessel while they both listen to the motherly lullaby echoing all across the ship with its intrinsically healing melody that was being sung for a short-of-breath Kristoff's welfare.

But as Elsa and Anna embrace one another in their swaying joy of hearing their mother sing lullabies again, out of the corner of Elsa's eye she suddenly catches sight of some movement near the edge of the bulwark she was guardedly watching.

"Oh no!" Elsa lets the exclamation escape, calling Anna's attention to the scene at the violently maelstrom tossed to and fro Gler's edge, as well.

The pair of sisters watch in horror as the crotchety, only semi-conscious, old villain Houtebeen is nearly sent careening through the opened-up, lowered plank on the port side of the ship he had cruelly tried to coerce Rapunzel and Eugene to walk off to their doom earlier.

Elsa and Anna of Arendelle stare at one another for several terrified seconds before they nod to each other in silent agreement. The sisters had become so close that each already knew what the other was thinking. For despite the innumerable, unpardonable wickedness that this pirate had incurred on their family in particular, both princesses still shared the compassion of Christian hearts and quick thinking heads.

"Here! Grab the rope!" All but drowned out, Elsa's high pitched voice raises to pierce through the maelstrom's screams as her projected ice sends out one end of the ice anchored rope to the wicked old pirate, who deserved not a good turn such as the compassionate Arendelle Princesses were offering him.

The pegleg, sensing his own imminent doom, tries to stand to grab it. But it was increasingly evident how useless that was for the clumsy one-legged pirate, continually slipping on the melting sleety ice.

It seemed all the lost souls screeching through the Moskenstraumen's spinning vortex of violent turbulence were howling for this undead soulless seaman join their dark ebony pit.

In an act of what it meant to truly be a Princess inside, the sisters were determined to lend a hand to aid the dizzy miscreant who was slipping dangerously near the edge of the boat.

Working together with her older sister to desperately save the foul villain who had done them both and their parents so wrong, Anna tries to lasso the corded rope that she had seen Kristly do so often on the mountain trail. But her slipknot ropes fails to capture anything but thin air.

"Whoops!" Anna clenches her teeth at her in inept aim. Her forgiving heart truly wanted to be successful as the apologetic young girl in the orange braids smirks through her big white teeth as she reels back the feckless rope to make another attempt again to lasso the slipping and sliding pirate Captain along the convulsing ship's deck edge.

"He's skittering about like a grasshopper on a hot plate! I can't get a fix on him!" Anna complains as another wall of an epic wave washes over the deck, drenching her wet braids thoroughly, her bangs plastered to her unhappy face.

"Here, Anna! Let me try!" Dead-eye Elsa switches places with her younger sibling. Anna was now the one to hold the rope's other end to the ship's windlass wench until they could secure and reel in the tumbling Houtebeen before he went over the side of the ship.

But as the more precisely aimed young lady who makes for a fine rodeo Ice Queen spinning her lasso high in the moisture-filled atmosphere, Elsa pitches a long elegantly rotated arm to send a well-aimed speeding lasso.

**_WHOOSHH!_**

She captures the floundering pirate within her rope's deft aim just moments before the pegleg was about to pitch over the left side of the plank.

But a rounded object nestled safely inside Elsa's pale icy cleavage rolls out onto the swaying deck in her vigorous arm-throwing, shoulder-action activity.

Yet it wasn't just any circular sphere.

"The orb of St. Olaf!" Anna cries out the name of that all too pesky golden trophy that was pilfered by that shameless thief at her wedding who started this epic adventure off.

"Ze holy orb!? Perhaps zis leetle trinket vill return Houtebeen back into zat powerful creature I'd rather be zan zis worthless scrap of human frailty! And zen I can kill ye all dead!" A true villain never learned from past wrongs in his wicked grievances. And Captain Cornelius Jol III secures that the greed and self-serving avarice that ruled his life would also be the qualities that would decree his death…

As mercenary Houtebeen covetously reaches for the golden holy relic that had lodged its blue jeweled self into a crevice by the bulwark edge the pirate was nearby, he finds that he could not grasp his grubby near dismembered hands around it. At least not while the safety net of the life-saving rope Elsa and Anna had tethered his storm tossed body with was still attached.

So what does the larcenous old evildoer do? With greedy eyes that glow in the reflective gold of the holy orb he lusted to steal away from King Agdar, if nothing else, the pirate Captain wriggles himself down and out of the Arendelle sister's generously extended rope's protection. So now he could reach one grasping gnarled and perforated hand for St. Olaf's holy orb he had already abused so diabolically...

**_CR-RAASSH! BA-MMM!_**

And just, as the spinning, gyrating spiral of the maelstrom slams into the violent turbulence of the whirlpool's colliding waves, the off-balance, untethered, debase pirate pegleg Captain loses his balance. The rolling spherical object he had dislodged from the strake it was stuck in finds its way to trip his one viable appendage seeking some footing. The slippery wet breaking up ice slick where he had been standing sloshes beneath him to make Captain Houtebeen lose his balance entirely to pitch forward towards the unforgiving sea….

Before Elsa could do a thing, with the guttural growl that even in his last efforts to claim the orb he sought so long in his life was now thwarted by God's nature. And Captain Houtebeen, the pegleg pirate, is swallowed up whole in a ghastly radiance of the dark ebony gaping hole that seemed to be laughing in its satisfied screams within the dearth of the most inexplicable force of the sea known to all, far and wide, as the legendary Moskenstraumen maelstrom…

"_Godverdomme_!" Curses on you and your family, bright shining Arendelle King! Arghh! Ahhhh!" With a cursing, foul, blasphemed screech that echoes remnants of that Draugen's hideous malevolent yells, wicked pirate Houtebeen is sentenced to his final demise by his own greedy hand.

Evil to the end, Cornelius Jol III a.k.a. Captain Houtebeen, the depraved pirate's wicked vengeful heart, that encompassed all of the seven deadly sins within his malignant greed and jealousy, finally does him in.

The last remaining pirate of the European high seas is thrown over the edge of the HmNoS Gler to be cast by the will of the maelstrom to be plunged straight into the ebony black endless abyss.

"ARGHHH!" His furious screams are mimicked by the maelstrom's deafening cacophony of screeches and howling wails as so many lost souls cry out from the devil's pit bellows for salvation of the passing of one more degenerate soul's infinitesimal existence.

King Agdar looks behind him as he meets Idun, his wife's eyes once more violet-indigo. Elsa and Anna hang onto each other when both race to the edge of the ship's railing only in time to see their kicking and screaming peg legged enemy be ripped apart, to be devoured by the thrashing spinning vortex of this most terrifying section of violent sea…

"Elsa! Anna! You come away from the edge at once!" As if the mature young women were his little scape-grace babes in need of his parental guidance, their Papa's overprotective baritone shouts out authoritatively.

The strong-spirited, weak-bodied older man then musters up enough of his own ice propelled steam to make his urgent way through the cryokinetically lifted away remnants of the fractured door of the bridge.

But the scene the King finds there was not one he expected, with a young teenaged coxswain solely at the controls of his Navy's proud vessel, with only the assistance of Agdar's inexperienced niece and her… pet lizard…who were steering their course.

"Where **is** your commanding officer, young man? Where is Vise Admiral Westergaard?! Report!" Bringing in an angry ice encrusted stormcloud, the vexed imperious man demands of the unwelcome sight reaching his disbelieving eyes as he steps closer into the wheelhouse.

**_Gulp!_**

"Admiral Bernadotte? Sir?! How could you be here…How could you be…?" With a disheveled salute, so rash and frenzied he smacks himself in the eye, poor Ensign Jan was familiar enough, growing up in the Navy, with the hallowed portrait of their nation's King and supreme Norwegian Admiral hanging on the walls in the naval academy he recently graduated with top honors thereof, to recognize who had just thundered onto the Gler's bridge.

Of course, the knowledge that King Agdar and his Queen had been lost at sea and declared deceased for some five years now, made this not so easy a pill to swallow. Especially not with tales of sea ghosts and ocean poltergeists the older seamen tried to spook the green-in-the-gills gifted young lad with.

"Whoa! No-no-no-no no no, you don't, Jan! My uncle and aunt have been being held captive all these years by that wicked pirate we just saved them from. He's not a ghost, really!" Shimmying over the controls to touch a warm fearless hand to her rolling-eyed Uncle's cheek, Rapunzel leans in to support the once again lightheaded helmsman. The girl who was taught to be afraid of everything, from the plague to men with pointy teeth by her controlling Mother Gothel growing up, sympathized with unfounded fears.

Rapunzel holds onto the knee buckled youth's normal first reaction to be addressing, after all these years, the ghost of his long dead Admiral and King.

Nothing much more than that would have been able to shock the lad after witnessing this deadly Draugen sea monster, Queen Elsa's ice magic in action, flying reindeer all over the Gler, not to mention Kommander Westergaard's nearly frozen body's re-invigoration that Jan had glimpsed in a blurry unsettled mirage of his fainted passed out mind's delirium.

"No matter. I hereby take command of this vessel, the HmNoS Gler." By the book King Agdar states the correct terminology used for assuming command of a ship in his Navy to be transferred sea transit, upon his discovery that the young Danish Prince he had entrusted this craft to, had blatantly absconded in its hour of need.

_Perhaps 'absconded' is not the fitting proper accusation…_

King Agdar's ice sharpened mind attempts to blunt and become malleable as his Idun's softening urged previously. He fairly turns it over in his racing mind, deliberating on how the industrious Dane performed in his family and country's behalf so well, up to now.

_"_Or maybe it should be…" The protective father and Norwegian monarch's psyche wonders aloud upon weighing how his perfect Snow Angel Elsa's fragile stolen heart that that questionable young Dane had been toying with, was by far the finest prize to run away with.

_Or from…Her powers can be intimidating for average young men...Hmm.._

Shaking his head at the trivial importance of those notions at this critical moment, even as Agdar's paternal concern was wandering, the other portion of his tactical mind knew all there was to know of the sail ship's steaming controls. It was as sharp and precise as the day the skilled King took command of his first naval vessel over 20 years ago upon his 18th birthday.

"Helmsman Jan. That is your name and rank, is it not?" Agdar asks as the boy gives him a frightened nod as Rapunzel was encouraging him on. "Keep the trimmed sails and efficient stabilization steady full rudder as tight as she can. Take position of that steering from Princess Rapunzel." The King offers Rapunzel a pair of kind eyes for her dogged effort in keeping the rigid levers of the Gler's out-of-sync control deck in the correct alignment.

The queasy, expectant young woman moves back from the deck with an obedient nod as she bows to her handsome Uncle's naval savvy and composure under pressure.

The cool, calm and collected Admiral of the Sjoforsvaret was in full command of his nautical instincts, if not fully his weak body, as he grips the edge of the bridge's navigation console for stability. But he would push his strained body, not quite ready for this intense struggle, to its limits in order to rise to the challenge.

But the practically marooned, sail tattered and mast bereft unmanned steam ship had let in much too much water into its lower hull hatches and valves earlier to be efficient against the merciless drag of the maelstrom's powerful tidal currents' downdraft.

As he takes the steering wheel, constantly glancing back to check on the pilothouse's even steam pressure and overtaxed engine revolutions as well as the magnetic gyroscope and rudder angle indicator, King Agdar only needed to look forward to the starboard viewscreen to come to a conclusion.

The failing steamship that his beloved girls were all on board was at the mercy of the treacherous unforgiving maelstrom's violence. That swirling ravenous vortex had already taken that evil pirate Captain as its first victim, and Agdar did not intend for there to be any more this day.

The well experienced naval officer had to admit to his logical mind, despite his breaking heart to ever leave a ship he commanded behind, the proud naval vessel HmNoS Gler, was to be a total loss. But as ultimate decision-maker, the Ice King of Arendelle was ready to wear his heavy crown.

_No! I refuse to let this fine vessel share the same fate as that deplorable pirate! God has delivered us before, and He will do it again, if I lean on His strength._

In his yet weak state of delirium, the tenacious King silently had the optimistic opinion where he would only hope against hope for the turn out all right if he only prayed for perseverance. And now that he had witnessed how capable and responsible and strong-minded Elsa had become, Agdar knew she could take care of Arendelle if the self-sacrificing King put his life on the line one more time, just as he did in many examples of his youth before.

"Niece." His brain synapses were whirring as his options were circulating as madly around as the deadly maelstrom's clockwise momentum.

"Join your cousins and aunt outside on deck and inform Elsa to utilize her ice energies to sanction a path for those flying reindeer in emergency escape of this whirlpool funnel, before it's too late. She will understand." He unequivocally orders Rapunzel as the overextended, disheartened Admiral prepares his family for evacuation.

"But Uncle Agdar! Please! You have to come, too!" Pausing in the doorway, Rapunzel pleads with the debonair mustached King whose back was to her as he was accustomed to people implicitly obeying his command, without argument.

"Rapunzel, do as I say. I do not have time to quarrel with you." The young woman, whose older, more gentle spirited, ebullient father never spoke to her in this manner, shrivels back through the open doorway at her uncle's terse words. Pascal's back and tail turn a cowardly shade of pale yellow on her startled shoulder as Rapunzel rushes out the door as fast as she could.

"Elsa! Your father… The King wants you to gather everyone and use your ice to form a path for the reindeer to escape the ship before it sinks." All in one breath, a frazzled Rapunzel spurts out the words to the taller girl who has to halt the dizzied pregnant woman from tripping onto her face through the open bridge door.

"And what about him?" As the swirling vortex jerks and spins the ship in sickening revolutions, Elsa had a sneaking suspicion this escape plan for all of them, did not include the self-sacrificing older man.

"I tried to get him to but… I don't think he's coming." Rapunzel answers with pity in her un-argumentative eyes.

"What? Papa!" In disbelief, Elsa's stubborn, frustrated quick tongue was abrupt as she nearly drops her biliously-spun Corona cousin into Anna's surprised, catching arms. The braided Princess scurries up from where their Mama was just wrapping up singing an Icelandic lullaby to a mostly all healed up, breathing on his own Kristoff.

With a big white snow-puffed cloud surrounding her as a buffer against the violent waves and whipping winds, Elsa stabilizes herself to rush across the roughly tilting back and forth top deck of the maelstrom tossed Gler.

"Papa! An attempt to save this ship is not worth your life! Arendelle needs her King!" The dutiful daughter announces without restraint as she easily floats on her ice in from the misty frost splattered top deck of the doomed vessel.

"Prince Hans! Explain to Papa!" The platinum blonde young woman beseeches the only other man who held sway over her heart. She was also certain that the Danish Royal was intelligent enough to agree with her in this weighty matter.

But when silence comes as the only reply when she approaches deeper into the bridge near the navigation/control deck, Elsa strains her eyes in the darkened bridge. There, her tall and able Papa was standing erect behind to direct the other man seated at the wheel's control, and Elsa could decidedly see that was not Hans she thought she was addressing.

She withdraws her familiar hand that she touched the shoulder of the man seated at the helm. Elsa could just make out in the dim light within the small wheelhouse the other man seated at the control panel in front of where Papa was partially obscuring the thin figure.

"Ensign Jan? Where is Hans?" Elsa's mind races about as fast as her wild eyes again scan the empty bridge room, other than the two men before her.

"Vise Admiral Westergaard has chosen to apparently abandon ship." Her father answers when the young coxswain starts to stutter his sworn secret under her demanding, beautiful, convincing gaze.

"He wouldn't… I don't understand." Elsa murmurs in shocked disbelief, shaking her head fervently at the betrayed trust of Hans Westergaard's affection and caring for her.

"I do not understand either, Elsa. Nor do I care to. I will only remark that many a less stout heart has been known to buckle under far less pressure upon the waves of the capricious sea." King Agdar both gives his understanding justification and washes his hands of the chastisement worthy cowardly act simultaneously as he takes note of her concern.

"Right now, I have far more pressing matters, my child." Taking the mantle as Admiral of his fleet and Kommander of this in-danger vessel in the Dane's place, proud lifelong Navy man Agdar's debonair mustache crinkles up at its sides in a sympathetic smile at Elsa in between his struggles at the Gler's gauges and controls that the Navy professional had been manipulating to gain the most ballast to the steam pressure for the hazardously sinking ship being sucked down to the spiraling whirlpool Moskenstraumen's certain end.

"And you, Snow Angel, must be the one to take your mother and sister and cousin to Lofoten's safety with an ice shielded vacuum bubble you must form around the escape path for those flying reindeer to traverse. That boy of Anna's can lead you on the wind to the archipelago's shore, I trust."

King Agdar calmly relates to Elsa his carefully worked out escape plan involving the Snow Queen's son whom he was coming to appreciate more, despite Kristoff being so…low class. The King had already calculated for Kristoff and his flying beasts to bring the women out of the black pit's revolving destruction that this lifelong sailor was willing to face against all odds.

"You may leave with them as well, Helmsman Jan. I will think no less of you as an officer in our fine Navy, and have nothing but high recommendations for your loyal bravery." King Agdar says to the eager-eyed young coxswain who had not left the ship, even when his own Kommander abandoned him.

"I have pledged my life to serve in your Navy, Sir. And serving this fine Navy is what I will do the last breath in me, proudly at your side, Admiral Bernadotte." With a clipped naval salute as he turns back quickly from his controls at the wheel, Ensign Jan nods dutifully to his new superior he felt privileged to serve under.

His Admiral nods back, pleased to have at least one obedient, loyal sailor on board his ship. He looks to meet Elsa's eyes, which were not feeling very obedient in her familial loyalty to her stubborn patriarch.

"No! Papa no! I will not allow you to throw your life away like this! We have to stick together, as a family!" Though cheerlessly sad and still in disbelief that Prince Hans would just leave her like that, Elsa declares with a sudden rush of open rebellion as she stamped her icy high heel in protest to the bridge's now frozen plate floor.

"Elsa, stop that nonsense! Do as your father says! My decision is not open for discussion." In their first serious debate at odds with one another as parent and grown-up child, Agdar never expected any backtalk from his shy, reticent little girl who rarely peeped a word of reprisal or protest growing up in her lonely childhood.

"Well, it should be! By the good people of Norway's prudence, I too have been coronated Ruler of this nation and supreme head of this Navy! This Sjoforsvaret vessel is currently under my direct authority. So is it not indisputable for me to deserve a say in any resolution concerning this vessel?" Her distress fueling her dynamism, Elsa challenges her astounded Papa.

Dialing back from his panic, Agdar's utterly flabbergasted mouth, his very mustache twitches in surprise at his child's unforeseen opposition as he continues to navigate the troubled Gler through the increasingly perilous revolving waters. With disturbed eyes, the confused father stares at the gyrating violent sea through the starboard viewscreen, uncertain of how to respond.

And then his domineering brain switches over to his loving, trusting heart.

"My little girl… Elsa. You have grown up to be quite a woman." Amid all the fear and panic of the dire situation, Agdar is impressed by his daughter's firm decisiveness that well befitted a Queen.

"Yes, your opinion deserves to be heard…And heeded, Queen Elsa of Arendelle." With a soft smile, King Agdar lowers his eyes to her sagacity as his frazzled mind finally listens to his just and fair heart. As his steely blue eyes meet her bright and steady cerulean ones with a calm gentle tone, the good father gives in to his child's greater perception and acumen.

"Thank you, Papa." She floats towards him on her ice slide to kiss her Papa for his trust in her, as Elsa must push aside her own distressed abandonment to focus on the pressing problem at hand.

"Come, let us all escape to survive this storm together, if God so wills it. And then Papa, we will rule Arendelle together and make our country a proud and beautiful place to live in." Elsa's faith realizes that the sovereign Lord above all had control over every second of their lives that she now wished to share with both her parents now that He had granted them back to her and Anna.

The Queen nods to helmsman Jan to accompany her Papa and desert his post as Elsa must give a physical warmer hand held to her father's shaking icy cool one stiffened around the Gler's steering navigational column as she urges the weak King to release it.

The thoroughly energy depleted, weakened King was just running on the field of his protective love and overwhelming duty to his family country up until now. After prying his frozen hands off, Agdar finally lets go of the ship's wheel under his loving wise daughter's begging, yet confident gaze.

As father and daughter's cold fingered hands clasp, Agdar leans upon Elsa's tower of strength with a proud smile in spite of his disdain for ever leaving a ship behind.

Just then, Anna comes skidding and barreling towards the bridge's open doorway she had managed to grab onto with her animated arms extended, her eyes alight with an indefinable curious excitement.

"You guys have **got** to **see** **this**!" Over the din of the screeching maelstrom all around her quite ungraceful stance on the violently rocking back-and-forth ship slamming her around, Anna shouts her sweet excited voice into the wheelhouse's entrance over the drenched deck's sloshing waves.

"Ooh, Darn braids!" There was still a big inextinguishable smile on Anna's face, even as the soaked caramel braids smack her in the eye due to the listing Gler's insistent thrashings.

As the tormented ship dizzily sways back and forth, Anna had boldly dared to move from her sheltered spot where a finally awakened Kristoff had placed her and her mother embracing one another in the relative shelter from the crashing spew in the stairwell passageway. Then, he went to round up and help Svala and Sven from where they had gotten tangled trying to keep the remaining sails above viable enough to be of use to the King's navigation.

Anna grabs a surprised Ensign Jan's aghast hand to stabilize herself and draw the young man out from the bridge to join in her exuberant excitement.

Although the beleaguered Gler had been sucked quite dangerously into the inverse spiral of the Moskenstraumen's dark ebony ring of revolution—despite King Agdar's best efforts to sustain the Gler's steam-powered resistance in the deadly downdraft—it was suddenly defying gravity itself.

To Elsa and her father's gape-mouthed shock, her Majesty's Norwegian ship, HmNoS Gler, was suddenly no longer being pulled corkscrew twisted down the high amplitude maelstrom's violent waves of immense turbulence.

The ship was actually being propelled the opposite direction in a reverse spiral upwards.

"But how?" Elsa whispers awestruck as her sister squeals in delight as their equally amazed Papa limps over to meet with her Mama. A giddy Anna dances around the deck like a pixie about to pop, splashing in the pools of water at her feet on the deck when an explosion of bright lights in pretty colors bring down rainbows to replace the dark dank gloom of the maelstrom's previously luminance-devouring ebony pit they were heading towards.

As the ship rises and nears the ocean surface's safety by some pull of magic no one on board could explain, Agdar looks from Elsa to Kristoff to the Snow Queen behind his wife's eyes, all of them being just as surprised as the other at the rainbow splashes that seemed to swim upon the mirror of the sea.

The reflective colors glimmer with the golden glow of the no longer Midnight Sun above in each of their blinded, bedazzled eyes.

But as their captivated senses clear from the dire gloom of the ebony black the Arendelle family had been swamped in, the crystalline waters of the fresh sea becomes dotted with the rainbow multihued glistened scaly tails of mermaids and mermen flip-flopping in an ocean ballet of sorts, along the playfully created waves.

And out of that sea rises the towering formidable King of it, extending his powerful, golden three-pronged Trident to easily hold over and reverse the flow of the Moskenstraumen. As he effortlessly does, the shine of so many fishes and whales and dolphins and walrus and seals, and all the creatures of all types and genus the new Wind Whisperer had made friends with along this incredible journey, had rallied to summon the Sea King for rescue.

And the magic of the sea was a blinding, glorious sight to behold, indeed.

"King Triton."

As Elsa watches with wide speechless eyes, King Agdar whispers in pure awe of the ocean ruler's magnanimous grace in saving this doomed ship and his family at risk from being swallowed up in this most terrifying deadly force of the sea known to man.

King Triton easily wields his mystical Trident to urge the waves of the ocean he commanded to bend to his will and draw the Gler to a safe distance from the Moskenstraumen's peril, bringing the ship towards the clear peaceful waters near Lofoten's shore.

"Thank God for you, your Majesty. You have saved the lives of those I love. I will forever be in your debt." Norwegian King Agdar reverently bows his weary head in prayer to God Who interceded to bring this ruddy red wavy long-haired and bearded ocean King as His envoy of deliverance.

Agdar embraces his wife Idun close to his chest. Elsa and Anna -who had finally alighted from her boisterous joy - were flanking Agdar to hang on each of his sides, holding their faltering father up, with their Mama in the middle.

King Triton, half man/half sea creature, floats closer to the halted ship to speak in his haughty lofty commanding tones full of the fathomless depths of the sea. He lowers his powerful Golden Trident in his massive fisted left hand, and the maelstrom instantly returns to its counterclockwise whirlpool at the safe distance on the horizon behind, without the Sea King even looking at it.

At his right hand side, the beautiful startlingly red haired beauty of the sea, his elegant and benevolently kind Queen Athena surfaces from the waters as she and her seven singing were children following their mother around like a flock of little chicks, were frolicking in playful collaboration with the glistening rainbow that Queen Athena had summoned to be-still the peaceful waters.

"A life for a life." Is all the sonorous voice imposingly imparts as the majestic, stoic king of the ocean, alluding to the years' old debt that King Triton now considered repaid. The ocean ruler was usually wary of land dwellers, but for these two Kings' fated meeting before years ago, he would have lost his kingdom and his life. Then, Agdar risked it all to intervene on the side of good.

Back then, the Ice King had saved the Sea King and his underwater family from Triton's traitorous sisters' attempted overthrow of shrinking the royal mer-family to wobbling sea kelp to usurp the kingdom of Atlantica.

King Triton and King Agdar exchange a respectful nod without further word being said.

As Triton extends a hand over the brilliant Aurora Borealis reflected water to lead his stunning titian-haired Queen and all the creatures of the sea to return back under the waves to their kingdom, Atlantican Court Maestro Sebastian the crab bobs to the surface.

The panicky crustacean hustles in his staccato clawed method of conducting the septet of mermaid princesses to harmonize and hum along with her melodic Queen Mother's heading home song. For the musical mermaid mother always had a song in her heart for every one of life's occasions…

_"Home is an unknown Wonderland where you're always welcome.  
Home is a feeling deep inside you; home is your heart will always guide you  
they again to all your friends, anywhere you roam  
for home is love; and love is always home_

_Love is always home  
Love is always home…"_

As the heartwarming beautiful melody of the inhabitants of the mysterious sea below echoes across the sunsetting waves, Elsa was sure she glimpsed in the corner of her eye a white horse streaking across the southern skies, in between the electric greens, vibrant purples and brilliant blues of the aurora borealis lighting the way.

Though happy her family was safe, Elsa couldn't help but feel a pang in her tearful eyes longing for the dashing silhouette of a handsome svelte figure's profile astride that white steed the split-second before all vanishes and fades beneath the reach of the Northern Lights.

And as the feminine undersea ruler gives Queen Idun and her children a kindly look and nodded smile, King Triton embraces his Queen close. Athena smiles when her tiniest four-year-old little girl, the pretty Little Mermaid with similar flaming red hair as her Mother and a voice for song, named Ariel, could not restrain herself from fearlessly waving back, even when all the other six mer-princesses were shy and timid to engage so much with humans.

Although, one human called Anna shares with and happily hums along with their song so fervently all the Princesses couldn't take their dazzled eyes from her.

Anna wildly waves at the tiniest redhead mermaid as she causes a distracted 4-year-old Ariel to nearly crash into a projection rock near the shore's shoals, had Sebastian the crab not swerved the littlest mermaid out of the way in time.

"I'm gonna be checking out these sing-songy, tailescent new friends! See ya, Sweetie!" With a salute goodbye in his inimitable way of speaking, Scuttle the seagull zooms alongside a giggling Anna to investigate the interesting band of lovely swimming ladies as they all head back South from their Arctic family vacation in these North seas. Especially that little redheaded curious-as-a-kitten mermaid cutie and her crabby crab pal berating her headstrong willfulness. She had caught his eye, and the dimwitted seagull had a feeling he would make quick friends with her as he takes off for a new adventure on different sunny shores.

"Good luck, Scuttle! We'll never forget you!" Waving farewell to the white winged absentminded, yet overtly friendly bird, Anna trots up the ship's forecastle upper deck to get a better view of the mermaid sisters' amazing swirling choreographed ballet on the surface of the water, fins and tails flipping and diving and flapping and flying that make Anna's own tapping toes wish to jump in the ocean and join them.

The effervescent Arendelle Princess is halted by her levelheaded Kristoff as he, on Sven, with Svala closeby, land on the forecastle deck behind her, with a shaking head smirk at his giddy little toe-tapping wife.

"Bye-bye!" Fondly waving her arms about like a nut in farewell to the mermaid girls, music-lover Anna sings along with the catchy tune that the lovely mermaid Queen Mother was singing as the sea's Royal family, alongside the helpful creatures they too called 'friends' swimming in time with the music's rhythm.

Until they all melt into the mesmerizing colors of the aurora borealis reflected ocean that was now in peace again with the world of Nature, brimming with life and reverberating with the magic of song…

_"'A place of warmth and wonder  
Home is the sea and all that's  
Underneath the waves  
We splash and play  
Where angelfish roam  
And sometimes being_

_When you look around and see a friendly fin, it's home  
Wishin' on a starfish in the sand  
Or being in a private place  
That's all your own  
Home's an underwater wonderland  
You're always welcome._

_Love is always Home…'__"_

* * *

_Min kærlighed - _My love in Danish

_min Sne Engel_ \- my Snow Angel in Danish

_Ich liebe dich - _ I love you in German/Prussian

_Móðir_ – Mother in Icelandic (pronounced moou-thir)

_Godverdomme – __blaspheming curse in Dutch_

* * *

Blowing in with the March winds, Greetings, my Frozen friends!

So how did you like the climax chapter of the adventure side of this story?

That wicked pirate has seen his demise at last! Yeah! Don't get better than that! He done himself in!

Elsa has been put to the test with discovering new avenues of her powers, freezing the air itself! And with her stubborn Papa too! ^_^ I believe she's shown her thoughtful intelligence in her commanding mettle, even to the King!

Now as for Hans of her heart... Did you like his sad acceptance of Elsa being out of his league?

Poor guy! Big brother Eugene had to take the reins here...Wonder what'll become of them...

Well, at over 14,000 words, this is my longest chapter yet! It was such an important one, it took me longer than expected to write, but I wanted to get in all of my original plotlines towards the conclusion of the adventure part of the story!

And King Triton and his entire mermaid family played a vital role in the end, didn't they? After all, even though the Mer-king is no fan of humans, even in his earlier years, he owed King Agdar a debt for saving Atlantica from Ursula and Morgana's hostile takeover 5 years ago, when the Arendelle's King and Queen were lost at sea as result.

A life for a life...

And the song featured at the end was one of the songs from the Little Mermaid Splash Hits album! I thought it fit for Ariel's mother to sing such a sweet heartwarming lullaby as her family travels to Norway on vacation to see the Aurora Borealis. Just in time to bail us out too!

Please review this chapter as the tale comes closer to its finish!

God bless you!

HarukaKou


	63. Chapter 62 - No Fear in Love

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act IV**

**Chapter 62**

**"No Fear in Love"**

_Several minutes before the aurora borealis above all these under the sea miracles took place…_

_Previously_…

All the while he had been flying on the Snow Queen's white horse through the sky hundreds of feet above the ocean surface, Flynn Rider's keen eyes had been scanning the waters below frantically.

_Guess I'm a little too late to help you out, Job, old buddy. Sorry, Pal. Stuff came up. Story of my life. But at least I know you're up there with your good Muma now…_ With a quick glance upward, Eugene's saddened mind eulogizes.

His depressed eyes come up blank in his search of the raucous sea line for the dark Carribbean man whom the grateful thief owed Rapunzel's life to when her flying carriage was ripped from the sky earlier.

Eugene squeezes to his chest the ripped off length of the ship's rigging cord he had makeshift tied to the crucifix cross that the devout man had bequeathed him to finish in his place upon the imminent demise of dark man.

"Elsa… My Elsa… Forgive me for being a disappointment…" The hallucinated words come every now and then from Hans Westergaard's guilty murmured lips, along the racing journey via the white flying steed that had caught Flynn's eyes when it pawed at the wheelhouse roof before as if sent just for them.

Through the dusky sky, as they travel quickly away from the Gler that Eugene believed was on an express course for the safety of Lofoten archipelago, Hans' floppy red head would flounder and speak, then listlessly sink back to consciousness, always muttering depressed sentiments intermingled with the singular name of the woman he loved.

"Yup, you've got it bad for that blonde enchantress, Lillebror. And believe me, you're sure going to miss out if you kick off now, Kid. It'll be a shame to waste those long luscious legs by dying before you get the chance to enjoy them." Garrulous Eugene mumbles under his breath with a half smirk at the still romantic notions of his dying little brother.

_Stop it, Flynn! __**No **__**one**__ is __**dying**__ here! He's __**gonna**__ make it! _Glancing down at the handsome young man he was holding on to the flying white horse before him, Eugene Fitzherbert had more optimism in his heart than he gave his blasé self credit for. Eugene shakes himself from the negativity to be more objective.

But the amount of blood drenching Hans' saturated belt sash was undeniable. Eugene balances himself and his younger sibling on board the flying steed's back while he races on the winds across the ocean as he wrestles Hans from his navy blue jacket to get a better look at the serious abdominal stab wound.

"Ooh, this is bad." Eugene cringes at the large amount of blood that was oozing out of Hans' open stab wound, even staining the white horse's coat a sickening crimson red.

"I've gotta stop this damn bleeding before your skinny ass runs empty! You are not gonna make it at this rate, Sideburns." Cursing in his frustration, Flynn's wild mind uses Hans' jacket to tie its arms around the passed-out officer's torso in his best attempt to staunch the nasty deep penetration gash.

"That should do the trick for a while, Good-lookin'. Hey! I didn't order a detour, you dumb horse! Why are we landing already! I thought I told you to go due-south pronto, you horse-face backseat driver!" The insulting man who never had a great relationship with equines, berates the misdirected Snow Queen's carriage horse.

Exasperated, Eugene quickly finishes tightly knotting off the long jacket sleeves around Hans' midsection in an attempt to stop the incessant bleeding. He then turns his attention to where the wayward white horse was landing on the cove inlet shore of the windward side of Mosken island's Mount Wilhelmstind.

"O-okay. So, I don't know where you came from, but I do have a feeling you're the one who sent this fine, independent-minded equine lady for us at that serendipitous moment. And though I do appreciate that, old man, we are kind of in a major hurry to be caught visiting strangers." Flynn rapid fire speaks to the lean leathery face looking up at him from where the person was kneeling with his own matching white horse behind him.

He was an older man wearing a tall hat who Eugene didn't recognize, although the stranger's deep set eyes gave off an air of calm wisdom that Eugene found oddly inviting and definitely not belligerent.

"A friend." Is all Ragi answers in response. His physical presence was once again easily projected by this original Wind Whisperer, now that the Nature he commanded was so right and at peace again.

The mysterious long wavy-haired, tall man stands from his campfire to reach up and gather Hans in his wiry old arms down from Flurru, the Snow Queen's lead horse he had rescued from the sea. With Hans in tow, Ragi begins to lead the equine towards the fire.

"Whoa whoa whoa, old fella! That's my little bro who _necessitates_ some medical attention right away you got there! And I don't want to be called rude or anything, but I need this horse you so kindly sent me, to do just that, and quick, if he's got any chance. So back off, _Friend_!" Eugene, not normally the confrontational type, leaps from his horse and grabs back Hans's body in human tug-of-war with the older, surprisingly strong man.

"Come on, pal! I'm asking nicely if I may borrow this little flying horsey of yours for a little ways longer. I personally promise you, on my honor as a – _ahem_ – gentleman. And I will give you my private Corona kingdom credit line IOU—" Looking into Ragi's unaffected serious eyes, Flynn begins to wheedle a deal. That's when a large grey-brown wolf emerges from the west side of the sea cave to join his master's side on the Mosken foreshore's dusky skyline.

_GULP!_

"—with accrued interest." Adding on the monetary offer, the thief gulps loudly. His frightened eyes were trained down at the sharp fanged wolf, as Eugene, with Hans in his arms, backs them towards the horse and away from the intimidating canine form skulking down the mountainside with a leafy branch between its bared teeth.

"Holger. Bring the yarrow here." But the old man was not at all fazed by Eugene's urgent pleas, nor by the vicious wolf-dog approaching. In fact, Ragi stoops down to gather from the leafy branch in the compliant canine's fanged mouth the fresh feather leaves of the dusty weed clusters the creature had gathered.

The wise-eyed older man then moves over to a stone bowl and pestle he had already previously prepared at the small campfire. Ragi begins to smash together the green leaves to add to his already fashioned moist poultice of various choice leaves, flower parts and tree bark that the birds of the air and other winged animals at his command continually appear to deliver from all over the lands, even beyond the sea, to this quiet, soft-spoken man of nature.

"Argh…" When Hans' incoherently groans softly in Eugene's arms as he follows Ragi's path around the shore's secreted cove, Eugene's patience with the enigmatic man's oddly purposeful tincture creation was about up.

Flynn Rider was just about to evoke his right to defy this peculiar elder gent for his ailing little brother's sake, and just filch one of the pair of flying white horses sanctioned or otherwise when another voice speaks from the dark cove's shadows.

"Da tonic is ready, voodoo man."

When a fluffy white baby lamb, now washed and dried in front of a roaring fire around the bend comes darting towards Flynn and pushes against his leg like a lost little puppy, Eugene squints against the dark backdrop of the mountain with interest.

Under the sky that begins to be streaked with colors of the Northern Lights, Eugene sees a familiar pair of shining black pupils set on a pair of white eyes from the darkness alight upon him.

"Is that you, Job? You made it, man! Damn! To stick it out through that maelstrom after that serious gut wound – you must be made of some really good –" Just stopping short of cursing the expletive, Eugene's own golden tan eyes open in hopeful curiosity as the tall silhouette of the pirate's former first mate stumbles lethargically across the shore to meet them halfway.

"You be right dere twice, t'ief." A hunched over, gasping with each step, yet stable Job's big grin greets the surprised Flynn. Big man Job then gathers Hans to lie on an already arranged bed of soft gathered leaves near the campfire.

"Dat man over dere save me and da sheep just before we was to goes down into dat maelstrom." Job answers as he busily sets Hans down on the leaf bed.

The responsible elder Wind Whisperer had previously flown over with his pair of white horses that he willed the forces of nature's sea back at his command to cough up in order to spare Job and Lamby. After Kristoff's sage father had brought Job to the safety of Mosken's shore, he called upon the animals of the land and the creatures of the air to quickly collect the plant materials necessary to staunch a gutted man's bleeding with external styptics and herbal hemostatics to encourage blood coagulation and clotting.

"Am I glad to see you, or what, Bud!" Eugene none too gently whacks the big pro-wrestler on the back, causing Job to double over weakly as he just manages not to spill the precious contents of the liquefied tree bark he had in a cup.

"Dis be for de cabin boy." Job had been, as per Ragi's instructions, brewing a special tea of the herbs gathered that he offers to Eugene to nourish his downed brother with.

With the wisdom and herb infused oils and tinctures made of bark tannin and foliage astringent, a reinvigorated Ragi's infinite knowledge of nature and the helpful creatures of it made for the waning black man's own circulatory, nervous and immune systems to be bolstered and strengthened.

So along with the natural clotting styptics that the birds and flying creatures of all types and sizes were amazingly still delivering continually to add ingredients in, Ragi's pestled poutice had given the dying Caribbean man a fighting second chance.

And though Job still had a lot of vacillating physical pain and an undetermined parlous struggle ahead that were yet unresolved and precarious as to his ultimate opened wound outcome, the reformed criminal wanted to help out his fellow victim of the foul pirate they both once slaved under the rule of.

"You've finished the second batch of the agrimony and cedar bark tea. Well done Job. After you drink half of the draught, prepare the rest of the tonic's dose for the boy."

A stark white polar bear, who had heeded his master's call had conveyed the rare cedar 'tree of life' bark from Ragi's arbor back home up north, eyes Eugene suspiciously as the unflappable older man immediately goes to work.

Removing the blood soaked naval jacket, Ragi kneels at Hans' side. The patient old Wind Whisperer first cleans the injury with a boiling hot cloth, then quickly swabs the ideal astringent yarrow poutice he had created to apply to Hans' abdominal stabbed penetration wound. The herbal remedy staunches the bleeding and simultaneously helps disinfect the nasty cut from the pirate's ragged old and dirty knife blade.

Though unconscious, Hans' body instinctively reacts as he lets out a high-pitched gasp the second Ragi touches his pulled back injury with the necessary first aid treatment. Hans' thin hand claws through the air until he grasps Eugene's swiftly knelt down brotherly offered one tightly for support as if the Danish Prince was a helpless little child again.

The field practitioner keeps the applied poultice in place with the boiled water moist cloth pressed and secured to Hans' fourth left intercoastal region where that terrible stab wound had been cruelly inserted.

"Eugene. You must make your brother drink that as well. It will staunch further bleeding." Ragi instructs Flynn as Job holds out the cedar bark tonic tea, still wiping the frown from his face with its horrid bitter taste lingering in his own mouth as he does.

"Who, me?" Flynn looks quizzically at the mysterious old man who knew Eugene Fitzherbert's Christian name and family connection to Hans, and spoke to the thief as an old friend whom he could trust. And after one dubious look into those unwavering ancient eyes, Eugene does.

"Okay." Eugene consents to the seasoned herbalists with a pursed lip nod as he accepts the cupful of some steaming hot mystery liquid after Job had taken a full draught of its pungent contents.

"Eww, not my cup of tea, for sure. If I ever drank the high-faluting pansy stuff." After getting a whiff of this odoriferous strong elixir, Eugene pinches Hans' celestial nose with one hand, his other pressing the cup to Hans' lips.

"Bottoms up, Handsome." He pitches the Danish Prince's head back as Flynn continues to pinch Hans nose to force the unconscious patient to down and swallow the smelly liquid tonic brew of the bark of the much sought after 'tree of life' contents.

_Cough cough cough!_

Though Hans sputters back to consciousness for a few brief moments, his green eyes spin in his head and then flutter back to that unconscious state again once the liquid is swallowed. But not before uttering the single word that was so predominant in his mind before he eventually slumps back to unconsciousness.

"Snowflake…"

_SLUMP_

"Okay. Got that in him. Now what?" Eugene, never knowing much of medicinal techniques, rather preferred to altogether avoid nasty pain and messy bloodied wounds that were deemed far too unsightly to suit the vain, narcissistic coxcomb.

And he was grateful for this unexpected assist to at least have slowed his Lillebror's incessant bleeding before the poor kid ran out of the prized red juice.

"Though I must warn you, I have merely postponed the irrevocable blood drain with these natural herbal remedies that I will leave the remainder with you for your journey to reapply periodically. Both of these men still require suturing surgical treatment before infection sets into their serious body invasions." Ragi conveys to Flynn, as even strong Job stumbled against one of the white steeds he was nearby.

"Then we better get going, ASAP." With a nod and helping hand to Job to mount his horse, Flynn answers, all in charge as he instinctively faces the white mare South. The thief already had decided where he was heading to get the job done as he loads Hans onto the other one of the pair of the Snow Queen's carriage horses.

"Oh, come on! Don't look at me with those big sad eyes! Okay! Okay, now everyone's gonna think me a softie, but—_Oof! You are one heavy Fuzzball!—_This one's for you, Blondie. Do you mind sharing your ride with Mary's little lamb, Job, old boy?" Eugene feels compelled to stop to pick up that 'baa-ing' Lambykins Rapunzel had become so attached to and load the wooly creature onto Job's fairly empty mare's back.

"Dat sheep be a good luck charm, T'ief." Comes the dark man's response as he uses the fuzzy fluffball as an arm rest he ties it to the saddle strap to hold the critter onboard his flying horse uncomplainingly.

"Great. And if we can't get any good grub on our impossible voyage, I know where the all-you-can-eat traveling lamb chop buffet is located!" Flynn starts off in his brash bravado when Job and the baby sheep both give the loudmouth tease a dirty look. "What? I'm kidding!" Eugene feigns it off as high spirited ramblings. "Mostly..." He chuckles under his breath until he looks down at his Lillebror's passed out body murmuring that Queenie's name seated before him, remembering the girl he was leaving behind too…

"Right. What the hell! Let's get this circus on the road!"

"You coming, Pops?" Not minding the extra company this trip, Eugene irreverently tosses the invite over his shoulder as he watches the man wearing a tall, wide-brimmed dark purple hat and matching long coat go astride the polar bear.

But Ragi hears his soulmate's delicate yet strong contralto singing her hurt boy an Icelandic lullaby in his own heart, and he gazes towards the Gler wistfully.

"No, my Queen is calling. I wish you health, lad, as you care for your brethren. Godspeed." Ragi says with a nod as he salutes Flynn. Holger the gray wolf jumps at his back to the large, unflinching polar bear.

"Who are you anyway, pops?" Eugene calls out, too busy in his own thoughts in preparation to have inquired who this unknown hero was who had appeared just when Eugene needed a friend most.

And he prompts his steed and Job's, alongside with the third rescued flying mare to follow as they are just about to take off.

"The new Wind Whisperer's proud father." Gazing out over where the words of the her lullaby had found his boy just setting nature back right again with the instincts of a true man of nature, Ragi responds with a pair of tender eyes that told Eugene everything a parent could feel for child to allow all his own recognition to be pushed aside and now be placed upon his own beloved son.

"Made the wind travel with you." As a gust of beckoned wind indeed blows, the two men part ways. The soft smile on both of their faces showed the pride in having a child, one present; one future; that both spoke of love for their mate's greatest gift of them all, the one that will last a lifetime to call one's own…

And in opposite directions the flying mares and the skybound polar bear move rapidly away from one another…

* * *

_Some minutes later back on the deck of the HmNoS Gler, near the southern tip of the Lofoten archipelago…_

"Well, Papa! Are you connected or what?! You have some cool friends in deep places!" Princess Anna dashes down from the top forecastle she had been singing with the mermaid entourage upon. The unawares girl drags and trips her Kristoff by the hand along. Mainly because Anna of Arendelle was as happy as a proverbial clam that her family – her whole family – was back together.

_Just like I always dreamed we could be!_

The vivacious ginger hugs and spins Elsa around as she glomps her plucky arms around her father's neck, all while giggling exuberantly. Anna was still filled with the enthusiasm of this incredible journey, and was still coming down from the rush and high now that this daring adventure they all had just triumphed over together was about wrapped up.

"Anna! Please go easy on your Papa for a while! After all, he still recovering, min alskare." With a warning smile at her hasty younger child, Queen Idun, back in her own skin, gently admonishes in her soft soprano tones her headstrong child with that lilting giggle Anna adored to hear again.

Anna was around her cherished father's torso with all the desperation the vibrant girl kept pent-up inside for these five years since her parents were believed dead.

"Oh, Mama! I even missed you scolding me!" The energetic orangey girl pulls her Mama into a group hug until all three faces were so close, none of them could barely breathe.

Idun doesn't heed her own warning much as she squeezes her arms as tight as she could around her husband's warm chest, nuzzling her sweet nose to his cheek in the relief of this moment they all longed for to come.

"Welcome back, my Swedish Delight." Though his voice was weak, his smile was strong when King Agdar instantly recognized that the Snow Queen's presence had left his feisty wife's physical host. Agdar knew it was his lady, with just one glance into Idun's crystal clear bright indigo eyes full of true love for him.

And that devoted look is reflected in Agdar's similarly affectionate eyes upon her over their youngest child's head, as Anna continues to squeeze the life out of the King and Queen.

"Oh, Elsa! Isn't this the best?!" Invitingly grinning from ear to ear over to her big sister, Anna was in tears of joy by now as she reaches out blindly for Kristoff's big reassuring hand.

And naturally, it was there, even as the blond mountain man was glancing around for his own mother's invisible spirit now that the Snow Queen had left Queen Idun's physical form. The Spirit of the Winter Snow had finally revealed herself to her one and only child and touched the special orphan boy's life with her gentle song in ways he never knew he never knew.

"Now for something totally important! Proper introductions! Without some nasty pirate kidnapping one of us, or trying to kill one of us, or generally making a nuisance of himself – Okay!" Anna sucks in a deep breath before she launches into her next verbal montage. "

"Papa, Mama! This is Kristoff. He's my guy. He's really nice. Really really nice. And strong. Really really super strong! And totally hunky – and truly good inside! And skilled at climbing mountains, plus he's super helpful too! My Kristoff's a great successful businessman and…and a super talented Ice Harvester and –" All while a flustered-from-excitement Anna was stumbling over her positive words in describing her—_getting around to it—_ new husband to her parents, much to Kristoff's shy, blushing chagrin as he tries to hide his embarrassed face and flushed cheeks at his noisy gal's shameless praising, Elsa wanders off.

Perhaps the older girl felt a little empty-handed next Anna's glowing braggadocious pride of her heroic fella. Elsa suddenly has the urgent urge to locate a certain Kommander of the ship. And maybe, just maybe, she might have someone of her own to show off to the folks.

_But where is he now? Did Prince Hans really leave the ship without saying goodbye?_

Remembering before that he was not on the bridge, the Arendelle Queen makes a quick peek around the berth deck below. She then makes a special stop in the Captain's quarters.

Only to find it exactly the way it was this morning.

Nothing, not a single shirt, nor personal effects, nor any stock of clothing was gone. Not even the new silk pajamas she had purchased explicitly for him back in Salsbrucket had been taken.

As Elsa rifles through his drawers in the Captain's cabin, she cannot help but breathe her nose into the pale blue silk shirt that still retained Hans' delectably pervasive rich scent in its soft folds.

Not even his shaving blade nor the mirror she had secreted into his cabin had been removed from his quarters.

Even Hans' well-worn Bible was still at his bedside, still turned to the same passages she and found earlier this morning.

Elsa's intelligent suspicious mind grasps onto the foregone conclusion with more enthusiasm than accusation as she lifts the dog eared Good Book at his bedside to read the carefully folded over passages on the pages that Hans was last referring to once again.

_'Surely he is my salvation. I will trust in Him and not be afraid. The Lord Himself has become my defense and my salvation.' Isaiah 12 :2_

_'Cast your burden upon the Lord for he will sustain you. He will never allow the righteous to be shaken.' Psalm 55:22_

Turning over one more sticky-paged bookmark, Elsa's eyes traipse over the highlighted selection she had not seen there before with new eyes.

_'There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.' 1 John 4:18–_

"That's right, Hans! There is no fear in love…" Elsa feels her own heavy heart lightened now that the man she was thinking of had undoubtedly digested this important instructional passage too.

_Then, if not for fear of our love, what could cause you to leave me without saying goodbye? _

"So where are you now, my handsome Prince? I know you wouldn't abandon me without just cause!" Defiantly in a whisper to herself, Elsa then and there makes the decision to spin on her icy high heels to trip up the companionway steps two at a time up into the bridge wheelhouse to confront Rapunzel about it.

* * *

"—It's what he wanted—" Rapunzel's soft voice could just be overheard to murmur from somewhere inside, as Elsa, on dainty tiptoe, quietly sneaks onto the bridge of the rescued naval vessel she already claimed the top joint command of as coronated head of the Sjoforsvaret.

"_Who_ 'wanted' _what_, cousin Rapunzel?" Queen Elsa inquisitively questions the flinching back brown haired girl until Rapunzel and Ensign Jan who had been conversing while the young helmsman was trying to steer the practically defunct steamship, exchange a look.

The young coxswain immediately turns to guiltily immerse his full attention back to his steering, unable, or unwilling, to meet his Queen sovereign's demanding gaze.

Now as for poor Rapunzel…

"Oh, Elsa! I didn't hear you come in! Y-You startled me!" Rapunzel and Pascal exchange a sheepish pale yellow glance and subsequent fake giggle to hide behind.

"Yes, I can see that." Elsa ponders her cousin's guilty expression reflected in the young helmsman's beet-red face that purposely continues to avoid her quizzical stare.

"Do you know where I can find Vice Admiral Westergaard? Papa said that he left the ship earlier. But I can't imagine why he would just leave so abruptly in the midst of the battle… And not say goodbye…" The insecure forlorn tears wavering behind Elsa's dismayed, quivering eyes make compassionate Rapunzel almost spill the beans.

But when a dutiful to his Kommander's wishes Ensign Jan shoots her a panicked look, Rapunzel must decide if she would keep to her sincere promise to Hans – perhaps his last request – that her own Eugene instructed her to hold to until they could be sure of a happy outcome for the beleaguered lad.

But her beautiful tall and pale-skinned cousin's anxiety was so clear in her eyes, that Rapunzel's honest heart felt it was breaking along with her.

"Elsa…I…I…You see… Eugene…" The indecisive Prussian Princess clutches at her palpitating heart and pounding pregnant tummy as her face turns as green as Pascal's worried one. The reptile pets his confronted girl's cheek tenderly in pity.

_HONK! HONK! HONK!_

The tripled blast of a ship's foghorn lets out a deep bellow from somewhere outside the bridge, halting Rapunzel's hand-wrung confession just in the nick of time.

"Now what?!"

"What's that?!" As Pascal springs straight up through the air to cling to the wheelhouse ceiling in fright, uneasy Elsa and shocked Rapunzel cry out over one another's lyrical scream.

The pair grab hold of the other's startled hands as they dash out through the smashed in wheelhouse door onto the Gler's top deck.

There, on the Norwegian sea from the East, the most modern, five masted, square rigged humongous frigate steams towards them around the dark horizon's bend. Its expert crew of fine naval men deftly avoid the Moskenstraumen that was already beginning its semi-diurnal elapse of less turbulent velocity.

Elsa and Rapunzel join King Agdar, Queen Idun, Kristoff and Anna at the Gler stem's bulwark railing to gaze at the massively impressive, open mouth warship approaching the Lofoten shore at a swift clipped speed, doing over forty knots.

And the flag that was flying in the sunsetting winds proudly displays the saltine's colors and crocus embossed banner of Arendelle that was a sight for all their sore eyes.

"YEAH!" Sprightly Anna expresses everything her entire family felt in one single word as she

hops off and down from the railing where the daredevil ginger was climbing in her excitement. Kristoff and Sven were luckily right behind her at the ready to catch her if she fell.

"Hi guys! Where's that big bad ugly sea monster we've got to kick the butt of? Was kinda nasty, all snarling, and smashing and spitting out us! And that gargantuan wouldn't stay down even after Vice Admiral JustHans mowed him down, courageously shaving the villainous creature's legs off while Kristoff was shooting arrow after arrow at it –" the talkative snowman obviously had been busy rattling off the team's tales of daring do to anyone and everyone who dared to listen to his prattle.

But in his enthusiasm, Olaf's swinging arms were re-creating the action scenes he had witnessed causing him to nearly tumble over the edge of the much larger vessel's stem he was haphazardly balanced on now.

"Olaf!" Both sisters cry out in joy to see their dear little friend. Just coming out of being confused about Hans, Elsa really could use a warm hug her snowman creation specialized in right about now. The Ice Queen's pensive face smiles when she catches a glimpse of Olaf waving his branchy arms around and tottering back and forth as he almost tumbles off the spiked bowsprit he was teetering upon waving at them wildly.

The simple snowman, who Elsa had blown on the cold air streams high above the atmosphere to transport the living mound of ice to find help and warn the folks back home of the vicious battle with the sea monster, had come with help.

He was lucky that now Elsa was attentive enough to save the clumsy-footed creature from slipping off his balanced dance on the bowsprit to float Olaf over to the Gler's deck.

"Did you miss me?! You beat the ugly faced monster already?! Too bad. I brought backup. They were already halfway here. Wasn't that smart of me?" Truthful Olaf explains happily in his slaphappy way as he coos and pets Sven's friendly face with a denied carrot nose.

"Backup? Did you send your snowman back to zero in on who I think you did, Elsa?" Trying to focus despite the growing weakness in his body, King Agdar asks his elder daughter, then turns back to the woman in his arms, with a twinkle in his tired eyes. "Who else would it be, Idun?"

"Who else would stand beside our little girls through thick and thin all these years, Min kärlek (my love)?" Queen Idun responds, equally grinning as she right away catches onto the reliable individual in her husband's pleased mind and just who this trustworthy '_backup'_ the snowman spoke of could be.

And just as Agdar and Idun predicted, rushing out from the HmNoS Feia's modernized Bridge Command Center, Arendelle's Head Counselor/Butler/Head of Household/ Agdar's childhood best friend and he and his children's tutor, Kai, appears on the frigate's lower top deck.

The large bodied, balding, with a crown of golden brown hair, older man blinks once, then twice, rubbing at his eyes as if to clear them as to what they were seeing on the deck just parallel to where he was standing at the pride of the Navy battleship Feia's stem.

"Aww, Mister Kai! They defeated that Big Ugly Seaweed Ball without us! I wanted to help Elsa and Anna and Kristoff and JustHans and Flynn-er-Eugene and Rapunzel beat that rotten old pirate!" Olaf laments missing out on the final battle the overconfident snowman who thought the world of himself was sure he would've played a vital role in bringing down.

"Even if we were moving full steam ahead from where I caught up with them near Salsbrucket on this great big monstrous frigate! Hey! Where is JustHans? I want to show the Feia off to him! He loves Navy ships and boats and nautical stuff like that! He even taught me how to read a ship's compass and telescope and gyroscope and so many instrument panels on the bridge that my head is still spinning! So, it's only fair…" Setting his noggin to literally swivel around at a dizzying rate, Olaf was excited to show off his new great big toy to the only man patient enough to entertain Olaf as amused playmate.

But when Hans was nowhere in sight, the pleasant snowman waddles around the deck in search of his missing Danish seaman friend.

* * *

"Ooh, Kai! Olaf was telling the truth! Our own dear rulers, King Agdar and Queen Idun _and_ our girls are safe! Praise be to God!" Across the way on the Feia's deck, clapping her hands together, rosy-cheeked Gerda, Arendelle's Housekeeper/Cook/Nursemaid/All Around Hard Worker and Confidante Friend falls to her plump knees. Gerda gives a devout prayer to the Lord Giver of All Life as tears spill from her joyful eyes to find their long dead King and Queen alive, and the charges Elsa and Anna safe and sound alongside them.

"Of course I was, Gerda! Don't you know? Snowmen can't lie." Peeking out from the hidden recesses of the equipment storage container near the aft end of the deck in search of Hans, though he would not fit inside the tool box for his 6 foot two height, Olaf shakes his head in that condescending manner.

Although, in his meanderings, the curious snowman swings around the golden holy orb and St. Olaf's sceptre he had collected from where they had been strewn across the deck. The honest snowman gleefully waves them about as he looks quite humorous wearing a scavenger hunt collection of Hans' Captain's hat he had pilfered from Elsa's head the moment he jumped on board; a corncob pipe that belonged to one of the sailors that they had left behind stuck in his toothy mouth now. His two joyous arms wave the precious holy relics of the kingdom around as if he actually were his namesake.

"Olaf, act properly." It only took those few authoritative words from instructor Kai looking down at him firmly for the misbehaving snowman to ante up the stolen items and hand them over to the stern teacher sporting a white cravat who knew how to gain respect from his pupils.

"Yes, sir." Olaf salutes Elsa and Anna's smart professor before he wanders off again in search of the two missing members of this journey.

"Spzzt-spzzt! Where's Flynn-er Eugene, cousin Rapunzel? Is he playing hide and seek with JustHans below deck? Can I play, too?" Snowpea-brain Olaf conspiratorially whispers up to Rapunzel as he tugs on her skirts and blinks up with the innocent query. The two quietly trail away under Elsa's curious eye, as Kai begins to explain all that transpired up to this point to his King.

"The very morning that Queen Elsa went missing from Arendelle Castle, Gerda and I left in search of where she had disappeared to. Inquiries and reports from your friend Captain Rustung, Sire, led us to the rumored evidence that ships and ocean crossings and pirates of the high seas were involved." The somber eyed man says gravely, showing his concern that caused him to go into immediate action in his deceased best friend's place as not only the manager the household, but a father figure that the young women needed desperately in these changing times of turmoil.

"So following the trail the good Captain pointed out through our telegraphed communications, I thought it wise to employ the newly updated frigate that I had continued to modernize as you would have wished for your Navy to continue on in your honor, your Majesty."

Grateful King Agdar pats his old friend on the shoulder, knowing that he left the right person in charge of Arendelle to dutifully watch over his family in his place.

"To protect and care for your most precious treasures, your jewels named Elsa and Anna, who I walked down the aisle in your stead, my King, just the day before. I decided to spare not the Sjoforsvaret's swiftest, most formidable warship to employ it to the unknown task of tracking down this vile villain of a thieving pirate and retrieve our lost Snow Princess." In his pompous voice, Kai speaks in the terms that he always heard Agdar nickname is blonde elder girl that only Gerda and Kai and his sister Johanne who served as Idun"s ladies maid now, knew of the family's icy secret.

And of course that meant his wife, faithful, loving and caring Gerda felt exactly the same way. The pair of rusty adventurers, well past their prime, were willing to race out into danger, to bring the children they helped raise into independent young women, home again safely.

"When Olaf blew on board while we were just coming out of refueling at the port of Namsos, your Majesty, with this awesome tale, Gerda and I were at first skeptical. But the nearer we approached, seeing the path of that monster's destruction and the sea's unrest, this story didn't seem as unbelievable as I first thought. After all, Gerda and I are both very familiar with implausible fairytales." The portly Royal advisor shares a knowing glance with his wife as both recall their fateful encounter with a certain Northern Queen that made all this adventure and legends seem ordinary.

"I always knew you would be our steady anchor to rely on in the end, my old friend. It is good to see you, Kai." Agdar summons all the strength stand up straight and tall.

_And never slouch, young man! One day you will hold your head high as Arendelle's King!_ Agdar still remembers this strict tutor's bolstering words to an uncertain boy just coming into his trying ice powered adolescence.

As his instructor, Kai had trained the young King to grow up immersed in history and knowledge of the kingdom. Kai had, as a friend, helped Agdar endure the years spent in a lonely Arendelle Castle together. After all, this intelligent young teacher came highly recommended by the Snow Queen herself through a royal epistle sent to Agdar's royal parents.

The older King and Queen of Arendelle wisely commissioned Kai, just a teenager himself, to be Agdar's tutor and mentor growing up so sheltered and hidden away from the outside world.

Kai was one of the only souls in the world who was privy to the special cryokinetic gifts of the young Crown Prince. Agdar was grateful to learn much about his awesome powers' potential through Kai, and his wife and sister that he brought along with him through their own experiences and acquaintances with the Snow Queen of the North.

"The Feia will secure the disabled Gler to the Lofoten port, your Majesty, then bring it to dry dock in Bodo. We will travel on the Feia back to Arendelle from there." At Kai's signal, obedient sailors under his command, saluting with wide eyes and awe at their returned King, stream over some of Elsa's created bridges between the ships to the Gler in order to employ its much used windlass wench and clamping cables.

"Your Majesties." With a respectful nod as the sailors behind him were ready, Kai includes Elsa as well in addressing the two returned rulers of her parents. "Arendelle will be beside herself with blessed joy and laughter to welcome you home again." The normally pompous and stiffnecked proper man expresses his subtle happiness in these agreeable lofty words to Agdar and Idun with the backdrop of every sailor on board the Feia saluting their returned King and Admiral all at once.

Speaking of admirals…

"And I'm quite interested to meet the young man that you have dubbed as your Vice Admiral, Sir. I believe we have met before, under less than satisfactory circumstances. But if you have judged him worthy, Sire…" One to hold a grudge, Kai remembers a certain red-haired Prince for his past uncouth dealings with Arendelle. Although, since Olaf had been extolling the reformed virtues of the Dane all the trip here, it would be King Agdar's final say in the matter that would hold water for Arendelle's Chief Counselor.

"Where is that Hans, anyway? Or Cousin Eugene for that matter? Olaf didn't find either of them. But I know I saw Hans running around and swimming to dive for Mama, quite unfrozen, Kristly! Let's go below deck and make sure those crazy sneaky brothers really aren't still skulking in the shadows onboard somewhere, while Elsa's busy with Papa and Kai." Anna whispers hastily in her husband's ear as the two young people quickly take off down the companionway steps when no one was looking.

"Thank you, Kai. Dear Gerda, allow me to help you." Gentlemanly Agdar says to his sweet friendly cook and housekeeper who had been always helpful with that forever young childlike wonder about her. Agdar had watched Gerda fearlessly climb her short, pleasantly plump form over Elsa's formulated ice stairway bridge, following some of the sailors across to the Gler's deck that his clever girl had linked the two naval craft together with.

"Urgh!" But amidst all the good-natured smiles, Agdar suddenly cannot restrain the exerted utterance that he tried to subdue. His not yet ready to be taxed arm and stumbling leg strain to steady Gerda's chubby form down from Elsa's ice ramp steps.

"Oh my! My poor boy! Are you unwell, my Dearie?! Tell Gerda where it hurts." In her doting, caring way, Gerda coos over the handsome 42-year-old King whom had, she just notices, lost that vibrant ginger of his hair in these past five years since she had last seen him.

"No, Gerda, dear. It's not your fault. Merely–_huff_–winded. These new/old legs will be right as rain–_huff_—soon. It just may take a little time for me to get back in shape after being bedridden for the past five years." Agdar tries to laugh off in embarrassment for stumbling and struggling just to stand after the harrowing events of the last few days had come to a climactic finish now in its peaceful aftermath.

His physical body, after going through so many changes, convolutions and magical healings of late had been left still weak, and at times faint. However, the Arendelle King's stubborn streak wouldn't capitulate to it.

"I'll be back to my old self in no time." Agdar announces defiantly, standing up on that new leg as tall as he could to proudly stride across the deck for a moment or two before faltering.

"Agdar!"

"Papa!"

Idun and Elsa cry out, wanting to rush to him, but fortunately Kai was right away at Agdar's side, ready to steady his friend.

"Your Majesty, you must rest. Please rely on us to transport the entire royal family all safely home. We will sort out everything there." As chief Royal Advisor for many years, Kai felt responsible for taking up the reins of decision-making for the, at times, rash young King-to-be he had been charged with long ago. As well as his pair of headstrong daughters now when Councilor Kai was called upon to stand in as regent of the kingdom for a few years before Elsa's coming of age coronation upon the King and Queen's death.

When it came to quiet gentle spoken deliberation, Kai was the thoughtful rock the people of Arendelle could always turn to.

"Yes, Agdar will require time to fully recover from all of this before he returns to duty. There is much to impart that has occurred these past five years." Queen Idun says as she approaches Kai to have her husband lean on her constant shoulder.

Though she was still so beautiful, the age behind her eyes fully told of all she had endured at her husband's side as the undernourished, diminuitive and frail Queen was still spirited enough to offer a smile to her anxious Arendelle friends.

"But the Lord has never abandoned us, and has given us this second chance to live again we must continually praise him without ceasing." Idun says gently, with a quiet power behind her words.

_"'For I am the Lord your God, who upholds you in trouble, who says to you, 'Do not fear, I will help you. I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you.'"_ Isaiah 41:13

And as Idun reverentially shares the Bible's holy words that have sustained the fear stricken and tortured Queen of Arendelle all through those terrible years, Gerda could see that same brilliant light still behind the eyes of the woman before her. The inextinguishable shine that had glowed in the eyes of the 16-year-old Swedish Princess young Crown Prince Agdar had been blessed to bring home to Arendelle one day as his bride.

While Kai and Elsa attend to Agdar, and Anna and Kristoff come up from an extensive search for Hans in the decks below, Gerda wraps her arms around Idun's strong faith, that was yet thankful, even through strife and torment, in a loving, tender hug.

"Warm hug time! I love warm hugs!" Indiscriminate Olaf hugs whoever was beside him, that just happening to be Sven, until the naughty reindeer tries the nibble at his carrot nose, Svala looking on at the comical scene, amused.

"The Good Lord blessed our Agdar—and our country—with the treasure of you and your little girls, my Queen. I've waited so long to be able to tell you that, Idun." As a dear friend more than a palace servant, Gerda embraces the tired, thin woman as she touches Anna and Elsa's teary-eyed cheeks with a warm familial hand.

"Come, my dearies. Let's get your Papa home to take a well-deserved rest in the bosom of his loving family and kingdom. Don't you worry about a thing. We'll take care of everything from here on in. You just rely on old Gerda and Kai. All righty, my dearies?" The devoted housekeeper pets and pampers her beloved ones, hugging each in turn and then over again.

For little Agdar's family had become her family too. The childless woman and her husband had seen so much of the world and the riches of love's warmth through the cold snowstorms they overcame at an early age.

After Kai had crossed the deck to speak to Ensign Jan at the helm, the Gler, after many Navy officers make quick work of attaching the two ships together, is hauled to the shore by the powerful frigate HmNoS Feia. Kai then joins Gerda in surrounding the reunited Arendelle Bernadotte family the couple had watched over for loyal years in faithful service of.

As he and Gerda meet one another's eyes, both were sure they saw the white rose petals they loved, the same ones that graced their summer wedding day those 42 happy years passed by, flutter in the form of delicate snowflake sculptures from the sky above.

And the pair of ageless adventurers gaze up to see a familiar flying white polar bear through the sky. There, their Snow Queen of old and that mysterious minstrel Ragi together were un-aged still as the mystical pair land on the Gler's stem before them.

The epitomized beauty of the winter is able to take human form again through her husband Ragi's liberated Wind Whisperer abilities of nature for all to see and hear her freely.

"Snow Queen! You are every bit as lovely as last we met, decades ago!" Gerda giggles like a schoolgirl upon seeing her ethereal old friend again face-to-face.

"And you're every bit as sweet, my Gerda." The Snow Queen smiles in that inexorable elegant way as her icy blue lips and palest blue eyes were full of a heartfelt warmth nonetheless. Even more of an almost human warmth than they had ever seen her possess before.

"Your Majesty!" Though his bones were creaky, and his rotund form not so sleek, nothing could stop Kai from bowing reverently to the ground before the Snow Queen he once worshiped in his childhood, from where he was attending a distressed and weak Agdar.

Her return giggles tinkle with snow flurries as the Snow Queen kisses Kai's now plump cheek, remembering that little blonde boy who started all of her curiosity with humanity. And even though his darkened, receding hair appearance was vastly different from that wide-eyed child with a full shock of curly blonde tufts, much akin to her own baby boy Kristoff now, to her, Kai was still and always will be that beautiful boy she first glimpsed in the mirror that opened her mind to love.

After giving Kristoff, who was standing beside Ragi, a loving glance, the Snow Queen then turns her attention to where her other extended family that she had embraced under her white wing was, full of concern around their weak and perspiring with uncommon heat feverish than frozen cold father who struggles for breath although from his mouth was coming out cold puffs.

"Fear not, children. Your father's physical form is adjusting yet." The Snow Queen's cold heart had been touched by human warmth Gerda showed her once, enough to show compassion to give reassurance to Agdar's family.

For she herself had gone through a transition much like this in between that time when she lost her powers when she had over-taxed them in diffusing a volcano to save lives. But she then regained them back some twenty-four years ago when a golden miracle was born. Even the all powerful, ancient spirit called the Snow Queen herself had to learn control anew under the calm gentle warmth of a wondrous man named Ragi's tender patient natural training and attention.

"For a time, my Wind Chime Boy's progressively healing body will be adjusting to his now established and realized ice powers come to fruition that he had constantly shielded and denied before. The balance of his mortal human warmth and manifested ice powers that had been developed as a flood and under such sudden strain, now that he has tasted its power, will be difficult for him to control, at first. Just as you struggled in your youth, Elsa. Your father is going through that now again." Speaking from experience herself, the Snow Queen affixes her cool gaze between Agdar and his icy offspring with a measure of maternal caring that she had gained from being a mother of a child herself since she suffered that power ambiguity.

"Your father will require your stabilizing cryogenic abilities and instructive advice at certain critical junctures in the next few weeks, perhaps months of his ice manifestation. At least until his involuntary systems have not only fully recuperated, but also become accustomed to his special gifts with no harm to himself or others, little Ice Angel." The Snow Queen speaks directly into Elsa's wide cerulean blue eyes.

"And until then, you must remain ruler of your country in his place, to keep the strain of running a kingdom from his mind, until he is ready."

"Me? Teach Papa to control his ice? I – I wouldn't know where to start." As she shifts her light weight from high heeled to other high-heeled foot, that tiny gnawing uncertainty that Elsa still retained way in the back of her introverted heart causes the quiet young woman to almost wince at the idea telling her wise old her father what to do, as he tried in her youth to instruct, instead of vice versa.

"Agdar's renewed leg and arm must have constant iced conditioning for several weeks, due to his body's rejecting the feverish regrowth that may destroy any chance he has to retain either limb. So, until he rehabilitates to normal temperatures, I will take him with me back to my chilly Snow Castle in the far North to maintain his low body temperature while he recovers." The cold hard logic of the Snow Queen's candid words hit Elsa, Anna, and Idun like a ton of ice bricks.

"No! Papa!" Grabbing her Papa's feverish left hand as he was closing his eyes to try to focus and contain, Anna defies her mother-in-law. The ginger Princess was very upset that their happy family life she so longed for all these lonely years was about the split up again for an unknown period time if the Snow Queen was take her Papa away to the far North in order to heal.

"It's all right, Anna! Please, calm down." After soothing her perturbed mother's cheek with a cool palm, seeing how affected Anna was by the terror of being separated again, that she too felt exquisitely inside, Elsa puts her two hands on her little sister's trembling with fear shoulders.

"I will do it, your Majesty." Regal Elsa states assuredly as she stands erect to take an assertive step forward towards the tall and imposing blonde Snow Queen.

"My Ice Palace I have created on the North Mountain will make an ideal cold environment for Papa to remain cool and learn to use his icy gifts, until we can acclimate him to live back in Arendelle, not so far away. With Mama and Anna and Kristoff and Kai and Gerda and everyone in Arendelle supporting me, with God's guidance, I know I can do this. Please. Please let me help my Papa in his time of need. You can rely on me." Elsa quietly, with rationale, petitions the Snow Queen with a confident pride in herself and her abilities she never knew she owned until this very moment.

And she discovered it all for the love of her family.

"You truly have the warm heart of a legendary monarch and responsible Queen, sweet Ice Princess." The Snow Queen brushes Elsa's artistic chin with a genuine smile and bowed nod of respect to the courageous younger woman's strength of purpose, though somehow sensing the girl's hidden heart in love's yearning.

"I leave you in capable and fearless good hands, my Windchime boy. God be with you." And with a tender kiss to Agdar's hot brow that cools down the febrile man instantly to sustain him for a while, her translucent hand is surprised to be felt to be squeezed by Idun's grateful warm palm that would forever be by her Agdar's side, thanks to her daughter Elsa.

And the Snow Queen's projected soul's embodiment, due to her own man of nature Ragi that she would eternally sit beside, smiles along with the other lovely mother she shared so much with.

The Snow Queen then joins her own ageless man upon the back of the tame, pristine white polar bear that Kristoff, Sven and Svala were making fast friends with.

{"Take good care of my Svala, Anna. Consider her our wedding present to you. I know you'll be her friend. Farewell, for now, my boy"} With a farewell salute to his cherished reindeer companion he leaves for his son's wife to travel alongside Kristoff and Sven. Ragi then uncharacteristically bids Kristoff a cordial goodbye rather than his usual simply disappearing act, causing Kristoff to look up through shielded eyes against the dazzling streaks of the Aurora Borealis.

{"Ég elska þig, barnið mitt." (I love you, my child)} With an icy blown kiss of snow flurries, the Snow Queen sends out her tender message in her native Icelandic tongue. The Wind Whisperer in Kristoff instantly translates through his mental spiritual connection she was able to log into through the years of love shared between herself and her soulful mate.

{"Goodbye, Muthir, Pabbie."} {"Thank you!"} Basking in the snowflakes falling around him full of motherly love that melt kisses on his cheek, Kristoff responds in affectionate kind as Anna, quick as a wink, reappears at his side to cut into his psychic transmission to his parents. As she drags her new reindeer doe companion along the deck with her, Anna scruffs Svala's tan furry cheeks with outward fondness.

Anna then wraps an emotionally exhausted arm around Kristoff's strong one. Together they watch Gerda and Kai wave off the departing pair and bid their farewells to the friends of their youth.

{"Please come and visit us up here in the North when your first child arrives. I long to hear the pitter patter of little feet again in my Snow Palace…"} The Snow Queen's wistful voice yearns for the immortal music of a child's laughter in both Kristoff and Anna's conjoined minds, though the pair react differently.

{"We'll get right on it, Snow Mama-in-law! There **is** an unfinished honeymoon we're about to get back to now. Right, Kristly?"} Despite her weariness of being awake for over 36 hours now, constantly on the action-packed move, Anna's unashamed bubbly yet amorous thoughts sing out through the mental airways Kristoff commanded. And the orangey Princess knew instantly she could tread upon there freely, since Kristoff's mind was an open book to her.

The vivacious girl's comment causes the Snow Queen and Ragi both to chuckle at their son's choice of an outspoken, lively Princess.

"Oof! Anna! What was that for?" Kristoff gulps bashfully and blushes violently when his new wife elbows her virile young stud none too gently in his solar plexus.

"Am I right, Kristly?" She asks again, just wanting to hear she was still loved and wanted.

"Yeah, you said it, Baby. Your wish is my command." Kristoff, seeing her emotionally spent need, wraps up his bride in strong arms and covers her wobbling lips with the much-needed kiss between lovers.

"Kveðjum…" (Farewell…) The Snow Queen speaks on the cool trade winds for all the world to hear just before she fades from sight, her melodic voice echoing through the polar sky.

Kristoff, finishing their kiss, watches his Nature mentor father and Winter spirit of a mother fly across the sunsetting sky above upon their snow white Ursus Maritimus flying polar bear that circles sky before disappearing into a crystalline snowflake burst of brilliant white light.

And all together, as Anna flits back to scoop up Olaf to bring to her parents and Elsa's shared embrace, the close-knit Arendelle family watch the land of Norway's archipelago draw closer as faithful and reliable Kai and Gerda watch over them as promised.

Under the swirling green, yellow, red, orange, pink, blue and purple aurora borealis shifting waterfall of colors through the dark sky, the Gler is hauled in by the larger frigate Feia towards the safety of the Lofoten port opening to the immediate North's welcoming shores…

In the warm embrace of her family, Queen Elsa of Arendelle gazes behind where all the others were facing. For back out over the calm, dark waves of the entrancing seas under the magical Northern Lights' glow, she was sure she could sense someone dear's presence whispering her name. Through the uncertainty and questions, Elsa still felt that overwhelming desire to believe in Prince Hans, to rely on his fidelity and abiding love, without fear…

_'There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear…'_

* * *

The same time as our other journeymen were under a different sky, heading over the Southern Isles' more unhospitable coastline…

* * *

Min kärlek - my love in Swedish

Muthir - Mother in Icelandic

Pabbie- Father in Icelandic

"Ég elska þig, barnið mitt." - 'I love you, my child' in Icelandic

Kveðjum" – 'Farewell' in Icelandic

* * *

Happy White Day, Frozen Friends!

For those of you who are familiar with Japanese culture, you know that today is actually considered the most romantic day of the year! At least the fulfilling, happy end kind of romance!

You see, unlike in the West, Valentines' Day is a sort of warm-up for White Day, exactly one month later on March 14th! ! On Valentines' in February, the girl is the one to give chocolates and handmade gifts (preferred to be homemade from the heart to commercially bought presents) to the boy they're sweet on.

Now if the boy returns that affection and wishes to begin a relationship with the girl who showered him with choco-love, then he gives her back a present today. Not necessarily just chocolates (though that is totally acceptable for all of us sweet-toothed lovers!) but jewelry and plush toys or some other sentimental expression of the love that they now unabashedly can share, since their danced around relationship is out in the open at last!

I know it sounds a bit inverse old-fashioned and quixotically silly, but Japan's honor-driven male society abhors the disgrace of rejection, so the female must show some interest and prompting first. But I still think it's kinda a sweet, romantic notion! ^_^

Plus you get **two** nationwide holidays full of chocolate kisses and true love!

Okay! Now that's explained! Onto storytime chatter!

Faithful Kai &amp; Gerda's own young romance blossomed through their own first meeting with the fabled Snow Queen &amp; Ragi (who just happen to be Kristoff's parents, It's a Small Small World! :) can be seen in the NHK Japanese anime "Yuuki no Joou" (The Snow Queen) The anime is referred to many times in this chapter because of all the Snow Queen versions, I consider it most spot on. It really is a beautifully done and true to Hans Christian Anderson's original tale, with some wonderful heartwarming characters and touching scenes. I recommend for all of you Frozen fans to watch the subtitled version to see The Snow Queen, Ragi, Holger and Gerda and Kai as children!

Here's my White Day return present to all of you! A new chapter full of longing romance and forever true love!

Happy White Day, everybody!

HarukaKou


	64. Chapter 63 - Act V: Take Me Home Again

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act V**

**Chapter 63**

**"Take Me Home Again"**

The Feia had docked with the hauled Gler into Lofoten port for repairs of the battle-worn, but still viable naval craft as it goes in for an extensive overhaul after its first lifesaving mission at sea.

As its passengers disembark to step on the stability of dry land after their long and arduous journey involving a ruthless wicked pirate, a ferocious sea monster, not to mention the deadly Moskenstraumen on top of all that, they could all give a collective sigh of relief.

Although, being the last to descend the gangplank due to a quick change of clothing to her more modest and less attention-grabbing purple velveteen dress and matching jacket, Queen Elsa of Arendelle stops to gaze longingly behind her at the vacant deck of the Gler. There, so many memories were born for her and the ghost of a certain redheaded man whom she had made Kommander of both the schooner ship and of her heart.

Even if Hans Westergaard was no longer present anywhere on the well searched ship.

With one last glance from the corner of her eye, Elsa suddenly sees the Dane's svelte figure, tall and gallant standing on the ship's top deck. Kommander Hans Westergaard was competently perched, his long-legged form with his naval telescope in hand, leaning against the bulwark railing of the ship that he served as its courageous Captain.

Just as he turns away, with the moonlight silhouetted behind him, Elsa was about to call out Hans' name. But her voice chokes in her throat when she realizes there was no one really there, just some faint reddish streaks of the Aurora Borealis hailing from the distant sky blinding her eyes. And Elsa's hopeful extended hand, greacefully reaching towards him, falls lifelessly to her side.

As the sea waves crash against the still hull of the deserted Gler where it was moored at the Lofoten wharf, Elsa sighs into this darkened late July early 2 AM morn. Now that the Midnight Sun days had ended, the first fall of a true dark night causes the beautiful blonde to close her eyes sadly, feeling that her summer was nearly over.

"Is Papa really going to be all right, Elsa?" Shivering as she calls upwards from the pier she was standing on, Princess Anna's usual happy and bubbly face, contorted with worry for her dear father, brings the older sister back to cold reality and Elsa finally breaks away from her reverie.

The Ice King had collapsed on the Gler earlier, after all the strain of his newly regenerated body after years of debilitation, then his overwhelming taking on fight with the Draugen sea monster to protect his family and country. Finally his momentous confrontation with the Moskenstraumen maelstrom was just too much for him to withstand.

Now at a loss for control, their Papa was internally struggling to keep his cryokinetics in check. His feverish involuntary coping with the process of healing, even as his developed ice powers were rebelling against his mortal warmth, just itching to be unleashed.

So it was up to Ice Queen Elsa to keep her father's physical body cool enough so that his cryo powers could be contained to ensure that the miraculous gifts of his renewed arm and leg would not be in vain.

"Yes, Anna. If we follow the Snow Queen's instructions, I am sure Papa will be fine. Your Papa is tougher than he looks, min spadbarns." (_my little one_) As she caresses her handsome mate's softly breathing cheek, Idun recalls her first meeting with her future husband, some twenty-four years ago. That was when her dashing Crown Prince of Norway had rescued and first touched the hand of this idealistic young Swedish Princess with his thin frame's surprising cool strength. Idun remembers how impressed she was when spectacular eighteen-year-old Prince Agdar lifted the sixteen-year-old, Princess out of a rockslide danger easily over the precipice and up to his chest.

The certain electricity that had passed between Agdar and Idun on that special spring day had never been doused this quarter-century of constant love since…

"By the mercy of our Father above, your Papa will be normal again someday soon, with Elsa's help and a lot of rest on the journey home to Arendelle, Anna." Queen Idun answers her younger daughter, grateful to Gerda when the plump older woman comes scooting back-and-forth from the waiting carriage with a shawl to wrap around the diminutive Queen's shoulders.

"Yeah, he is a tough guy. I remember how he used to pick us up and spin us around the air like we were birdies! I was never too big to go for a ride with Papa!" Perking up, Anna giggles at the pleasant, fun memory, not too distant, when her mother pets her troubled brow and smoothes the wrinkles away.

"Elsa is the strong one now. Papa will be so pleased." Idun gazes with such warm pride upon her capable and ice proficient daughter that Agdar had spent many hours in anxiety over abandoning Elsa, all through their captivity, without ever explaining their ice connection when his snow princess needed him most.

"You're right! Elsa is so strong." Anna adds her own pride in her big sister's phenomenal abilities and capable mind to lead a country for these past two years without their parents.

Even from where she had been atop the Gler's vacated deck, the sad-eyed Elsa had been masterfully attending to her Papa where he was on the stretcher below, while Mama and Rapunzel were keeping vigil, taking turns singing their healing medley.

"I'm sorry, Anna. What were you saying?" Turning back on the Gler with a nod to Kai who was ordering its repairs officially underway, Elsa glances to her little sister and blinks.

Elsa was continuing to sustain King Agdar's chilled body and monitoring his below normal temperature as the sailors carried his stretcher towards the coach awaiting their departure. But the dejected look that had left only traces of melancholy on her beautiful, quickly composed face, causes Anna to be worried anew, now for her sister.

And though it pained her, Anna knew exactly the reason why Elsa was left sad.

"Just…" Anna smiles in the natural darkness, sensing how hard this all was for her Elsa. And even if Anna despised Prince Hans once upon a time, when she would have wished him to disappear like this, and just leave Elsa alone, many times on their incredible adventure, she didn't want it to be like this.

Anna loved her sister enough to recognize that Elsa's heart was breaking because that red-haired Casanova was no longer around.

_I guess he's not a Casanova… He did truly seem to care about Elsa… And maybe this going away proves that he's not just mercenary and out to marry one of us to take over our kingdom anymore…_

The good girl in Princess Anna concedes at last that even a scumbag, like Prince Hans was before, could be transformed by the power of the Almighty.

Anna's mind whirs with the forbearing thoughts of Hans' unexplained absence, without looking for acclaim nor gratitude for his important role in this daring adventure, that could mean he was genuine this time.

_Yes, I guess he did his share, and then some. Even I can't deny it._

_Just when we could use a helping hand, Hans would jump right in the thick of it, over and over. He was there for Elsa, too, when she needed him most._

And now that Hans was gone, Anna could appreciate all he did for her sister, all he did for all of them. Even though she herself believed Elsa could do better, there was no refuting that Prince Hans of the Southern Isles had made a lasting impression on Elsa's once closed heart.

"I love you, Elsa." Anna sympathizes with her beloved sibling by wrapping Elsa up in a big bear hug, feeling the cool icy tear on Elsa's cheek melt into the warmth of her ginger hair.

"We'll all be fine now, because we're family. Imagine! We're a real family again, Elsa!" The loving Princess whispers in Elsa's ear with an ecstatic squeeze to her elder sister's thin slender waist. Both smiling Arendelle princesses then link arms to walk over the quay to where Mama and Papa were being seated into the waiting carriage.

Agdar's semi-conscious form is carefully placed into the carriage to prop against Mama's accommodating shoulder as she gives her children a sweet motherly smile over Papa's weak, but breathing, head.

The two girls, who had seen far too much loneliness and sorrow in their young lives, begin to cry with relieved tears of joy in one another's embrace at the realization that their cherished parents, who had been ripped from their lives far too soon, had been, by the grace of God, returned to them. And now, with their Mama and Papa back, everything would be just like it used to be again. But this time better, now that they truly understood one another.

There would be no more hidden, concealed secrets to stand in the way of their familial love and caring devotion for one another.

"Oh! Oh! Warm hug time! I want in, too!" Olaf interjects himself into the sisterly embrace. His cold mounds race across the planks of the dock wharf to bustle in between Elsa and Anna's leg until the boisterous clumsy snowman unwittingly hug stumbles them down to his level.

The collective stumbling snowman knocks an unsteady-on-her-pins Anna to fall back splat on her bloomer-ed behind. Her flailing legs and arms knock Olaf apart like a crashed house of cards as Elsa tries to keep her balance to gracefully sink to her knees upon a quickly created soft snow drift.

Relieved, exhausted, elated, overcome with so many emotions, the pair of young women together squish Olaf's various pieces in between their hugged laughter. Now, at the end of this arduous, dangerous journey that they surpassed together, helping and trusting one another with belief in their sisterly love, Elsa and Anna had become so much closer than they ever thought they could be.

Looking into one another's glistening eyes, Elsa and Anna burst into gleeful chuckles now, acting like the little kids from the childhood that was stolen from them, together again. Neither care what the astonished spectators were thinking as some chuckle along with the giddy duo of royal princesses. Anna and Elsa laugh until they were both in tears to watch their poor snowman scramble around, topsy-turvy upside down and headless in search of his disassembled stray parts.

"I love you too, Anna!" Elsa was in full fledged tears of relief now, drawing close the little sister who could always make her smile into a hug from where Anna was sprawled quite unladylike on the planked ground of the dock.

"Why are you crying? Are you hurt? Are you sad?" Reassembled, Olaf innocently blinks up at the pair of females. The dense frozen friend only associated tears with unhappiness. He was yet to discover why humans shed their bodily moisture for intense emotions on either side of the spectrum.

"No, Olaf. We have our Mama and Papa back! Why would be sad?" Fully into Anna's sunny frame of mind, Elsa sniffles back tears to smile bravely through her weeping heart and prove to herself and Anna that she could be strong for their family to be whole again.

"Good point, Elsa." A much deeper, more masculine voice than Olaf's responds from behind, which causes a suddenly self-conscious, blushing Elsa to leap up and immediately rise to her own feet with a start at Kristoff Bjorgman's bemused voice behind her.

Pompously, a mortified Kai, in-motion towards the carriage, scoots around the common and shirtless, lowly mountain man's wide shouldered frame to hastily intercept and offer his snobbish assistance to his honored Queen to steady his charge in Kristoff's place.

Arendelle's snooty High Counselor was just finishing speaking with the naval yard's port master as they addressed Ensign Jan, who was explaining where his other injured Navy shipmates had been safely deposited on Mosken island, as per Vise Admiral Westergaard's order.

With a quick salute to Elsa to avoid her about-to-question stare, the young helmsman mixes in with the gaggle of bustling sailors in their busy duties attending to the Gler, until he can no longer be seen.

Though fully capable of standing on her own, a still splat on the quay Anna lets her adoring body be pampered and lifted straight up as if she were a weightless dolly to her rugged mountain man's muscular strong arms.

"Anna." With a smirk at good-old Kai, Kristoff only need utter her name for the ginger Princess to feel like totally melting into the ripped bare chest of her gorgeous new husband.

"Oh, Kristly? I've missed you!" Anna whispers, pressing her cheek against his rigid pecs lovingly as he dutifully rubs her other, more downward sore cheeks until they felt better after that tripped fall to the hard planks.

"You and Olaf take your parents and Rapunzel with Kai and Gerda in the royal coach to the inn, Elsa." Kristoff calmly says to the platinum blonde ruler as the troupe begins to walk down to the waiting carriage where Gerda was beckoning her girls to join them.

"Since there's not enough room in there for all of us anyway, Anna and I will catch up with you guys at the ship's launch with Svala and Sven later." The levelheaded young man offers quite calmly and logically as he easily lifts Anna in his powerful arms in Sven's direction at the adjacent end of the wharf pathway, where he had already seen to the two reindeer feeding and watering.

"How much later?" Elsa asks softly, as not to be heard by Kai, or Papa for that matter, when the quartet nears the carriage. The sharp young woman saw that certain glint in Kristoff's eye as her little sister swooned against her virile new husband's warmth.

_GULP_

"Tomorrow morning?" A gulping, hopeful Kristoff was still sweet enough to blush under big sister Elsa's inquiring, penetrating gaze.

"Tomorrow, at daybreak. Just be sure you're early, before the Feia sails, Kristoff. I don't want to have to do much explaining should Papa awaken asking questions of Anna's whereabouts. Take good care of my sister." Elsa lays the ground rules to her brother-in-law with a haughty teasing smirk at the pair of young lovers on perhaps their last chance for the freedom of honeymoon bliss before the long trip heading home under a certain parent's frosty watchful eye.

"You heard the lady, Sven." With a broad smile across his face, Kristoff elbows his best friend as the reindeer saunters close for Kristoff to load blissful Anna onto the Rangifer's sturdy back, her olive green print dress blowing of the sea breeze as he swings her body around.

{"I'll do my best, Elsa. But these two are hopelessly incorrigible."} Sven projects his humored thoughts, knowing full well that Kristoff – and maybe a coy eyed Svala, who wondered what mischief lay ahead from the way Kristoff and Sven exchanged looks – was the only other one able to hear his words.

Elsa merely gets a 'HOMN! HOMN! HOMN!" coupled with an enthusiastic nod and accusatory big brown eyes upon the tall Ice Harvester and his piquant new bride.

"Come on, Sven, Svala. We have a few hours before being shipboard again." Slinging his dark cape over his shoulder, Kristoff salutes to Elsa as he mounts his reindeer and rides onto the Lofoten beachfront in between the craggly rocks.

His madly in love little wife was clutched to his back with her closed-eyed smiling face pressed to it in between the folds of his noble gold trimmed cape. Anna's arms greedily wrap to tightly slither around Kristoff's impressive bare waist.

Although she was still worried about her ailing, yet stable, parent, Anna had learned long ago to compartmentalize any negative emotions and override them with joyous happy ones, even during the loneliest times of her youth.

"Kristly? Where are we going?" Not really caring, but wanting to hear his voice, Anna murmurs deliriously in love with her brawny hero.

"I'll take you wherever you want to go until daybreak, Baby." Smiling, Kristoff whispers behind his shoulder in a husky voice to his beautiful girl as Sven rounds along the shoreline.

"_Come_ _away, come away, my love. And I'll carry you over the sea. Come away, come away, my love. And I'll make you as happy as me… You are young. You are beautiful! And I want you to be free… Come away, come away with me… "_Kristoff begins to sing in his tender mellow voice to his pretty young bride as Sven kicks up the sand of the beach.

Kristoff's sure grip holds to his reindeer buddy's soft fur neck-mane as Anna clings to the rock-hard abs of her melodic love. Through all this tumultuous danger and frightening trouble, her Kristoff was always her solid rock, the strength she could always rely on to come running for her even without saying a single word.

The soft wind on her face, the crashing winds of the sea gently rolling over her ears with his steadily breathing warmth beneath her fingertips, Anna opens her brilliant aqua eyes to see the dazzling array of the Northern Lights streak across the dark midnight sky, as if just for them. And her Kristly's serenade made it all so perfect, so romantic, just like Anna always dreamed. She needed to feel his gentle, caring love right now and the intuitive young Wind Whisperer sensed it.

"We have 'til daybreak? Then I hope this night never ends, Mr. Bjorgman." Dreamy Princess Anna whispers rather amorously, her pounding heart racing to let go of all the pensive fear and heart-wrenched worry of the last dozen or so days when the newlyweds had a mission to tackle and couldn't focus on each other at all.

"I love you, Mrs. Bjorgman." Feeling the exact same way, Kristoff responds to her breathy invite of a honeymoon restart by swiveling his pure muscle athletic torso around on Sven's racing back until he and his lovely new bride were face-to-face with one another.

And mouth-to-mouth soon enough, too as they pick up where the honeymoon left off now that everything had settled down and the battle finally was all over.

The Snow Prince and Arendelle Princess' lips lock as, in always perfect Wind Whispered balance, the young lovers embrace their fleeting freedom while Sven races around the breathtaking Lofoten beachfront scarp.

With Kristoff and Anna breathless under the rainbow illumination of the Aurora Borealis' special lights emblazoned across the midnight blue sky, the flying reindeer pair running side by side, exchange a knowing glance.

Spontaneously as one, Sven and Svala take to soar to the aerial heights of Kristoff and Anna's love, carried upon the paths of those amazing shimmered streams of light glistening over the iridescent sea…

* * *

"Let's go, Olaf." Watching her sister and brother-in-law take off, reindeer bound towards the still seashore beach beyond the rocky hills west of Lofoten Peninsula, Elsa smiles. She then, as second nature with ease, waves an ice magic hand to salvage her snowman creation's multiple scattered parts to reassemble those squirrelly arms back into him in a snow flurry flash.

"Thanks, Elsa!" Olaf smiles toothily as he quite naturally uses those reattached appendages to grab hold of Elsa's lonely hand, even as the few others on the 2 AM quiet pier respectfully bow their heads to the regal sovereign Queen. Elsa regains her composure again to walk stately towards the carriage where her parents and Kai and Gerda awaited.

"I wonder what's in this interesting parcel. Somebody must've dropped it. I thought we already loaded all the luggage on the carriage roof? That was fun! Except the falling off part. Although my gal back home would think it funny. Eliana thinks everything I do is funny! Especially when I tumble!" Olaf giggles at his own clumsiness and what the snowgirl he left behind in Arendelle would think of his antics. Olaf, in passing, asks of the interesting small packet that he had picked up from the ground where the trio fell down before.

"Olaf! Give me that!" A red-faced and vexed Elsa suddenly scrambles to rudely grab hold of the half open package and shove it beneath her purple jacket.

But it was too late. Olaf had already seen the wrapped contents and surprisingly recognizes it right away.

"The blue silk pajama shirt? Wasn't this the one that you bought for –?"

"Olaf, be quiet." The embarrassed young Queen chastises her tactless snowfriend as she looks around, making sure that no one had seen or heard the exchange.

"Okay." Zipping his ice-sealed lip, literally, Olaf guilelessly blinks and smiles up at her as he reattaches to a flustered Elsa's hand to hold and walk the rest of the way to the carriage in amiable silence.

"Where is Princess Anna?" There, Kai was waiting for his young charges impatiently before giving the order for the driver to proceed to the nearby Vandrerhjem hostel inn in the southernmost, devastated village of Å. Kai looks around Elsa and Olaf loading into the carriage for the- _as usual_\- dawdling orangey head.

"They'll be joining us later at the hostel, Kai. You may go now, driver. Please." An uncomfortable Elsa overrides Kai's questioning stare out the window in search of Anna and her absconded lowly mountain man consort.

"Good for you, Anna." Joining Kai's gaze out the carriage window to see Anna and Kristoff quite intimately close and kissing through the reindeer crossed skyline, Queen Idun congratulates her younger child's ability to take her love and run with it the minute she had the chance.

_Which is more than I can say for you, my poor Elsa._

Idun wonders what happened to her older child's prospects of that handsome young hero, who appeared to have left the romantic stage, without even saying a single farewell, fond or otherwise to any of them.

_Perhaps you frightened the poor boy off, Agdar. You do have an intimidating icy stare, min alskare, when it comes to young suitors come to court your precious little girls._

Idun looks down to the strong stubborn chin where her attractive spouse peacefully was resting his head on her shoulder.

_But perhaps I was amiss in thinking my reluctant Elsa was ready for love…_

Suddenly, Idun's serious doubts are all dashed away.

While everyone else in the lurching forward coach was busied with some task or conversation, the keen eyed mother sees her blonde daughter, seated on the other side of the resting, unconscious King, quietly lean towards the window with her face behind her purple jacket lapel.

There, Elsa had buried her nose in the pale blue silken folds of what appeared to be a man's nightshirt, with a sigh full of stifled longing that only a woman who had known true love could understand.

"Psst! Psst! That **is** the shirt you specially picked out for JustHans in that nice little shop in Salsbrucket, Elsa! JustHans let me try it on when he was changing aboard the Gler. I wanted to know my size and if I looked good in that color like JustHans did. Then I could drop some hints for my girl Eliana back home to get me one, too. Maybe in a chartreuse..or a teal… But definitely not yellow. Ooh! Yellow and snow, no go! I bet Eliana'll get me a silk shirt just like it for Christmas!" Olaf gazes up to Elsa, starry eyed at the thought of his frosty sweetheart bestowing upon him such a sweet gift as Elsa did for her guy.

"I wonder where JustHans is now? I miss him and our little chats already." Olaf's soft inane prattle as he plunks to Elsa's feet on the carriage floor confirmed Idun's suspicions. And all hope on the front of love was not a lost cause for her darling Elsa after all.

For just that forlorn yet dreamy expression on Elsa's face at the mention of her young Danish Prince's name told Idun reams of the love story going on in her quiet daughter's heart.

_So if Elsa did not discourage you, and I truly doubt her father could have stunted such a valiant young love that boldly dared to challenge an Ice Queen's cold heart and win it, then what did happen to drive you away, Prince Hans? After all that you did as a hero of our nation… I do wish your dear mother were still alive so I could contact her and ask of your whereabouts. Though we had only met that one time, I instantly felt a kinship with Queen Louise, as if we could open up and speak on any matter, especially concerning a fortuitous budding romance between our children…_

* * *

_**Just south of the Norwegian border, beyond the fjords…**_

"No! Don't, Ruddi! Father won't like it! Please don't! He'll blame me!" A tiny voice sings out from inside an old dark chest, clutching a bottle of paste.

"Shut your mouth, Squirrel! Or we'll throw the whole trunk into the moat! And we'll soon see if you can get out of that, Hans-dini!" The abnormally long-necked twelve-year-old with an alarming shock of wild, spiky blond hair and vague pale eyes spits out in distaste for the smaller boy, causing the bullied child to cringe.

In the feverish mind of that selfsame younger boy, a scene replays from his distant childhood that the 13th in-line Danish Prince would rather have forgotten… some 21 summers' end past ago…

* * *

Four and a half-year-old Hans didn't mind the dark. Maybe it was because growing up with 12 older brothers who constantly locked their youngest little brother in any one of the 66 room's hidden trunks and closets and box containers of all sizes and shapes, he was used to it. In fact, curious Hans reveled in uncovering the numerous secret passages inside of Egeskov Castle's ancient stone double walls. Often, his only getaway from his spiteful gang of brothers' torment, was staying hidden inside the recesses of their old cobwebby safety.

The boy, not fondly nicknamed '_Squirrel'_\- for the tuft of vibrant red brown hair that grew in quite a coiffed natural curl up the young child's forehead – had an uncanny knack for getting in and out of tight places. Not to mention the youngster's affinity for the wild grown nuts and berries of the land beyond the Castle moat in the hedge mazes.

Hans often scavenged there in his favorite beechnut maze for food when the bully boy brothers confiscated his breakfast and lunch and even dinners on evenings their strict father was not present at home.

If the unwelcome child could ever call this cold unfeeling stone castle by that hallowed and pleasant, warm name.

So, Hans had always kept to himself, trying to forget about his brutally unkind brothers, with one of his only escapes into some semblance of happiness—when he would gather all the berries and beechnuts and even some apples from the trees he'd climb to bring to his only pride and joy–a new dun foal in the Ladegården stables who let him be free to roam the glorious outdoors, every now and then.

When he was forced indoors again, 'Squirrel' didn't care about being cramped in tiny, musty old chests and obscured bureaus full of dust that the bullies would toss him into. Although they offered little air, the curious boy found they were so full of interesting old curiosities in books and ancient treasures hidden for forgotten centuries as part of their Egeskov Castle history, Hans was never bored. He looked on it all as a character building game that his clever mind would eventually devise a way out of the cruel entrapment in a sporting challenge for escape. So much so, the others would often ridicule him as a lowly conjurer, a looked-down on boy magician of sorts.

But all their taunting of his small slender build, the name-calling of his quiet self-possessed demeanor and stealing his few toys and books until he found his possessions discarded and torn to shreds in the forest, didn't bother him anymore.

But what the small boy _was_ terrified of was what his terse, callous father would say when he found out that the final page of his important treaty papers he had been working on and crunching the numbers of with Egeskov's many map drafters and account managers for days to finish in time for the pressing Royal meeting this very afternoon –

-Had gone missing from his desk late last night.

And the reason little Prince Hans was absolutely sure his father would blame him for being responsible for the missing document, even though the small child was totally innocent of the crime –

-Was because it had been torn to shreds by those naughty children who did take it to be locked inside the dusty old treasure chest with the tiny boy all night.

Hans had seen the wicked twins closest to his age, twelve-year-old, Ruddi and Rune, actually steal the page from their father's study desk and bandied it about with the other chortling boys as they plotted.

The group of them had snidely waved it in Hans' face, holding it out and hitting him with it until they forced poor Hans to rip it as he was baited to grab it back to rightfully return it to his irate parent's desk.

The young Squirrel had dashed around the castle with the ripped pieces in hand, collecting the bottle of paste in his mad dash around to the library. He fully intended on gluing the important paper back together and replacing it to the desk before his father found out that the naughty twins were messing with it.

But there were so many more impious brothers who soon joined in on having malicious 'fun' at Hans' expense. They were all so cruel to gang up against the poor child as they, en mass, chased their little prey down until they bagged him and dragged him kicking and screaming into an old chest.

The paper ripped from Hans' hand that the group of bad brothers vindictively shredded the rest of the way, rained down on Hans' head as they smashed closed the chest lid and locked it over him, taking the skeleton key, laughing and cackling as they all scampered merrily away.

Well, the moment that they were gone, Hans always tried to look on the bright side of even difficult situations.

At least this chest that his twin torturers, Ruddi and Rune, with the aid and assistance of at least four or five more of the older, bigger boys to dump him in the heavy chest and carry it upstairs, had to be hidden away from the servants on the east side of the unused, closed-up wing of Egeskov Castle's spooky attic.

Because at this location, the rising sun that was coming up would most probably peek into the large keyhole opening with just enough luminosity for this intelligent youngest Westergaard son to be able to read the document. He had, those long hours in the dark, already arranged together, by his fingers' sensitive touch, the ragged paper's edges and had fit the pieces together like the puzzle games he enjoyed playing at.

The steel nib dip pen Hans was so proud of was his one and only 4th birthday present from a visiting British special envoy who had a soft spot for birthdays. The haughty, yet kind-eyed and gentlemanly British representative of the Crown had come to discuss Denmark's economic ties with England in the agricultural sector and free access to the Baltic through the Danish Sound and Straits with the Danish King.

While visiting in Egeskov then, the tall, lanky diplomat on the wrong side of five and thirty, sporting a stub of a pulled back ponytail, took a shine to the adorably curious son of that late departed, warm and caring Scottish Princess. The British envoy who was continually attempting to light his pipe, once admired and tried to woo the stunning Princess in his youth. When Princess Louisa was still a flesh and blood, nymph of beauty in Scotland back home before this cold, cunning Dane conquered her heart with his overt good looks and sly charms.

And if her lonely littlest boy she'd never held in her arms looked like he could delight in this shiny and useful new friend of a pen, the generous man who delighted in caring for little children, would give him at least one parting birthday gift.

So with an ink bottle secured from one of the accountant's desks, the intelligent young lad had taught himself how to read and write when no one else was paying attention to his constant library excursions. He practically lived in the dusty old book warehouse where none of the other boys ever wished to roam. Hans was not missed by even the nannies who had long given up keeping track of the erstwhile clan. As long as he wasn't up to the mischief all of the other rascals were prone to, they let their littlest, only obedient charge to wander where he will.

So, Hans took out that cherished steel nib pen he hid away in his secret inside-inside best pocket from his hateful kleptomaniac brothers. With the trusty pointed metal nib he had become quite adept at, the four and a half year old had carefully sliced out a piece of blank parchment from the page of an old Bible blessedly left in the bottom of the chest he was prisoner of.

Upon it, the clever youth quickly copied every letter and number of the ripped up final page's figures and letters with such precision and diligence, he didn't even have to check his forged numerical equations or important letterings twice.

Mainly because young Hans didn't have the time to.

After he had deliberately copied his father's thick dark handwriting of words and numbers even down to the King's exact signature that the gifted boy forged, the 'Squirrel' had used his multifunctional, precious steel pen nib as a lock pick.

_**CLICK!**_

And even though from the inside the tumblers were more difficult to judge, the industrious young child who had not slept a wink all night for fear of what the formidable single parent may say, emerged from the cramped old chest soon thereafter.

After little Hans escaped the trunk, he carefully folded the neatly copied treaty paper that was near perfect to the original as could be, despite the fact that the forger was not yet of schoolhouse or tutoring age.

Without giving a second look to _that_ doll's glassy eyes staring blankly at him from her corner of the attic where it had been for centuries, 'that must remain untouched, or her curse would come to pass.' Or so he was told. This was curly dark-haired doll that his nasty brothers so often taunted him would come down the attic stairs and besiege him one day, as the youngest boy's room was nearest the attic door.

With a shiver, little Hans shook the attic dust from his feet.

The pliable youth squeezed through the opened attic window he had jimmied open with his many-use steel pen bit. Hans then began to fearlessly climb down the Egeskov's three-story, old rounded-stone, monk's brick conical towers as if he were some acrobatic lizard more than a four and a half year-old human child.

Through the rounded arch window, he silently snuck into his father's kingly study and managed to deftly plant the copied out treaty paper on the desk's edge.

Just seconds before King Herbert of the Southern Isles of Denmark first entered the room.

A panicked Hans snuck beneath the large carved desk's deep cavity so swiftly that the wind from his dashing had caused the paper he so slaved over to flutter to the floor nearby. But he didn't dare sneak back out to replace it on the desktop.

Terrified Hans didn't even dare breathe, nor let his vibrant red-head, covered with his upturned shirt, peek out from under the desk where his stern father didn't see the hard breathing child huddled in hushed silence.

The tall and handsome king, with hair graying at the edges of his temple, pensively paced the study before picking up the stack of important treaty papers awaiting his retrieval.

"One, two, three, four – Damnation! Where has that blasted last page gone?!" The ill-tempered King exploded, his fine-looking face which reddened with anger made his sour expression dreadful for Hans to see peeking through a crack in the desk top.

"Lars! Get in here! Stupid boy must have misplaced it!" Calling for one of his elder sons, the egghead one who had drafted the paper in conjunction with the harsh King these past two nights, King Herbert moved towards the desk rear to duck his head under the table in search for the paper. There, the frightened little boy was shrinking back, shaking his horrified head in cowered fear…

"What is wrong, father? Did you call for me? Are you unwell?" The elder teenage boy with dark hair and spectacles named Lars Westergaard, comes in from the Hall library where the studious lad spent most of his time.

Hans, who often shared lamplight with Lars in the library they were practically recluses within, was secretly glad that it was this elder brother whom Father called in.

Nineteen-year-old Lars, of all his brothers, was not as mean-spirited or vindictive as many of his other siblings. But the clinically logical teen lacked any amount of affection at all. Most of his interest was in dispassionate books of higher learning rather than joining the others in their game of tormenting their youngest, unwanted, 'Squirrel' of a littlest brother. The one whom all the others, from an early age, as their bitter father had taught them all, had 'murdered' their dear mother.

Of course, cerebral, well-educated, brainy Lars hardly believed that childbirth for an older woman gone wrong in this unsanitary day and age of medicine hardly warranted the serious accusation of murder to the unwitting offspring. So, he for one, held no animosity for Hans, as, illogically, did the others, stemming from the top.

As Lars walked into his father's study, his quick eyes beneath those spectacles and big ears immediately picked up that someone else was present in the room. But Lars was too detached to care one way or another as he calmly crossed the study to see what was wrong with those well-worked papers the irate King was thrashing about in the air angrily.

"What did you do with that final page, you fool?! I signed it and expressly told you to put my seal on it for me! What did you do? Mix this most important page up with one of those dusty old books your nose is constantly stuck in, boy?!" The bad tempered Danish King was always strict, but for these past four years since his wife – their sainted mother's – calming influence had been taken from him – _stolen by that despised child_ – King Herbert had turned into a bitter, ready to snap, often vexed man, as the veins of his neck were ready to pop.

"Father, please relax. Remember what the doctor said about your blood pressure. It must not be encouraged to rise further." Pushing up his glasses to his nose, Lars had sedately answered. He had a sneaking suspicion that the younger twins, Ruddi and Rune's marmalade hands were involved, once he had encountered the sticky edge of the desk, obviously having a dastardly part in all of this nonsense.

Almost immediately, astute Lars' furrowed brow spotted the missing page that the King was ranting and raving about which had obviously been blown to the floor earlier, most likely due to the downdraft of the slightly opened rear window.

_Opened rear window in his study? Father is so stingy he never allows this already drafty castle any further heat escape…_

But upon examination of the missing document, Lars quickly noted that this was not the original, but an exact replication of the page he himself wrote up under his father's dictation but yesterday.

"Hmm…" Lars murmurs, marvelling at the interesting set of circumstances that could not be the end result of any of his other brothers' unsteady, unruly, or unwilling hands.

Not Kaleb, nor Anders, nor Ivers, nor Mattias. Not Didrik, nor Peiter nor Tøger nor Berte. And never Franz, Ruddi or Rune could have plausibly accomplished this painstakingly patient task to make such a precise, orderly and neat copy of his own systematic, methodical handwriting.

"Is that the missing document, Lars!?"

Now. there was only one in this troupe of brothers who could have personally accomplished what this teenage genius who strived to achieve academic perfection could do, without so much as a blotch or erasure, in this entire household—

"Umm…Yes… Oh! Oops... Sorry, father. The wind in this drafty old castle, you know." But Lars, whether out of pity or simply wishing to avoid a big drawn-out punishment phase that his harsh father would no doubt inflict concerning this whole kerfuffle, whether warranted or not, chooses to take the high road. The cogent young scholar would spare his littlest brother the assured wrath of one of his father's agonized whippings.

In one deft hand, the bespectacled older teen had already been warming the red wax seal for the King's crest that he had secured in his other palm from the desk where he had left it yesterday. To the paper that he had strategically flung under the desk, Lars quickly, yet cautiously, slaps the King's royal seal to the hot malleable wax on the flat of the floor, all while giving a wide-eyed scared Hans something akin to a conspiring smirk to have outsmarted Father.

"Lars? Lars?! Where have you disappeared to, you sluggish boy?! It is vital I have that paper at the meeting in twenty minutes! All those imperial visitors and Royal ambassadors have already gathered and assembled in the west wing's Hunting Conference Room! If I don't attend soon, producing this promised treaty, the name of Denmark's most prestigious Royal house will be dragged through the —!" The uptight, pompous monarch's high blood pressure was about to shoot straight through the roof as nineteen-year-old Lars and four-year-old Hans together beneath the desk urgently blow on the hot wax until it was cool enough to harden…

"Here you are, father. The missing fifth page of the treaty you signed for our land settlement and border security with our Prussian/Saxon/Thuringian neighbors to the south." Lars slid underneath all the other four pages the fifth. It was almost seamlessly similar to the original, with the fast-dried King's seal and all, save for the slight yellowing of the paper from the century-old Bible from the old chest Hans had substituted.

"Well done. Though it took you long enough, Bookworm, to find what the simple wind had scattered. You would have been quicker had you paid more attention to your fencing instructors and horse riding outdoorsman brothers instead of frittering your life away on those worthless library books of yours." The Danish King with the sharp tongue affords his third son at least a complementary nod amidst his damaging words.

"Very good, Father." Lars had answered civilly in his detached way, unaffected as to his parent's quick to be harsh words.

"How do I look?" The graying at the temples nervous older gentleman straightened his military jacket over his still handsome cut figure as he tried to calm himself to look regal and in charge for when he walked in the room with at least two other Royal monarchs.

"We wouldn't want that oddly eccentric Romanticist King Friedrich of Prussia to go back to the continent spreading false rumors of my ill health. There are all kinds of Gypsy riffraff there in Prussia to beware of, taking advantage of a young man's moment of weakness." King Herbert had said almost self-reflectively, recalling his liaisons with certain dancing enchantress and her exotic eyes, as he gazed into the full length mirror that the tall and handsome, vain man had installed in his study for just such spiffing-up occasions.

"That sentimental old fool even brought his young Swedish Princess wife to show off, rubbing it in my face how I recently lost my dear Louisa. But she's more likely there to hold her obese husband up. His child had been kidnapped practically out from under his nose around the same time of our bereavement. Just a missing daughter, for all their complaining. But it works in our favor now that the push-over Prussian King will fold like putty to anything I put on the table." The King of the Southern Isles assesses, coarsely ruthless.

"It's that young firebrand of a pompous French King just coronated we have to watch out for today. He is presiding over the meeting as a disinterested third party. As if there is anyone in European politics without a vested interest in this treaty deal! Besides, that silly cigar-smoking, ridiculously moustached Frenchman has already stated his entire kingdom could ride on the shoulders of some future non-existent son. Ha! He hasn't even landed a suitable bride yet! And should something happen to that one meager lad, where will his Papere's wealth and kingdom go then?" The dispassionate Dane had both learned and been taught the harshness of this cruel world in his unhappy youth and unfortunate life. So he did little to add much more to it than countless young men, all raised to be just like their cold unfeeling patriarch.

All except the last one, who was about to be blessedly sent away to be raised by the sisters of a charity school convent and be out of the Danish King's way once and for all.

_Out of sight, out of mind._

"And as for that other matter were speaking of yesterday, Lars. See to it that your youngest brother will be ready to be shipped off to the Fattigskole convent for his primary education, plus room and board. Then straight off to the Naval Academy Sovaernet when the nuns have had enough of the unwanted whining tearful creature. Parting with the greatest dollars will be worth it if I don't have to see that wretched child's sniveling eyes trembling up at me again. There is nothing worse than a boy who so easily cries. What kind of pathetic man will he become? How could this be a son of mine?" The King of Denmark ran a frustrated hand through his dark brown hair. "Besides, Hans has been a disturbance to your other brothers, causing them to understandably strike out in anger at the boy who took their mother away. **He** does not belong here in Egeskov." As the King went on a long tirade concerning the boy who had been hiding underneath the desk hearing every word, Lars shifted from foot to foot uncomfortably.

"I leave Hans' dispatch to you, Lars, since you seem to be the only one who can stomach the contemptible child." With the symbolized dusting off of his golden epaulette decorated shoulders, the coldhearted calculating King Herbert took his stack of papers and left the study with a resounding bang of the door.

"You heard him, Squirrel. Off to the Fattigskole convent boarding school in the morning for you." Phlegmatic Lars said in his detached, not meaning to be hurtful, way. But the look on young Hans' horrified little face at the thought of being driven out from the only home he he'd ever known, to be placed in the Lutheran Convent of Noble Maidens charity school like a throwaway orphan was pitiable enough to cause even cold Lars to frown.

"But…When can I come back home, Lars? It didn't sound like Father wanted me around at all. Why, Lars? Why does no one ever want me? Did I do something very, very wrong?" Just as his father predicted, Hans, unlike all his other twelve brothers, seemed to own a sensitive heart that caused his lip to tremble and eyes shake with forlorn injured tears of sorrow for not being loved.

_Just like mother…_

Stolid, philosophical Lars was old enough to remember growing up with the kindhearted vibrantly wild curled, red-haired Scottish woman in his early youth before her fiery spirit had been defeated, deflated and so beaten down by her cruel husband's cold attitude and his insatiable quest for innumerable son after son. So much so, his need to propagate became like a greed, as King Herbert relentlessly strived for so many overwhelming offspring in his ultimate plan for the Danes to conquer every royal house in Europe and beyond by eventual genetic attrition of all other nations not hereditary to the Danish kingdom.

To leave the mark of a proud Westergaard Dane's lust for power on the world at large, even at the cost of his own overtaxed wife's life to give him so many children, even one more too many, so late in life…

"Why can't I ever have a real home? Why can't anyone ever love me?" Four-year-old Hans was unashamed to weep openly as he stands alone in the midst of the room wiping his reddened eyes to match his red hair with the balls of his distressed shaking fists.

"Look, Hans." Lars had heard his smallest brother's plea and it touched him in some small way. Perhaps because Hans looked so much like and reminded him of his mother and the way he knew she would have cared for her littlest child.

"I'm sure Father will permit you to return to Egeskov for the Christmas holidays and Summer break from the Academy when you're older and he has mellowed a bit. But you and I both know that this will never truly be your home, Squirrel. You'll have the name and title and prestige of a Southern Isles Prince to purvey you into this world. But that's as far as Father will go. They all still foolishly blame you for what happened to Mother, especially him. I know you're very young, but you must rationalize that father and all of our other brothers will never welcome you at Egeskov. You'll have to find that wonderful home you dream of so much of elsewhere, Hans." The emotionless scholar came close to compassion as he reaches out a stiff hand to scruff the weeping boy's titian mane of wavy hair that gave Hans the nickname of a red squirrel.

"It's up to you to find that place to call home where someone will love you someday, Squirrel. There're too many forces against you here. I guess there's not been any love in Egeskov for years. Not since Mother left us…" Lars speaks from that small space in his cold logical heart that recalled his loving Mama with fondness.

"But there's a whole bright big world out there, where you can at least try to make a home for yourself." Lars' final words as he leaves the room gives Hans his first ray of hope that there was somewhere else out there that maybe could become that cherished place his tiny heart always longed for. A place where boy could feel like he belonged, a place where love could make it feel like home…

_Maybe it is 'love' that makes a home, a home…_

And the small boy who had never known love, not even a mother's tender touch once in his lonely unwanted life, was to become an outcast of his own family. But if a small seed held a flower's hope on the roof of a windowbox through the winter months to grow full bloom in the spring, like he once read about in a fairytale story book one of Kaleb's little children accidentally left in the library one day, then maybe his hidden flower would someday bloom into a an exquisite white rose, too. Perhaps his own Snow Queen would come and take him away from all his torturous brothers, cruel father and empty life devoid of promise and affection, and bring him to her gleaming Snow Palace on a hill far away…

_"Except ye become as little children, ye shall in not enter into the__kingdom__of__God__."_

* * *

**_SLAP!_**

Hans awakens to feel a quick, rough backhand to his cheek.

"Hey! No walking out on me, Sideburns! I've never had a little brother before and I'm not to let you get away from me so easily, Kid!"

The sky was indeed flowing by at the swift speed of the white mare he and someone holding him onto the horse that he had been riding through the clouds upon.

"Lars…?" The redhead's breath had all but ceased, his pulse practically nonexistent, as his consciousness had sunk to his worst childhood day in memory. That traumatic experience when he overheard his father say all of those harsh, heart-breaking words that shaped the cool, mercenary man Hans became. But still, through it all, that burning desire to be loved still lived in the Danish Prince's innocent heart.

But Eugene's tough love slap makes Hans groggily come to with fluttered open eyes, maybe just in the nick of time.

"Whew, Handsome! Don't you do that to me again! You scared us for a while back there! It's okay! The Kid's still holding on, Job!" Flynn Rider's cantankerous voice booms over the airways over his shoulder to where their Caribbean companion was astride his own flying white horse behind them.

Quiet Job silently nods back, adjusting the sheep on his lap, who baa's in pleased response.

"Forgive me, Storbror. _Cough cough_. I was…having a hallucination of one of my past youth's unhappy episodes." Hans wasn't usually the kind to open up his innermost thoughts and dreams, but there was something about Eugene Fitzherbert's '_say anything I won't hold it against you'_attitude, along with the older man's careless caring mixed with humor that made him easy to talk to.

"Ahh…I figured from the contortions of your handsome mug that you weren't fantasizing of your blonde bombshell again at this juncture." Eugene gives a sigh of relief to his weak, yet still kicking Lillebror, accompanied with a teasing wry smile.

"So…who's this Lars? The big, bad brother? Or is he one of the decent blokes of our insurmountable consortium of fourteen lovely lads of such good-looking – dare I say charming – genetic genealogy?" Eugene prattles off in typical Flynn Rider style, none too modest of his stunning features now linked with Hans' family's flock of freckled faces.

"Though at most times indifferent, Lars probably was the one and only Storbror who wasn't outright cruel or unduly hurtful. So, yes, I would class him in the decent realm." Hans answers fairly, remembering the times, albeit few but important to him, when Lars spoke to him kindly.

"So, old Lars is the 'only' good brother you got, eh?" Eugene asks, his eyes rounded as he fishes for a compliment.

"And you, Storbror…Eugene… In the short time we have been together, we have uncovered a close kinship, where you have been the best of brothers to me. Far better than I deserved…" Wistfully, Hans relates to his stubbly newest Storbror who had shown him more affection in the short two weeks they had been together than all the years he had with the other twelve brothers combined.

"P-shaw! Don't be going all sentimental on me, Sideburns! And no talking in the past tense! You are going to get better! Where's that fighting Scottish streak that I bring out in you?! That's what brothers are all about, I've heard. Arm wrestling, swearing at each other at ball games, swiping one another's food, clothes, women—in no specific order. Just another guy who you can generally hang out with, then give a good two fisted punch every now and then to knock each other back to his senses and laugh it off over some brewskis at the end of the day! " Flynn's idealistic outsider view of brotherly love amuses Hans to surrender to the genuine chuckle that the gregarious thief was purposely intending to evince.

"Ha ha! I knew I'd get a snigger out of ya!" Eugene laughs, though the mood suddenly changes when Hans' dizzy gaze turns downward and decidedly more solemn as the trio's flying horses just happened to cross over Denmark's Southern Isles.

And particularly over the dank, dreary landscape of the southern Funen Isle to the east.

"Perhaps the recognition of approaching Egeskov nearby was indirectly jogging my memory…" Hans speaks in a soft voice at the faraway glimpses of the centuries old, palatial Renaissance Water Castle. The grand castle of his youth was set in the midst of a large drawbridge that kept the austere, imposing grey building in all the depressed black gabled glory separated from the rest of the ostentatiously decorated Crown land.

The vast acreage was dominated by an artistic fuschia flower garden that displayed topiary figures in row upon row of well-maintained hedges that encircled the courtyard in a series of dramatic mazes of much estate landscape note.

Even the august _Ladegården_, a thatched, half-timbered building that served as the acres of farmland agent's office, out in the far end of the royal house's domain possessions, was impressive.

"Can't say I am not impressed by all I could have been part of, had I not been born on the wrong side of the sheets! Man that's a DAMN LOT of land! Is it ALL ours?!" Eugene dismissively admits his illegitimate beginnings and all the vast richness that small detail denied the orphaned beggar thereof.

"Roughly twenty hectares around the castle perimeter and 1130 hectares of the estate, in total." Is all Hans dejectedly answers, lacking pride or any other emotion in speaking of his expansive birthplace.

"1130 plus 20 equals…1150 hectares…!? Whoa-whoa-whoa! That's almost 3,000 acres of prime Danish real estate! We are **rich** asses!" Flynn's money-loving mind flashes pure silver Rigsdalers in his bedazzled, greedy thief's eyes until they spin around his fantasized head.

**_"A-hem_**!" With a loud grounded cough to reel it all in, Eugene has to pinch himself to come back down to reality.

"Although…it doesn't look like the warmest of homes to grow up in, with that awe-inpiring fortress moat surrounding that massive, foreboding castle complex." Beneath his breath, Eugene's keen eyes discerned the stark coldness that exuded from Egeskov's twin conical towers far down below their aerial view.

"So, Sideburns! There's no place like home! Whoo-whee! Nice digs…" Trying to put on a positive face, Eugene lets out a low whistle at the sprawling twenty hectares of well groomed land that had a humongous, formidable looking Castle upon a moat in the center of it.

"That's not my home. It's my father and brothers' home. Never mine, since the day I was born. I never had a home." Hans answers in a defeated, sullen tone as he looks down on Egeskov from afar, wondering how his multiple fractious argumentative siblings had fared since last he was there.

Though he had not been permitted inside Egeskov proper, nor spoken to much upon his disgraced return from Arendelle, the punished young man had picked up dribs and drabs from the stable workers where he had been sanctioned to toil.

It appeared that most of the other twelve brothers had been vying for bequeathed rule of their dying father's accumulated wealth and business empire, not to mention the vast lands and grand Castle of the house in the elderly gentleman's final declining years.

And as each were trying to outdo the other in the Danish king's sights, they were all glad to have one less contender in their dishonored and disinherited youngest brother.

Oh, how they had enjoyed watching him shovel manure in the back stables as the first enforced wave of punishment the older siblings had worked out in their sickly father's absence for Hans.

_I wonder if Father or any of the others would care to see me one more time before I go…_

Hans' depressed swirling mind vaguely processes the ponderous thought with a bad taste in his mouth that no one beneath in that bleak, unreceptive castle he was born to would even care if he lived or died. Not even his own flesh and blood Father.

"Wow. I'm sure your folks would probably **_love_** a big family reunion with me as guest star, were we not in so much of a hurry to our important destination, for some friendly chitchat with the clan right now." Irreverent Flynn Rider didn't quite grasp the weight of Hans' brotherly situation, quite unaware that all of Hans' brothers - even Lars to a lesser degree – didn't like Sideburns as much as nobody ever liked Eugene.

_I guess us good-looking fellas have that prejudiced handicap to continually contend with other jealous alpha males._

"You can count on at least one big brother to stand behind you, thick and thin, no matter what, Lillebror." With a nod to Job to steer his horse eastward, Eugene whispers as he holds onto Hans. The boy had grown faint and dizzy from staring down at the passing Danish Southern Isles' landscape until the mortally injured Danish Prince comes to pass out again against his big brother's welcoming chest.

Flynn Rider did get the feeling from all the redheaded Prince told him before, that Hans wouldn't be so eagerly accepted back with a warm welcome home hug.

"Hang in there, Kid." Eugene notices the mortally wounded man's lackluster head slumping down against him a bit. And there, dangling over Hans' handsome head on his chest was that wooden Crucifix cross that Eugene had hung over his aching heart. The roughly hewn cross Eugene had promised Job to finish for him when the chips were down before.

He glances over to Job with a small smirk as he realized that maybe his dark Caribbean friend's belief in the Almighty was rubbing off on the irreverent former criminal, too, on Eugene's own never-paid-much-attention-to path to Redemption.

_Hey, Lord. I seem to remember that you listened to a humble thief's prayer once before when you hung on that there 'ole Cross, didn't you? Well, here mine is: Give my Lillebror a chance to love and be loved once in his sorry life. I can attest that he's a good kid now. I don't know all the ins and outs of what wrongs he keeps confessing that he did before that were so grievous. But which of us poor sinners aren't guilty of something less than perfect in Your eyes? Isn't that why You had to send Your Son - to suffer and die for us sinful beggars to take away the sins of the whole damn world?_

_(Sorry for the swearing. I wasn't raised in a God-fearing castle.)_Eugene frowns at the memory of harsh orphanage life.

_But I, for one, am grateful for Your munificence, that none of us deserved but got anyway, Big Guy. Just shine a little extra of that blood-atoning, redeeming Light on my kid brother. He could use a Savior about now._

_I've heard there's power in this here rugged Cross to make the crippled walk, blind men see, and the dying spring back to life. Guess that about covers us, Lord._

As the wind flies through his shaggy dark brown hair aloft the flying white mare, Eugene silently speaks the honest prayer on his heart. He pets back the sweatdrops formed on Hans' forehead creased with pain, both physical and mental for one so young, with an anxious expression.

_And while You're at it – 'cause I'm pretty sure You are ace at multi-tasking, God, from all I've gleaned over these years of skipping church services and being lectured that You were watching me slack off- please keep an eye out for my Brownie girl and her bun in the oven while I'm away, too._ Back to his flippant self, Flynn smirks with a thought for his loving wife's safety and welfare in his absence.

Taking this opportunity of Hans self-sedation, Eugene reaches into Hans' unbuttoned open shirt to reapply the healing salve tincture that Kristoff's Pops had mixed up for his wounded kid brother to put on, as he changes the not so bloody bandage at his ribcage in order to do so.

"After we get you all better, Sideburns, I am gonna bring you home to live with me in mine. My beauteous bride and her stupendous Godly family took me into Corona without a smidgen of royal credentials. They're good folk. You'll meet 'em soon. Old Fritz and Arianna would _love_ to have you stay with us for as long as you want, I have no doubt. And knowing my matchmaking Liebling Rapunzel, I'm sure you'll be seeing a certain icy blonde beauty soon enough… And the home of her icy blue eyes again…"

Eugene speaks with a blessed assurance in his heart to the unconscious younger man as they leave the skies of Denmark and crossover into the more familiar, welcoming landfall of Flynn's embraced Prussian homeland…

* * *

_min spadbarns_ –my little one in Swedish

_min alskare_ – my love in Swedish

_Søværnet_ – Royal Danish Navy

_Funen_ – pronounced 'Fyn', the Danish island where Egeskov Castle is located, was also the birthplace of 'Snow Queen' writer Hans Christian Andersen.

_Fattigskole_ – The charity school wing of the 18th century founded Lutheran Convent of Noble Maidens in Odense, Funen, where Odense native Hans Christian Anderson was educated.

* * *

\- In 1716 Sister Karen Brahe founded a convent for unmarried women of Danish nobility in Odense, Funen. The convent functioned as such until 1972. The main wing was built at the beginning of the 16th century as part of a bishop's palace, with several wings by the river and a high arched cellar and big windows facing the courtyard. The interior in the building is remarkably well preserved. On the walls there are layers on layers of decorations such as panels, wall paper and wall paintings. The house has been completely renovated by Realdania Byg, known for their many successful renovations of historic buildings, and today it houses the H.C. Andersen Secretariat from Southern Denmark University Odense.

On the charity school wing of the Lutheran convent (Fattigskole), a memorial tablet tells us that it was here that the town's famous poet, Hans Christian Andersen, attended school there. The building dates back to 1570 and was built in a typical renaissance style with storey overhangs in part of a four wing complex.

* * *

Easter greetings, Frozen friends!

Our incorrigible, yet so good-hearted rogue Flynn Rider gets us into this most blessed Easter weekend's true meaning in his inimitable way with his honest prayer! I thought it was beautiful how At the Cross, At the Cross, he finally saw the light! God bless his rascally soul! ^_^

Now, the scene with Kristanna racing along the beach was inspired by my talented big sister's gorgeous illustration! You must see how beautifully she drew in her art of rugged muscly shirtless Kristoff, adoring Anna hugging him lovingly, and Sven merrily bounding along Lofoten beachfront! (Sven's neck fur is simply breathtaking to behold! I have no idea how Setsuna did it! Wow! I fell in love with the picture at first sight! And it fit in perfectly with this part of my envisioned story at last!)

What also fit in hand in glove was my recent discovery (thanks to my dear Sister in Christ friend! You rock, RibbonsandChocolate-chan!) of Jonathan Groff singing for "1001 Nights: A Love Story about Loving Stories" theater muppet show this stunning song 'Come Away'! So I incorporated that in this chapter too! Go listen to the wonderfully sung, mellow love song on YouTube, Frozen friends! And Setsuna's gorgeous art of Kristanna can be viewed by searching Kristanna on her DeviantArt 'SetsunaKou ' or Tumblr 'QueenElsaWestergaard' blog.

And a special nod to my good friend SecondAbbreviatedJP for inspiring Rapunzel to be Eugene's beautiful 'Brownie' now too! So cute I had to borrow the no longer 'Blondie' gal's more spot-on moniker! Thanks JP-sama!

* * *

So, to hop into the Easter celebration properly, there are a dozen Easter eggs hidden in this special chapter! How many did you find? ^0*

* * *

Give up? Here they are:

\- King Friedrich (Fritz for short ^_^) &amp; Queen Arianna (I had to alter Rapunzel's real parents' names, due to the release of the 'Tangled: Before Ever After' TV show due out in 2017) were attending King Herbert's important meeting.

\- Hans' brother bully boy, Ruddi, one of twins, described in the latter half of the chapter with a wild shock of blond hair and vague eyes, looks just like his Scottish ancestor Dingwall from 'Brave' and Hans' long-deceased Mother was the spitting image of Merida from 'Brave' with the 'vibrantly wild curled, red-haired Scottish beauty with fiery spirit'. Hmmmm…

\- Egeskov Castle &amp; its beech mazes, topiary figures, fuschia garden labyrinth is really located in the Southern Isles of Denmark, right where the map in Frozen Fever pointed.

\- And, who was that unnamed, gentlemanly 'special British envoy' who kept lighting his pipe and generously gave Hans his steel nib pen as a birthday present because he was sweet on his mother? Sounds like old Grimsby from 'The Little Mermaid' in his heady youthful days to me!

\- The new foal in the Ladegården stables was Hans' horse Sitron, featured in the Frozen movie.

\- There is a real-life spooky legend of the cursed doll in the Egeskov Castle attic that if moved, ghastly things have been purported to befall the occupants.

\- King Herbert, as per the semi-secret taboo custom of the discreet day, has an illegitimate son with the surname 'Fitzherbert' (guess who?)

\- The gypsy '_dancing enchantress with exotic eyes'_ mistress who left Hans' father with a lasting memory (and illegitimate son) was based on Esmeralda from 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame'.

\- Fattigskole, the charity school wing of the Lutheran convent Hans was sent to as a boy, actually has a memorial tablet that tells us it was there that the town's famous poet, Hans Christian Andersen, attended school.

\- It was Hans Christian Anderson's 'The Snow Queen'' book little Hans found in the library.

\- Olaf's new 'girlfriend' from 'Frozen''s Christmas special? was mentioned, as purported by Josh Gad (Olaf's Voice actor).

\- Kristoff's 'Come Away' song for his Anna, as performed by mellow voiced Jonathan Groff, was featured in the story to accompany SetsunaKou's stunning artwork.

\- Extra marshmallow peeps to those who figure out and identify who that young cigar smoking firebrand of a French King who so staked his entire kingdom on the pride and joy of his unborn son!

There! A Baker's Dozen of Hidden Easter Eggs! ^0^  
(Actually Lucky#13, as Prince Hans in his march of brothers, and Elsa in Disney princess line, both are!)

Have fun on this Frozen Easter Egg Hunt, dear friends!

* * *

Tell me what you think of our Easterrific extravaganza! ^_^

And thanks for reading this half flashback/ half flashforward episode of Frozen Again!

Please have a Happy and Blessed Resurrection Day Easter, giving thanks and praise with your families and friends in sharing the perfect, sacrificial Love of our dear Lord and Savior Jesus Christ!

God bless you! Jesus loves you!

HarukaKou

* * *

P.S. To my 'Guest' reviewer asking about Anna as a 'damsel in distress' (I can't contact you any other way since you comment anonymously and aren't logged in-thanks for reading my response here instead. J )

Anna was never a 'damsel in distress' in my story-she was kidnapped, certainly, but that doesn't make her a 'damsel in distress'-no, far from it in this case and in fact, all she did during her captivity proves she is the opposite. ^-^ She was always snappy, sang happily the whole time, fought back at others, never fearing, never doubting, never hoping nor wanting to be rescued. She in fact, rescued herself, as well as her captor at one point. She could easily have let Houtebeen die when he fell off the dolly winch on the cliff's edge, but as a true heroine, she saved him—all on her own. She also rescued herself from him, in many ways, and even got Job to be on her side, just by being herself. She befriended Scuttle and was a feisty, got-it-together woman throughout her capture. She was never wanting rescue but always knew she would get out of her situation somehow-just as she always does, with courage and determination. So I'm not sure why you think she was a 'damsel in distress' ever, as she never was in this story. ^-^ If you think about it, do you consider the part during 'Frozen' when she fell over from ice in her heart, right after the troll wedding, and had to be carried and brought to the castle by Kristoff, as her being a 'damsel in distress'? She had to be completely saved by another there, she was totally vulnerable, and even after being back in the castle, she just gave up in distress, crumpled on the floor, until Olaf came and rescued her, too, bringing her back to her senses and reminding her to be her feisty self. She was much more a 'damsel in distress' there at that part in the film than she was here, (which, in this story, is actually not at all since she remained forever feisty, upbeat and confident during her kidnapping) wouldn't you agree?

Anyway, thank you so much for reading and enjoying the story and for your input! :hugs: God bless!


	65. Chapter 64 - Much Less Touchy-Feely

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act V**

**Chapter 64**

**"Much Less Touchy-Feely"**

_Hidden deep within the twisted forests of __Prussia__…_

"Have you seen my favorite thimble, Bruiser? The polkadot one with the little hearts on it? I've been searching every inch of the surgery all morning for it! "A tall, thin and opinionated man with a pair of thick brown pigtails comes pensively skulking into the connected brightly lit room in a rage of irritated frustration.

There, a dramatically opposed, quiet, hulking brute with shock of short mahogany hair, big rounded nose and cleft in his ample chin merely glances up from his own tedious work.

"No, Killer." The soft-spoken giant pauses his deft knitting needles and string of yarn along with the tiny orchid pink mitten he had been painstakingly knitting for weeks now. The obsessive perfectionist man who had pulled out more stitches from the well-made rosy mitten until the result was picture perfect as he envisioned, was as different from his garrulous older brother as he could be.

"Well, didn't I see you playing with it yesterday, when you were cleaning up with Ulf after we operated on Thor's ulcer so he could get back to arranging flowers for the Church bowery?" Killer accuses his partner of a younger sibling who the skilled-with-needle-and-thread ex-con had opened a medical practice with two years this March.

And his clean freak little brother was always messing with his precious tradesman's tools, neatly stacking needles, scissors, spools of suture thread, etc. here or there in some such compulsive disorder.

"No, Killer." Bruiser repeats the same answer in just as calm and even a tone. The gentle giant of a man gives a little sigh as he puts aside the tiny little plummy pink mitten that would barely fit one of his large burly fingers, let alone the gargantuan's monstrous hands that seemed out of place doing this delicate needlework.

"Then what in hell happened to it?! How can I function in this place?! How do you expect me to perform my magic on our patients without my special tools!?" Seriously holding his skillful hands up in the air like a proud surgeon, the nervous, irrelevant man was practically twitching from head to toe as he wrenches off the spiked, needle embedded, Viking-type silver helmet so he could scratch at his spinning scrap of hair at top.

Killer scratches so thoroughly violent that the multicolored spools of thread strapped all across his chest and hip were set a-jiggling.

"Please calm down, Killer. And please don't use that foul language when you are in the doctor's office. We run a respectful establishment." Gentle Bruiser, as usual, must use his lilting, high-pitched, effeminate voice to tone down his gravelly partner's nerves. The big bruiser practitioner tranquilly continues his knitting again where he was seated at the outpatient's front desk of their humble clinic while Shorty, the receptionist, was taking his dinner with '_a tall drink of water'_.

_That older gentleman certainly does like to keep liquefied_.

It was ingenious how the clinic's vestibule had been built partly inside the carved out opening of a centuries-old Prussian white oak tree. The fifteen meter wide girth of the huge tree had been hollowed out and was previously used by the thugs as their secret hideout from the authorities.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah…" The frustrated former Killer with the gifted hands runs his tensile extremities through his greasy mat of thinning hair at the crown of his elongated head once again.

"You think we left my thimble inside of Big Nose last night when we took out his last-minute goiter nodule that everyone finally convinced him to get rid of before his wedding tomorrow?" The suddenly perplexed look crossing Killer's face is reflected in Bruiser's shocked one, as both wide-eyed, reformed criminals swallow hard simultaneously.

_Knock! Knock! Knock!_

Both brothers nearly jump ten feet in the air at the abrupt, after-hours rapped door interruption.

"Sorry, we're closed. Come again the day after tomorrow please. We have a wedding service to attend in the morning. Thank you. Have a nice day." The pleasantly loquacious man with the tender throat projects his loudest assertion after recovering first from the surprise.

"I wonder if Princess Rapunzel and her thief will make it back in time for Big Nose's wedding tomorrow." Killer muses aloud after seeing in the corner of his eye one of Rapunzel's prized paintings full of pastel colors depicting the forest waterfall some trodden path away from the Snuggly Duckling tavern they called home.

The Corona Princess herself had hung the painting on their self-employed business wall on the day that 'Leave You in Stitches' clinic opened, with their benevolent and proud Princess pal and fellow dreamer as its royal sponsor.

"Come on! Killer! Bruiser! Open up! We've got an emergency!" Hookhand's sharp silvery appendage bangs against the hollowed out tree's fitted closed door entry on the other side.

"I'm reduced to being just 'her thief'!? Ouch. I heard that." A muffled voice complains from without.

"Is that the best you guys can do for your gracious and munificent Prince of the Realm? After all we've been through together, fellas. I'm hurt." Feigning dismayed feelings on his devastatingly gorgeous face as the door is flung open, Flynn Rider peeks his head in to greet the pair of industrious Snuggly Duckling attendees with a familiar smirk.

"Prince, hmph! You're just one of us common criminals lucky enough to have a comely mug, Pretty Boy." The slight, squirrelly felon named 'Fang' chirps in, as Bruiser signals the tag along pub thug member to leave his ever-present rats outside their scrubbed clean clinic's doorway.

Vladimir, another one of the Snuggly Duckling members of petty pilferers and lawless felons on the lam, hunkers down in through the doorway after Eugene.

"A pretty mug _and_ a charming personality, thank you very much." Flynn's uneasy anxiety is vented in his witty repartee with the familiar motley crew.

"Which my little brother here shares in tenfold. Especially when it comes to a certain icy lady. That is, if you guys can fix him up back to fully functional working order again, so I can bring him back in tip-top shape to his gal." Flynn had seen enough of their past work of hands-on vast experience in patching every type and severity of fatal wounds, ugly gashes, broken bones or nasty cuts. The job the pair did with deep stabs, bloody lacerations or any otherwise violent body invasion known to man, was impressive enough for Flynn to trust this issue to the talented brothers.

Whenever their fellow erstwhile compatriots of thuggery often came back to the Snuggly Duckling suffering from the ill effects of their reckless lifestyle's injuries, the enterprising brothers made a productive business in stitching each back up to nearly good as new condition.

And the 'Leave You in Stitches' medical establishment was founded to not only keep their criminal class brethren healthier and whole, but to rake in enough pfennings by their talented hands' acumen, now that they were on the path of the straight and honest.

"You have a brother, too?" Bruiser quietly comments as he gathers Prince Hans' limp body from Eugene's arms, even as Killer eyes the unwelcome stranger to their black sheep fold.

"My kid brother, from up north, named Hans. He's been in and out of consciousness after being knifed in the gut yesterday. I said to myself, if anyone can pull him through this, it would be you two amazing miracle workers. So here we are. I've actually got two cases for your high-in-demand, inimitable, quality services, fellas. But start with Hans here, 'cause he's worse off, I think." Whether Flynn was putting on the schmooze, or if he really believed in this unlikely pair of self-trained 'medical' men who pulled off more than a few miracles since their Royal Corona sponsored clinic opened to the public, he had their attention either way.

"He looks too smart and too good-looking to be related to you, Thief. See his perfect celestial nose? Nothing like yours, anatomically speaking." Giving vainglorious Flynn a spiteful poke in his Roman nose to get out of his way, Killer, well-versed in human anatomy, couldn't resist adding the snide disparaging criticism of the touchy nasal subject as he clears the surgery table for Bruiser to place the insensible redhead there.

"I like him. I think he looks nice, even if he's in pain." Smiling as he gazes down at the Danish Prince's passed out countenance; the more pleasant bigger younger brother thug carefully undresses and positions Hans supine on the medical cot to examine him more closely.

Bruiser then elevates the operating table beneath the prone man under a series of hand turned gears and ratchets that ingenious blacksmith at-all-things-metal Attila had put together for the medical entrepreneurs' promising self-made new endeavor that benefited them all. Along with Gunther's interior designing skills to make the small tree clinic more homey, the thugs all pitched in to build this ruffian and thug health center of their own.

"I think he looks rich." The old drunk named Shorty had wandered into the surgery, greedily digging through Hans' removed jacket pockets.

"Hands off, Shorty. He's family." Flynn slaps the vertically-challenged old man's gnarled grabbing digits back from purloining the entire expensive velvet fabric Navy blue jacket after Shorty sinks his yellowed, cracked eye-teeth into the Sjoforsvaret uniform's real gold buttons until dollar $ signs pop to his larcenous eyes.

Flynn grabs back the jacket from the dirty old man's paws, shaking his head at the strange, aged creature who was elected by this _hallowed_ group to be Eugene's best man at the wedding five years ago.

"Hey! This is serious. I've seen you guys work miracles hundreds of times! I trust you to save my kid brother's life. My new friend Job, over there too, after you're done with your magic stitches on Hans. Our Caribbean pal is a wee bit sturdier than my emaciated Lillebror. Whew! I've gotta get that boy fattened up!" Eugene's eyes slit in concern as he watches Bruiser gently peel off Hans' inner shirt reveal the all skin and sinewy bone young Dane's deep bloody incision abdominal stab wound.

"The poor kid is too skinny." Vladimir, the biggest gargantuan of all the wide shouldered, well muscled, definitely not 'skinny' gang of the Snuggly Duckling ilk, hunkers down through the doorway to intone.

"We'll take care of that little eating disorder issue when we get him home, with a few pieces of Arianna's famous Schokokuchen mit kirschen!" Flynn Rider blithely speaks of the Queen of Prussia and the high cholesterol, indulgently calorific sponge cake recipe she is always trying to shove down his throat.

"So what happened to him? That's a pretty nasty entrance wound." Killer lifts up his metal helmet from his eyes after giving a bare chested Hans' ragged torrent skin beneath his fourth and fifth left intercoastal space a visual examination.

"Okay guys. Here's the story. It's not exactly my story, but I did play a vital role in making it all come to pass." Flynn takes a deep breath for launching into his tirade before the group of Snuggly Duckling patrons had gathered around him in the clinic's receiving room.

"I got involved – by no choice of my own, mind you me – with a nasty piece of work, a peglegged pirate, who threatened our own King Fritz and Queen Arianna's lives unless I did a tiny, trifling, trivial pinch for him. So as any good thief among us would – I agreed. Little did I know that this guy here –_ seems I was his father's, the Royal King of Denmark's, long-lost illegitimate bastard. It's okay, you don't have to bow_ –my lil' bro, after being disowned and disinherited himself for what I hear were some unsavory personal romantic dealings with our beauteous Norwegian Princess neighbors in the north_,_ was sentenced by his, and my – _hold onto your seats now _– twelve other big brothers. Consequently, Hans was sentenced and sold to the said evil pirate on his ship as galley cook, clean up between decks boy, and all around kicked down slave. No wonder he was in this sad state when we found him."

Without missing a tick, Flynn takes in a big gulp of breath, battering pub thug Fang's ratty claws away from making off with passed out Hans' fancy belt and sheathed naval sword. Flynn then himself pats the poor hard-breathing guy's bony arm when Bruiser goes to work on him.

"Long story short, we got caught up in grave digging, kidnapping, plunging from a thousand plus foot mountain peak all in the old madman's whacko quest for a holy orb's miraculous healing spring water legend. And when we finally found it – along with the believed drowned King and Queen of Norway, my icy uncle and lovely aunt – it rejected his dirty black soul and turned him into a huge sea monster that we all had to risk life and limb _– this one nearly amputated for the bullet embedded in it still that I took to save a little girl._ _I'll have you guys check up on it at a later date for a nominal fee, since my brilliant kid brother already did an initial on-site triage._" Eugene has to pause here to swallow, every one of the pub thugs raptly listening with baited breath and slack jaws to his far-flung adventurous tale.

"Oh, and our steamship almost got us sucked down the Moskenstraumen maelstrom after being swatted out of the sky in our magic sky carriage. But we had Snow and Ice Queens, flying reindeer and horses, an ice-powered Norwegian King come back to life from the dead, a Nature whispering ghost guy and his son who shoots a mean bow and arrow, talking whales and seals and bears to help take down the enormously hideous monster. Whew! How is that for a two-week reconciliation getaway for me and my gorgeous bride!?" Eugene finishes his well spun, but factual, tale spit out with a flourish in a matter of a minute or two.

Flynn Rider was speaking to a stunned silent crowd by now. In silent applause, Ulf the pantomime, cupping a white gloved hand over his 'O' circular mouth, was the first to recover as the obese theatrical actor mutely mimicked Flynn's every creative word before each one of the gathered around thug's astounded faces. They were all sitting on the ground or leaning against the clinic's walls to hear all the adventure that transpired in their thieving 'friend's' and his pretty princess' absence from dull old Corona.

"Now, are you all gonna just stand there catching flies? Or are you going to help my Lillebror and our new Caribbean pal who was the pirate's former first mate? Good Ol' Job had turned on the vicious, wicked pegleg and came to the side of right as a hero just when we needed him. He even saved Rapunzel from drowning in that maelstrom in the end. So I personally owe Job here a gratitude I can never repay." Before all their empathically shocked eyes, Flynn chokes up a bit on those last words in that touchy-feely manner the blasé man claimed to never resort to.

The Snuggly Duckling patrons, though rough, tough and tumble on the outside, really were a bunch of goodhearted blokes and dear friends to Rapunzel. Her first friends in fact, because the sheltered girl was brave enough to believe in her dream – and all of theirs, too – after being secluded in that tall tower for the whole of her lifetime.

And if this guy was friend to Princess Rapunzel, then he was a friend of theirs now, too.

"Gotta say I was impressed when my brother Hans here, after being half frozen by the woman he loved, was still able to skewer the hundred foot tall sea monster with the ship's mast and bring it down. But after that, that scum of the earth, vengeful pegleg who just wouldn't die, cruelly knifed the Kid in the back. _That rotten piece of one-legged garbage_ _scheiße _– no offense to disabled folks as a whole, Hookie. But you could've warned me better of that Captain Cornelius Jol's streak of insanity." A swearing foully Flynn passes the blame around as he directs his heavy eyelids to the hook handed former seaman present who played the piano at his Royal wedding.

"None taken, Rider. But the boys here are witnesses that I told you NOT get involved with that crazy old nut Houtebeen! But did you listen to me? Nah! You're just too smart aleck clever to listen to reason or ask the authorities for help, Thief! You didn't even have the courtesy to tell your sweet wife! It broke our hearts to see poor Rapunzel mooning about over you for months!" Hookhand sinks his metal appendage into the pile of neatly stacked pages on the desk filing cabinet until they were all skewered onto his sharp claw for threatening effect.

"No violence or harsh words in the doctor's office, please, gentleman. They disrupt the peaceful atmosphere of healing." Sweet voiced Bruiser gently berates ill tempered Hookhand and arm-crossed, challenging Flynn for raising the tensed voices in his tranquil abode.

The large bodied former criminal turned physician points a thick finger upward to the new sampler sign above both their heads as he pushes Eugene and Hookhand cheek to cheek together.

The daintily yarn knit and embroidered sign read: _'Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth' _in beatified flowery wisdom.

"R-right. Sorry, but my nerves are frayed for this guy." Eugene smirks self-consciously at the doctor's insinuation. An incited Hookhand merely scoffs and backs away from the confrontational scene. The goodhearted blowhard leans against the clinic wall of the knobbly trunk section of the big white oak the office had been carved into.

"…Elsa… Elsa! I'm so hot… Elsa… Please…Hold me…" As a feverish Hans' delirious breath succumbs to the nitrous oxide laughing gas that Killer was applying to numb him to an insensate state, the Dane murmurs out the longing words as an empty hand reaches out for his invisible love's touch.

"Is this 'Elsa' the boy's Mama?" Between the way Eugene spoke and treated Hans as a 'Kid' and the Danish Prince's thin, gangly body form, Bruiser considered Hans still young enough to be calling out for the warmth of his mother's embrace in times of trouble. Bruiser presses an ether-soaked sponge to Hans' admirable nose to compassionately comatose him.

"Nah. She's his girl." Eugene answers with an honest smile down as Hans' verdant green eyes flutter closed with an evident longing in them, intermingled with pain.

"Ah, his Ice Queen. That's nice." Quietly listening to Eugene's discombobulated yet thrilling story earlier, the romantic in Big Nose answers as he helps bring a stumbling, yet stable Job into the small clinic's overfilled waiting room.

"Good kid, huh?" Simmered down Hookhand, who knew his share about annoying little brothers, inquires as Eugene's usually unfazed eyes tremble a bit to watch Hans' struggle for breath be put under the anesthetic effects of 'sweet oil of vitriol' a.k.a. ether.

"The best. I didn't realize until now that I could care so damn much about another fella like this…Strictly _brotherly_ _love_ like the Good Book says, though. Let's get that absolutely straight, boys! A man has his reputation to watch out for! Especially when his wife's away in a foreign country…" An embarrassed Flynn brushes his errant bangs back from his forehead.

"See, admitting this touchy-feely stuff just isn't me." A flustered Eugene blushes as Hookhand and the other Snuggly Duckling thugs snicker at his queasiness with tender emotions.

Gathering equipment, Bruiser scrubs up to his bulging biceps as Killer sterilizes the scissors he pulls from his chest utility belt, along with more than a few large choice needles stuck in his metal helmet.

"So how's the prognosis looking, Docs? I never had a little brother before, so I hope you guys can pull him through all right in one piece! Whoa, whoa, whoa! What's with all those sharp unsightly and dangerous objects you're floating around him?! Aren't you just gonna, you know, stitch him up?"

_GULP! _ Flynn's expressive language extends to his terrified eyes that connect with both of the doctors sharpening their knives and scissors over Hans' abdomen that Killer had bafflingly just shaved clean of any extemporaneous body hair.

"Please go sit and rest in the waiting room, Prince Eugene. There is a lot of exploratory surgery we must do to ensure the subcutaneous depth beneath the underlying fascia. There could be further complication if the initial knife stab hemorrhaged into a hollow perforation of any viscous organ beneath the peritoneum or intercoastal muscle. That could thusly cause a fatal hernia, if left unchecked." Though raw honesty in medical terms right now may not have been the best medicine for Eugene, loquacious Bruiser was well studied in this area for the hundreds of similar serious cases he made his business to learn all the medical procedures during his last stint behind bars in prison.

"Showoff." Killer rolls his eyes. As he finishes sharpening his steely knives together, the sartor loads suture from thread spools in several of the sterilized needles that had resided in his helmet. He was less the brainy book-learned surgeon and more a sadistic hands-on precision-skilled-at-bloodletting master with the scalpel and razor-sharp multiple scissors that constantly accessorized his fashion.

"That's extremely reassuring." In a high pitched leggiero, Eugene gulps again so hard that his large Adam's apple was sent on a roller coaster ride of wobbling after hearing the two coldblooded brothers' operational descriptives, audio and visual.

"I think you're not too good with blood, either. Like me, Eugene. Let's get you out of here, before we got another patient and no more beds." Disgusting blighter Big Nose teases as he cuffs Eugene around the collar and begins to drag him out the surgery.

"Just be careful with my little brother, fellas. That boy is to be the royal property of the Queen of Norway someday. So I'd make sure to optimize the cosmetic results of his – ehem – privately viewed wares, if you going anywheres near there. I'd be real careful, if I were you guys." Flynn warns as he is ushered out of their surgery into the attached waiting room by Big Nose. Hookhand and Attila remain behind as assistant nurses to help Killer and Bruiser float between performing surgery on Hans' thoracoabdominal zone in stab wound exploration and Job's localized anesthesia and suturing on the secondary sickbed beside the Danish Prince.

"We took care of your horses outside, Rider. I gave them each a proper rub-down, then watered and fed them good oats. They are beauties. But a little flighty." Horse lover Vladimir, the biggest gargantuan of all the wide shouldered, well muscled bunch of Snuggly Duckling attendees, was the one who first helped the stumbling dark man to the secondary patient operating table.

"You know, Vlad old buddy, that's because them horsies can fly. Why don't you take one of them around for a sunset test spin while we're awaiting the surgery? I reckon a flying Pegasus is almost second best to one of your beloved unicorns." A grateful Eugene offers the fantasy ride of a lifetime to the man whose dream could only collect dust before this chance with a wry smile.

Without a word, the gleaming eyed elation showed in the normally sullen giant's missing toothy grin as he charges out to play with the every bit as delicate as his cherished ceramic statues of mythical horsies.

"And don't any of you crooks be thinking of making that sheep into mutton pies! That ball of wool is Blondie's new pet!" Eugene calls out the 'treehouse' door when he sees the gaggle of thugs poking and prodding as they surrounded his traveling zoo near the stream. Then Flynn turns back to the voice calling him to 'Leave You in Stitches' reception desk.

"So, what type of payment will we be expecting from you today, Master Rider? Cash or credit?" Shorty, the endlessly drunken elderly man who was employed to the clinic as receptionist/accountant, leans over the front room's death with his gnarled hands stuck out towards Flynn.

"For Pete's sake, Shorty! My Lillebror's still under the surgeon's knife in there! Can't it wait?! Besides, I'm a little short on funds here since my harrowing journey! You know I'm good for it!" Flynn adroitly makes excuses as he sticks his hand into his pants pocket that was virtually empty save for some ship ratline twine, that dang pair of handcuffs that had ripped up his still excoriated wrists and beat up chafed knuckles, and the small carving knife Job conferred to him along with his Crucifix Cross.

"We know your _wife_ is good for it, Thief. By the way, where is our little dreamer?" Shorty asks in his rambling droll way over the navy blue piece of fabric he was just bringing an extra pair of Killer's scissors up to.

"Hey! I don't reckon you're bartering in size 'slender' men's naval jackets! That belongs to Vice Admiral Westergaard, I'll have you well know! Awarded to him by the Queen of Norway herself. Give me that, you two-bit thief! You and your beer belly would never fit in it anyway, Shrimp!" Flynn proudly reaches a long arm over the reception desk counter to reclaim Hans' swiped, gold buttoned, fancy decorated jacket out from the old geezer's grasping hands. But those gnarled digits don't so easily let go.

As Flynn and Shorty have a tug-of-war skirmish over the article of stolen clothing, the younger man finally pulls so forcefully that the dark blue velvet, maroon trimmed jacket is forcefully wrenched from the gray-white bearded short man's knobbly fingers.

Eugene, Shorty and Big Nose, who was trying to break up the face pushed in struggling pair of sticky fingered thieves, all watch in gape-mouth surprised. When, out of some hidden inside, inside pocket within Hans' naval jacket, as its fabric was being strained and stretched in every fought-over direction, a singular silvery object flies out and goes zinging through the doctor's office still air.

"What the –?!" Eugene halts his swearing under Bruiser's knit sampler that was framed on the reception desk depicting Noah's Ark and its line of creatures of all shapes and sizes walking side-by-side peacefully under the Promise of a rainbow…

_A promise_… Luckily, Flynn Rider still had the fastest fingers in Europe's West as he beats all of the pub thugs that come out of the woodwork with their clammy fingers to make a dive for the silver, blue-and-white bejeweled band that had been for who knows how long obscured in the secret folds of Hans Westergaard's naval jacket.

As a triumphant Flynn holds up the shimmery silver, diamond white and blue topaz delicate ring set in a snowflake starburst pendant shape, he instantly knew what it signified.

"Oh! Isn't that the most exquisite engagement ring you've ever seen?! Those gemstones are genuine as all get out! And believe me, I know. I've seen some beauties in my time in the family business. That is, before I went clean." The Big Nose-d reformed criminal had a keen eye for the custom jewelry his Prussian Jewry family business specialized in. He could easily see, even without his carat magnification tools, the clarity and purity of the beautifully set, elegant ring that was so sentimentally schmaltzy. After all, the romantic man had been hunting for one just as perfectly suited to his new bride-to-be too.

"Hmph! You sly dog, you! Whew!" Eugene whistles under his breath with a quirky smirk as he stares at the obviously personalized snowflake setting of the flawless piece of jewelry.

_Rapunzel and I both suspected you and Queenie were a hot ticket item, despite both of you crazy kids trying to trick us into thinking not! So, you have been planning to pop the question to Queenie for how long? Look, there was absolutely no opportunity for you to purchase such a superb engagement band as this in the rural country parts we were traveling through. So how long have you been in love with that blonde beauty from afar, Handsome?_

_Geez! Never seen two kids so mixed up about such an obvious thing! After all this pining, heart-on-sleeve, ring hiding in special secret hidden pockets stuff – you __are__ going to make it back to her, Good-Lookin! And I'm going to make sure that you will put this on your icy beauty's deserving ring finger, Mister! If your big brother has to whack you silly until you snap out of the self chivalrous funk you always slip into, rich boy! Just be a human man for once in your life!_

Eugene peeks his amber-gold eyes through the open surgery door when Attila scurries out to fetch some more clean bandages. Eugene glimpses where Killer and Bruiser were clamping Hans' incision in a laparatory incision into his peeled back at sliced open fibrous tissue that they had been, layer by layer, now expertly stitching back together.

_Please, get him through this, Lord. He's got a good lady's heart on the ropes too. Me and my baby-carrying missus and I will take care of the rest. You can count on us old married matchmakers to do our best to bring those starcrossed lovers together, Big Guy. And I'll attend Church every damn Sunday the rest of my days with the wife's family in __Corona__, I promise._

Eugene's pledging, deal-making eyes dance as the last rays of the late summer sunset glimmer through the white oak hollowed out tree window opening to catch the glistening beams reflect on the pure blue topaz of Hans' concealed engagement ring. Flynn holds it up to the fleeting light with a proud smile, knowing both the stubborn parties involved and their reaction if this was revealed, before squirreling it back into the sanctity of its hidden secret pocket within a hidden secret pocket that had been so carefully sewn into the inner breast lining of Hans' velvet blue Sjoforsvaret jacket.

"You really do know how to keep backstory secrets, kid. Gotta ween you off that bad habit that seems to run in the blood." Flynn self analyzes as he sits on the waiting room bench. He begins to carefully carve at the Christlike figure on the wooden cross Job had entrusted to him. After all, not only did the noble, holy task calm his nerves, but the generous pastime gave Eugene a chance to rein in his scattered thoughts.

Seated there in the outpatients bench, the ample yarn decorated pillow cushions that Bruiser had knit and placed to line all the clinic bench catch Eugene's eye.

He glances up to read in all calming, blue lavender embroidered letters the Psalmist's 23rd passage from the Luther Bible published in 1545 on the couch cushions of the bench he was seated and carving upon.

'Der HERR ist mein Hirte; mir wird nichts mangeln.

Er weidet mich auf grüner Aue und führet mich zum frischen Wasser.

Er erquicket meine Seele; er führet mich auf rechter Straße um seines Namens willen.

Und ob ich schon wanderte im finstern Tal, fürchte ich kein Unglück; denn du bist bei mir, dein Stecken und dein Stab trösten mich.

Du bereitest vor mir einen Tisch im Angesicht meiner Feinde. Du salbest mein Haupt mit Öl und schenkest mir voll ein.

Gutes und Barmherzigkeit werden mir folgen mein Leben lang, und ich werde bleiben im Hause des HERRN immerdar.

Amen.'

_'The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want._

_He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters._

_He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake._

_Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me._

_Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over._

_Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.  
Amen.'_

With that hopefully appropriate prayer in mind, Eugene's doleful eyes gaze towards the surgery door were Killer and Bruiser were stitching Hans with so many carefully placed layered sutures that it could, no doubt, take hours. Many of the other pub thugs had already departed to their rooms at the Snuggly Duckling loft just a hop skip and a throw away.

With Hans' Naval jacket, sword and belt securely tucked beneath his arm as he pauses in the entranceway at the clinic's surgery, Flynn looks in on the labor-intensive operation.

"This might take a while, Prince Eugene. You look tired after your long journey. You may wish to take a rest in the Snuggly Duckling's upper rooms while you wait. I can assure you that there is no trace of septicemia for peritonitis in your brother. I believe it's chiefly due to that natural salve that you applied at the first critical juncture. I must get that tincture's formula." Bruiser says when he spies Flynn looking anxious in the doorway.

"Really? You sure the kid's gonna be all right? That's a relief! And my pal Job there is the man to talk to about that magic blood clotting herbal mix. Make sure you take good care of him too, all right? Money is no object for these heroic fellas' recovery. That guy put his life on the line for Rapunzel and I'll never forget it." Eugene allows himself a genuine smile. "I'll be back after I secure some lodgings with the SD innkeeper."

"Yes, absolutely! Your friend Job is doing well! He's already coming back to consciousness. That big man must have quite a constitution to not succumb to the ether for long. Killer is stitching him up as we speak. He is a quiet big man, but his eyes are kind. We will give him my finest service, rest assured. And will be working on your little brother for a time more, but he's responding well too, so far." Bruiser answers as he hurries back to his work.

Work–in-progress Crucifix in hand that he flashes to show a woozy Job as he departs with a smile, Eugene, with Big Nose at his side, begins to walk out the entranceway of the clinic's hallowed out oak tree, moving towards where a crooked sign swaying in the rustling cool sunset breeze. Eugene watches the large bulbous nose, hopeless romantic pause to pick some wildflowers and breathe in their sweet scent of the forest's summer offering as the two stroll beside the beautiful waterfall and its connected riverbed's babbling stream.

"Isn't love a beautiful thing? You have to give me some tips on how a good husband should treat his new bride. I would appreciate it from an experienced, happily married, good husband such as you are, Prince Eugene." Big Nose asks as he walks beside Flynn on the path leading to the Snuggly Duckling.

"A good husband…" Eugene thoughtfully reminisces that first time when he brought Rapunzel through this maze of the Dancing Forest rich in wildlife and full of twisted trees in convoluted spirals bent to the ground. The long winding path that led to the Snuggly Duckling Tavern where the thief had tried to discourage the girl he had just met from her pure purpose was now gleaming in the final sunset rays as he walks down memory lane.

Sunlit big dreams such as hers could not be trounced down by a jaded man's dampening bucket of cold water. And the patrons of the Snuggly Duckling each responded, appreciating that her dream proved that theirs was a common goal that they all could keep reaching for together.

"I miss you and those big dreams, Liebling. All I can hope is that you and that new dream of ours are doing well, my Brownie girl." Eugene's mind wanders to his absent love as he walks the road they once walked together, even as Big Nose drawls on and on about his enthusiasm for his happy day in the morn.

"Come on, Flynn! I'll get you a good room next to mine so we can discuss married life and the joys of husbandhood all night! Killer and Bruiser expertly took care of my little goiter nodule problem last night as an early present for my wedding to my Hilde tomorrow. So no worries about your little brother! Those guys are great! Let's eat, drink, and be married in the morning!" Friendly Big Nose sings a silly, merry tune as he puts an arm around the weirded-out Flynn's squeezed shoulder in camaraderie.

_Yup. Weddings are happy days._ Flynn Rider allows himself to sentimentally touch the still wriggling Snuggly Duckling's dangling sign that was every bit as rickety and hole-y as that memorable day five years ago when he and Rapunzel first darkened its doors as a single strangers.

With a smirk, Eugene throws open the pub's door with all the finesse he had expressed back then.

"Garçon! Your finest three beds for three of your finest dashing and daring conquering heroes!" For old times' sake, blustery Flynn Rider announces his arrival to the old pub's fanned out patrons. Their glare up at him did not exactly have the amount of vicious venom, but there was yet an unwelcome amusement for his interrupting their card games and conversations.

Knives, hammers and maces immediately are drawn once again at his handsome face's arrival.

"Oh, there's no place like home sweet home in the bosom of good friends! I missed you guys." A quixotic Eugene murmurs with a silly daffy smirk pasted on his face as the group of Snuggly Ducklings grab hold of his loose body to toss Flynn Rider back-and-forth under fire breathing threats and flying blade darts before they let them down with a mercenary laugh.

And Eugene allows himself the laugh along with his ridiculers as he struts through room of the pub as if he owned the place.

After all, with all the structural improvements and well-paid employment of the former ruffians by the uniquely eccentric royal family itself, that thought wasn't so far out of the Prince consort of Prussia's claim.

* * *

_Meanwhile, on board the pride of the kingdom's naval fleet, the HmNoS Feia frigate, as it sails southernly homeward bound upon the north __Norwegian sea__…_

"Elsa? What you doing out here, all by yourself? I've been with Mama, after Papa drifted back to sleep. Olaf's been talking her ear off about everything that's happened since they've been gone! In full embarrassing detail, too!" Effervescent Anna nervously shivers as she tries to strike up conversation with her quiet sister.

All morning into the afternoon, Elsa had been dutifully attending to her semiconscious parent, as Papa had been slipping in and out of an at times feverish, at times frozen cold, sentient state since the royal family had boarded ship.

Now that the weakened Norwegian monarch had finally fallen into a restful repose under his Queen Idun's cautious tender healing ministrations, and Elsa's cool maintained aura from her room next door, Elsa finally slipped away for some time in self reflection after the close of the escapade at last.

"Has he been?" Elsa responds distractedly, her blue eyes entranced upon the cresting sea waves where she stood on the Feia's foredeck starboard stem. She pretends to push her stray bangs back when even unobservant Anna could see that she was wiping the prohibited tears from her eyes.

"Yup! Olaf even resang that troll family ditty all about Kristoff being '_smelly'_and '_gruff'_and '_tinkling in the woods'_… My poor Kristly!" Anna made it her prime goal now to garner a smile from her saddened older sister. Even resorting to using troll-like crass language for normal body functions - that definitely did not fit in Victorian era sensibilities - at the expense of her hunky husband's dignity.

"What _tinkles_…in the woods, Anna?" Elsa, obviously lost in her own thoughts to this point, was purposely attempting to engage in polite discussion with her bright eyed younger sis, not quite in tune enough to unravel Anna's gauche phrase to catch on.

"Hee hee. You know." The tactless girl with insinuating wicked eyes gestures downward as her orangey head that was whistling back-and-forth enough data she chuckles and giggles with implied revelry at her big sister's artless guilelessness.

"Oh!" Elsa innocently blushes at her taboo gaffe, her cheeks going a lovely shade of rosy pink set against the sunsetting sky.

"You're so pretty, Elsie." Anna pets a caring hand up to her lovely sister's softly alarmed face.

"That's a cow's name." By rote, Elsa repeats the exact same accusatory words she used then when a certain other person called her by that bovine associated nickname.

And in the next moment, the Ice Queen breaks out in hot tears, launching herself into Anna's welcoming arms.

"What happened to him, Anna? What did I do wrong?" The elegant blonde young woman separates herself for a few moments from her constant worry over her ailing parent that she alone must care for, to vent her own distressed heart to the only person who understood everything she was going through.

"Nothing! You did nothing wrong, Elsa. You've been perfect!" Anna consults Elsa with a warm comforting embrace. She was aware that sheltered Elsa knew very little of people relations after the Norwegian Crown Princess had grown up detached and too frightened to face the world at large. Elsa knew even less than Anna when it came to young men in matters of love.

_'Anna, what do you know of love?' _

_'More than you!' _Anna's soul remembers the sisters' tense argumentative confrontation from over two years ago concerning the romantic topic that neither young girl had any real relevant experience with at that point.

And the kicker was, it involved the very same man in question now, too.

"He didn't even say goodbye…" Elsa openly weeps cool iced tears of her greatest fears at not having the ability to live a normal woman's life into Anna's caramel braids.

"I don't know, Elsa. Maybe he doesn't like goodbyes." Anna says offhandedly in her best attempt to sound noncommittal as she looks over her hugged sister's shoulder when she catches a glimpse of a familiar silhouette.

Just then, a yawning Kristoff, just awakened from a nap after being up all night, ambles up the Feia's top deck after trudging down from his warm cabin bed to see to Sven and Svala in the large ship's lower orlop cargo deck where the reindeer were settled for the extended passage.

But one look at the poignant scene of sisterly devotion – not to mention the tears that strong-willed Elsa rarely shed – made the levelheaded mountain man turn on his booted heel to return to the safe solitude of the engine room below.

Anna gives her retreated 'hero' a sourpuss face at being abandoned by her big, strong guy when she could use some extra emotional support.

{"Brave guy."} Anna grumbles and shakes her head at Kristoff's moral cowardice. Sure, he was ace at climbing steep mountains, shooting straight arrows, and lifting up huge chunks of ice, among other things like a real man. But when it came to tackling a woman's tears, her mountain man, Kristoff Bjorgman, was still a little boy.

{"What?"} Kristoff uses his mental link to answer his little wife's demanding eyes as he backtracks and leaves with a sheepish look on his cute blond face.

_Anyway…_

"I thought Prince Hans cared for me. Maybe I wasn't born to have a real kind of love like you and Kristoff have. After all, nobody could want someone—something—like me." But when Elsa whispers those words in a monotone voice and disillusioned eyes filled with shame, Anna forgoes her own distaste for the Danish Prince to answer honestly her brokenhearted sister's pleas.

"He did, Elsa! I really think he did care…And what do you mean, 'something like you'—you're perfect! Anyone and everyone would want you!" Anna shakes her head and tells all the truth the kind girl felt inside.

She loved Elsa way too much to let her older sister's tentative heart teeter back to shutting itself back out from the world again due to a terrible and incorrect idea of rejection. Especially after Anna glimpsed Hans Westergaard's true soul in that final battle.

The way the Southern Isles Prince wished to sacrifice himself without Elsa ever knowing that it was her ice that would be the ultimate cause of his demise, just to spare his Queen's tender heart, really nailed it home for Anna that Hans had changed. And then, the simple fact that their bond was so great that his iced heart had been thawed, allowing Hans to save their drowning mother's life and subsequently stop the beast with his ingenuity, Anna appreciated all that too.

_So when it was all over, why did he suddenly leave? Did Prince Hans really consider himself unworthy of Elsa? Was there really nothing left of that former desperate villain she once thought she knew?_

It was Hans' choice, Hans' decision, preferring to hide the facts in secret rather than cause anyone grief for his sake. He made Anna swear to never tell Elsa of the Ice Queen's role in the matter. He defeated the bad guy Houtebeen and brought down the monster, and then as the Gler was steered safely out of the maelstom, Kommander Westergaard of the newly commissioned HmNoS Gler had disappeared without a trace.

And Anna was bent and determined now to find out where that heartbreaking Red got away to.

"Shh. Shh…Don't worry, Elsa. It'll be all right. I know it'll be." The empathic braided girl who loved her sister to tears and truly wanted Elsa's happiness—_even if it meant having Westergaard around, grumble,grumble—_ was at a loss for how to respond.

At the moment, the sisters were needed in Arendelle at their parents' side. So Anna simply hugs her upset sister's trembling body tightly as she could as the wheels and cogs in her mind start to spin.

Gently swaying in time with the ocean waves, Anna begins to hum their favorite childhood_ bånsuller –_ lullaby – that their sweet Swedish Mama used to sing them to sleep with when they were wee little girls, humming along. Back from the days when little Anna and Elsa would do everything together as eternal best friends.

"Vårvindar friska leka  
Och viska lunderna kring  
Likt älskande par.  
Strömarna ila,  
Finna ej vila  
Förrän I havet störtvågen far.  
Klaga mitt hjärta,  
Klaga och hör  
Vallhornets klang  
Bland klipporna dör.  
Strömkarlen spelar,  
Sorgerna delar  
Vakan kring berg och dal.

_Spring blossoms whisper and weave.  
__Through the trees green  
__and fresh as young lovers be_

_Streams flow in a hurry,  
No rest or worry  
Until their foam meets the sea._

_Cry out my heart.  
Cry out and hear  
The herdsman's horn  
First echo, then pale.  
River sprites playing,  
Sorrows dismaying  
As they keep vigil on  
__the hill and dale."_

"Ooh! That gives me chills, Anna! I remember your dear Mama rocking you two energetic babes to sleep with that melody, night after night. How the pair of you girls loved to hear her sing those high notes!" Gerda comes scooting up behind the two sisters with that familiar warm, hand-knit shoulder wrap that she placed around each of her charge's shoulders.

"Queen Idun always had the most beautiful spinto soprano voice. Especially when she was singing to her children. How that young queen would dote on you two. And when your Papa stopped in and added his deep dramatic baritone to her lullaby, it was like hearing music straight from Heaven." The plump woman ushers Elsa and Anna in from the darkening sky atop the frigate's open deck to come down below.

"It's been a long day for you two young ladies. Off to bed for you both after you say good night to your parents. I've fixed you up a beautiful cabin room down below deck. Kai thought it would be best if you share a bed together. Just like old times. Won't that be fun?" Sunshiny Gerda, as she always has, tries to put on a cheerful face, though she understood how harsh the bedroom separation her husband Kai was enforcing for Anna and her new mate was to not upset the King.

"Yep! You can put your cold feet on me in the middle of the night, Elsa! Like you used to!" Anna too puts a good spin on it. After all, spending quality time with her sister was every bit as important. Or maybe even more so for Elsa at this fragile juncture.

"Come, take Olaf off your sweet Mama's hands so she can get some sleep too, now that your father has dropped off. While our Idun does enjoy Olaf's chatting company, goodness knows the poor woman could use a good peaceful rest after her long ordeal. God bless her sainted, long-suffering soul." The plump-cheeked and pleasant, older woman directs the Arendelle sisters down towards the Feia's state quarters where the King and Queen of Norway were currently residing.

"We'll make it through this, because we're best friends forever, Elsa! It'll turn out all right. Just trust me, okay?" Anna gives all her loving support and squeezed hand to her sister as she pulls Elsa across the main deck and down the companionway steps.

The trio passes Kai in the ship's waist corridor where he was delivering some milk of magnesia seasick stomach powders at a bilious Rapunzel's door. A pukey green colored Pascal picks up the packet to mix the dosage for his nauseated poorly girl, who quickly must make a dashed run back from the door to the already many times used basin bowl at her bedside stand.

"Oh dear. Good night, cousin Rapunzel." Deflated from her ready question, Elsa must restrain herself from going in and asking the sickly pregnant woman the whereabouts of her husband Eugene or any questions of the other man who had mysteriously gone missing from the Gler after the final battle.

"Feel better, 'Punzy." Commiserating Anna grimaces at the seasick/morning sick expectant young mother's pallid woes as her healthy younger cousin wiggles her fingers at a weak from convulsing Rapunzel in a friendly wave.

The nauseated cocoa brown haired Prussian Princess could barely wave her queasy hand back at them as Kai swiftly closes the door to give the qualmish, nauseous Corona Princess some dignified privacy.

A little ways more down to the Feia's Royal stateroom, the girls quietly tromp forward behind their lifelong nanny/cook/friend as Gerda carefully opens the door as not to make too much noise should the injured King inside be disturbed as he was under the influence of his wife's tender healing lullaby.

Elsa had maintained the chilled temperature inside the royal couple's stateroom in an early attempt at air-conditioning for her recuperating father all the while.

But instead of hearing Queen Idun, who was content to be all wrapped in a sweater at her husband's side, their beloved Mama's lovely spinto soprano strains were replaced in their ears by something quite different indeed.

"_Spring blossoms whisper and weave.  
__Through the trees now green  
__and fresh as young lovers be…"_

Olaf's warbling voice was quietly humming the same old Swedish lullaby that Anna was singing before just moments ago. And though the happy snowman was by no means hitting the high C's involved in the soaring melody that was written for a feminine soprano's voice, he captured tender rhythm's undercurrent of caring devotion and soothing constancy of familial fondness within the lullaby precious sweet lyrics nonetheless.

Obviously Queen Idun had taught the observant eager snow creation the favorite Swedish lullaby up her _b__å__ns_ – her children – that she sentimentally was humming in tune to her vulnerable love. After all, it was Agdar who gave her, through his love, those two precious bundles of God's wondrous gifts of life named Elsa and Anna whom Idun would be forever grateful for.

The exhausted Queen, body mind and soul, had finally relented her unrelinquishing spirit to allow herself some repose upon her frosty darling min alskare's pale bluish tinted, yet solidly breathing, neither too feverish nor too icy cold, chest in one another's embrace on the comfortable plush bed the royal couple finally could share after five long and hard years of un-restful torment.

"_Streams flow in a hurry, No rest or worry. Until their foam meets the sea."_ Musically icicle-eared Olaf's motivated songful voice drones on the instantly picked up song.

But when Olaf's single warble is added to by a pair of golden melodious, sure throated songbirds in harmonized unison, chirping in enthusiastically, solo Swedish lullaby is enhanced the lovely lilting beauty it deserved.

_"Cry out my heart.  
Cry out and hear  
The herdsman's horn  
First echo, then pale.  
River sprites playing,  
Sorrows dismaying  
They keep vigil on  
__the hill and dale."_

As sweet, warm and bright, full timbred lyric soprano Anna takes the soaring high notes while dramatic coloratura Elsa harmonizes with her great flexibility and sustaining power's dramatic tessitura range, the lovely lullaby of the girls' childhood that brings the pair hugging one another as they serenade their weary – _yet alive!_ – parents with emotional tears of joy.

Queen Idun and King Agdar's eyes flutter open briefly with smiles on their lips, as Elsa and Anna both in turns bestow kisses on their cutely slumbering parents in each other's loving embrace.

An absolute serene feeling of tranquility together ties Arendelle's Bernadotte family together now far closer than they've ever been before. The gratitude to God above, from their once broken hearts, gives Elsa and Anna both the fortitude to push aside their fears of yesterday and worries for tomorrow for just a little while of humble prayerful grace as they stand hand-in-hand, arm in arm, with voices intermingled in glorious song as they watch over the peaceful faces of their beloved parents returned to their lonely world…

* * *

_Schokokuchen mit kirschen -_ a German sponge cake that's not too sweet with groundnuts, chocolate chips, fruit, lemon peel, cinnamon and not too sweetened whipped cream as frosting.

_leggiero_ \- Italian for Light-lyric tenor. The high pitched voice has an upper extension of high notes and a lightness of quality that allows for rapid passagework and florid ornamentation.

_dramatic Baritone_ – deep singing voice that's powerful, full and imposing

_Bånsuller_ – lullabies or cradle songs in Swedish

_Vårvindar friska_"- ("Spring Breezes Whisper and Weave") Swedish lullaby, written in 1815

_min alskare – _my darling in Swedish

_tessitura_ – range of notes for vocals in Italian

_coloratura soprano_– agile singing voice in the higher upper extension, capable of fast vocal coloration and great dramatic flexibility in high velocity passages with great sustaining power (Elsa)

_lyric sopano_ – warm singing voice with bright full timbre, able to be heard over an orchestra. Higher tessitura than soubrette ingénue with youthful quality (Anna)

_spinto soprano_ – sweet brightness and height light lyric soprano, but can be pushed to full dramatic ranges without strain and may have a sometimes darker timbre (Queen Idun)

_soubrette soprano – _Light, fresh voice with sweet timbre, mid-range tessitura, with a lighter vocal weight than other sopranos. (Rapunzel)

* * *

Thanks for reading, everyone!

Did you enjoy our romp into the Snuggly Duckling? ^_^ Its pub thugs are really an entertaining bunch, aren't they? And full of secret talents, too! But they still have it in for Flynn! They're good guys, helping out with Hans! ^_^ And our Eugene is a gem! (Like the beauties set in that hidden engagement ring squirreled away in Kmdr. Westergaard's Naval jacket)

Ah, Hans...Elsa's pining away for you...Wonder what sweet sister Anna is planning in her spinning head...As the melodic sisters serenade their returned parents on the trip home to Arendelle...

God bless! Review your thoughts on our newest guest stars, please!

HarukaKou


	66. Chapter 65 - The Same Old Song and Dance

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Chapter 65**

**Act V**

**"The Same Old Song and Dance"**

After another full day of high speed, full knot ahead steering, the modernized multiple engines of the HmNoS Feia had swiftly, and uneventfully carried the ship across the Norwegian Sea, until it had traveled its steam-powered way into the Skaggerak Straits.

To Queen Elsa's crystalline blue longing eyes, that meant that she and her family were almost home.

Now as for Princess Anna, the sleepy eyed girl had tried to wake up at the crack of dawn too, but her eyelids were too darn heavy. It took Gerda's physical tugging of the drowsy girl into her frock and brushing her errant hair down from its wild frizz for the spinning top named Anna to get her engines fully revved. The caramel braided gal had then dashed from their shared cabin room to catch up to Elsa, who left quite early in the morning to greet the day.

Several minutes later, she finally skittered across the top deck of the Feia to meet with her more dignified, standing poised and elegant, older sibling.

"Isn't this exciting, Elsa? What will everybody say when they see Papa and Mama?! Won't they go nuts?! I bet they'll want to throw a huge party, and a ball and so many events to meet their missing King and Queen again!" Anna was so thrilled she was all a-tremble as she finishes re-braiding her bed-mussed hair. The young girl reaches a hand out to grab her surprised elder sister's loose appendage from behind.

"But I don't intend to inform the citizens of Arendelle just yet. I'm sorry to disappoint you, Anna." The cool Queen of Arendelle attempts to soften her definitive declaration with a warm disarming smile and squeeze back to her little sister's hand.

"Why not?" Curious as a kitten but lazy as a cat, Anna stifles a yawn, hugging Elsa's arm. Anna leans her sleepy head on her sister's royal purple velveteen jacket shoulder while the Feia pulls into the familiar view of Arendelle's docking wharf area.

"Kai and I have already discussed this at length. He believes, as do I, that Papa's tentative health will not benefit from an overwhelming welcome home celebration. At least, for the time being. Kai also agrees with the Snow Queen's recommendation for me to take Papa up to the Ice Palace's cold environment in the North Mountain where he can more slowly, in his own time and on his own terms, adjust into his developed ice powers." The platinum blonde young monarch takes her responsibility to her parents and her nation extremely seriously as she gazes towards her proud kingdom that was looming closer ahead. At the same time she cogently explains to Anna of the ultimate decision that she and her chief advisor, Minister Kai, had earnest deliberations over on board the journey here.

"Oh! Family vacation time in the North Mountain together?! That sounds like so much fun! I know you'll be able to make Papa better up there in the Ice Castle! We can play snowgie bowling with Kristoff and Olaf. And I'm sure Marshmallow would love to meet Mama and Papa! We'll have to stop in Arendelle to pick up Eliana and some winter clothes. It gets mighty cold up there, even in summertime, and Mama might want to fetch some of her pretty coats and shawls and warmer bedding. Good thing Gerda kept their room intact all these years! I can't wait to see Mama back in the Castle in that lilac purple nightie when she would always sweep across the floor singing us lullabies 'good night'–" Half asleep, half fantasizing in a childlike dreamworld, baby-of-the-family Anna rattles off her daydreams enthusiastically, in no particular order, as she starts to hum and sway, pressed against Elsa's shoulder with her eyes closed in a quixotic daze.

"Oh, Anna. Thank goodness, Kristoff!" Elsa beckons with a relieved smile to her flighty younger sister's stable rock who just happened to appear on the top deck nearby.

"We've been gone so long from our people already – over twenty days now – and we may be away in the North Mountain for quite a long time before Papa's truly ready to safely return to Arendelle. Kai and Gerda believe it best that they remain at Papa and Mama's side in these first difficult weeks readjusting. And I imagined that perhaps, you and Kristoff could stay on and take care of Arendelle in my place, until we get this all settled."

Elsa lets out a long sigh after finally revealing what she and Kai and Gerda had been evaluating for the past few days of sea travel in secret. It's not that she didn't trust Anna and her new husband to run the kingdom – though High Counselor Kai had his doubts, that sweet trusting Gerda quickly quenched – but Elsa knew how her clingy little sis would react to this proposed separation when Anna had her hopes up so high to be together as a family again..

"What?! Be separated from you and Mama and Papa when we just got them back?! Are you kidding me?!" Anna, as expected, explodes in an almost indignant disdain. The sheer look of pure incredulity on her screwed-up, cute features showed all she felt about the situation as Anna takes a disbelieving step backwards.

Elsa glances around for Kristoff to come bounding over at his new bride's obvious displeasure. He mentally caught enough of the conversation, as heard on the wind he commanded, to get a whiff of what was going on.

{"Anna. Calm down."} The sensible and rational Ice Harvester tries to employ his soothing influence over his Feistypants girl. For both he and Elsa knew Anna well enough by now to know that she was about to self-destruct, and each hold a breath before the big bang exploded…

But just when the orangey firebrand's puckered lips and scrunched up nose on her red face appeared about to literally pop, Anna takes a deep sigh, looks down, and closes her eyes.

"I'm okay with that."

When her countenance was visible again, it was as if the storm cloud had inexplicably passed.

The pleasant smile that totally replaced the angry vexation of moments ago took Elsa completely by surprise. The Norwegian Head of State was already gritting her pretty little white teeth together to prepare herself for Anna's explosive impact, as was Kristoff.

With a confused glance up at the tall shrugging mountain man when none comes, Elsa lets out a deep sigh and small chuckle.

"Then, it's fine with you and Kristoff to stay in Arendelle for a little time, while Mama, Papa and I stay up in the North Mountain?" Elsa asks again, just to be certain of how mature Anna was taking this.

"If it's good with you, Kristly, it's good with me, Elsa. Right?" Anna precious pasted smile did not deceive her guy one bit though.

{"Anna? What are you up to? I would've thought you would want to follow your parents wherever they – ouch!"} With the psychic question, Kristoff eyes Anna suspiciously, about to verbally express his own unease with that outlandish idea of familial separation when his wife's little feet kick his big shins.

"All right! All right! We'll do it!" The tall muscular man leans over to rub his lifted up aching shinbone as he wholeheartedly agrees to whatever his changeable petite bride had planned for them in the near future, no questions asked.

"Good…" Elsa, although feeling a bit weirded out by that funny turnaround exchange, was relieved to be leaving Arendelle in…capable hands…

In her own, Minister Kai's and her Papa's absence from the kingdom.

Well, at least levelheaded Kristoff would be there to advise Anna. Between the two of them, Elsa would have no worry. She hoped.

"After a small rest, while Kai and Gerda acquire some supplies, along with willing servants to accompany our journey to the North Mountain, by this afternoon, I hope to set off with Papa and Mama to the Ice Palace. Once there, Papa can be free to stabilize his cryokinetic abilities, without fear of endangering Arendelle or her people while he becomes accustomed to controlling his ice there." Uniquely understanding that exact sentiment of helplessness and need to protect others from oneself, Elsa explains their itinerary to a raptly listening Anna.

"Sounds okey-dokey to me."

With clandestine ulterior motive, the perky younger girl continues to force a smile as the Feia docks into Arendelle harbor. As soon as the gangplank is lowered, a green gilled Rapunzel and fanning tail Pascal hurriedly were the first to escape the sea vessel and run to Arendelle's familiar shore.

Kai and Gerda escort their returned rulers, with Papa secretly obscured in the dawn's early light upon a stretcher carried down the gangplank and into Arendelle Castle's back rear entrance without any unnecessary fanfare.

With the precious cargo that the Navy men on board the battleship had been sworn to secrecy thereof, Elsa, bids the ship's Kommander fair sailing. Then, she and Anna, with Kristoff, Sven, Svala, and Olaf in tow, step foot back on Arendelle soil.

_…Welcome home…_

Even the wind seemed to whisper a sentimental greeting to the weary travelers, who've returned after much trial and strife, by the grace of God...

* * *

_Miles and miles southward, in the still deep of the night…_

There was usually nothing really still about a night spent in the loft inn quarters of a tavern. But with one of the Snuggly Duckling prime members having an important appointment in the morn, Flynn Rider could be at least content that the constantly raucous crowd had quieted to afford the Big Nose-d groom at least one decent night' asleep.

Although, the cacophony noises of loud snoring, wheezing, hacking up and the general disruptive sounds that filled an establishment that housed over a dozen unkempt, unrefined, and unsavory gents who haunted a public drinking house, could keep a cat awake.

A _cat_ _burglar_ anyway, whose heightened senses had the worry of his little brother and his new friend Job's recovery on his mind, not to mention the painful distance between he and his true love, so far away.

In the bright moonlight, unable to sleep for more than a half-hour or so himself, Eugene Fitzherbert stretches up from his small 'choice' bed in the 'finest room' of the Snuggly Duckling – namely the cramped attic loft where three dusty scant cots had been reserved for he and his two companions. He bangs his already raw knuckles against the unfinished splintering wood slats of the vaulted roof as he does.

"Damn it!" Flynn stifles his own cursing mouth with his other working hand that bites in to keep the silent restful night in some semblance of its disagreeable discordance.

Fortunately, none of the other occupants of the loft were awakened. Eugene pauses to look down first at Job's yet sleeping dark face, and then on his younger brother's peacefully slumbering features. Hans had not awakened from the heavy sedation that Drs. Bruiser and Killer had put him under for the operation.

Which Hans seemed to uphold through with flying colors, as the 'Leave You in Stitches' 99% success rate indeed lived up to its hype.

Eugene lightly brushes the Danish Prince's forehead to check for the fever that was now thankfully nonexistent. Lifting the thin sheet covering Hans, Eugene's eyes peek in the dim light at his Lillebror's exposed chest and gut area where the surgical operation took place. The doctors had given the all clear and Eugene was glad to see that Hans was no longer profusely bleeding. The site wound was not red nor infected looking at all, with a perfectly executed neat set of crocheted stitches across Hans' left fourth intercoastal section.

The reformed pub thugs had done such a bang up job, that the boy was now peacefully sleeping, the danger passed. And maybe a tinge of Eugene's own darling Rapunzel's magical tears that had spilled over Hans before they took off to the sky had some residual effects in his quick healing, too.

This was the first time that he examined his little brother's wound since the pub thugs had finished working the stitches on Hans later that evening. They then subsequently helped carry the ether and laughing gas knocked-out unconscious lad up to this pub's loft for a full night of rest.

"_'Denn dein ist das reich und die kraft, und die Herrlichkeit in Ewig Keitt. Amen._'" (For Thine is the kingdom, power and the glory, now and forever. Amen.) In his native tongue, now true believer in the Almighty, Eugene Fitzherbert, finishes the silent prayer in gratitude to the Creator above.

Satisfied that Hans and Job were both breathing normally and no longer suffering the ill effects of infected feverishness or wasting away from blood loss, Eugene lets out a sigh of relief as he cradles his own battered and bleeding knuckles. He decides the best medicine for them might just be a stiff drink – _or two_ – to keep him company this lonely night where he could find no sleep.

And just because Eugene was now a praying man, it didn't necessarily make the irreverent thief a teetotaler. He was in a bar, after all.

"Hey! How about a neat whiskey, on the house, of course, for your returned conquering hero, my silent Buddy?" Flynn places his arrogant order at the empty bar to the plump cheeked bald man left on duty. Ulf mimes some rather heroic poses as the theatrical act before giving in out of sad-eyed pity to bring an amused, smirking Flynn his alcoholic beverage.

Exhaling sharply as he pours a liberal amount of the high proof alcohol over his bared knuckles to numb them, Eugene turns when a ticking tongue berates his actions.

"That's no way to treat a tall glass of whiskey, boy! Here, let me show you how it's done." In one felled swig, Shorty the drunk puts away the rest of the entire glass's contents as a displeased Flynn frowns down at the dwarf.

"Okay. That's the same trick you played at my wedding toast. Now you owe me two rounds, old man. By the way, how did you get to be my best man back then anyway? The happiest day of my life went by in such a blur, I never got the chance to ask how that all went down. After the runaway wedding cake slid off the balcony to be skewered on top of the cracked ice sculpture; the ill-timed doves and the flying lanterns' early release; the ripped banner of an inept likeness of my nose; the flooded town full of wine and the tarred and feathered horse and frog, I guess that little detail got mixed up in the melee. Hmmm…" Eugene asks, demands and accuses the drunk short man on one breath, to which Shorty merely answers:

"We drew straws and mine came up –"

"Let me guess – Shorty." Eugene rolls his eyes at the old used up joke that only the chortling elderly man found funny.

Him and one other guy.

"Ha ha ha! That's a laugh, Flynn, old pal! Is your witty humor the secret to your being a good husband after all these years? And since you're awake now, we can have that discussion about… you know…that the wedded bliss stuff, right? From one happily married man to another." In his high pitched whispering voice, due to his recent operation of a goiter nodule removed at the back of his throat, Big Nose taps Eugene on the arm with the specific query.

"You said we could have that little chat later. So, now is later, am I correct?" The accented large schnauz man

Eugene gives a hopeful Big Nose a sideways, skeptical glance.

"So, boys, speaking of forgetting a little fact in all the surgical excitement earlier –" Flynn, maybe not too comfortable with discussing the emotional aspect of his relationship that he was still learning the ropes of, while certain that he was quite an experienced ace at – ahem, the more physical facet of marital life –_God, I miss you Liebling –_ and was egotistical enough to brag about it, he was not in the mood to share intimate secrets of his love life with his fair-skinned Princess Rapunzel with this curious Big Nose amateur. A decent man had to draw the line somewhere.

So, what else to do but change the thorny, awkward subject?

"I know you're gonna think this announcement calls for drinks all around, in honor of your beautiful benefactress, Princess Rapunzel! So, without further ado, raise your glasses high, boys, with me in a toast to my lady love. Because she is gonna make me a new Daddy soon!" Eugene announces to the growing crowd of pub thugs who seem to crawl out of the woodwork at the offer of free booze and toasts.

"Yeah!" They all scream out in unison enthusiastically.

"You, a father? Holy Toledo!" Big Nose's sore goiter causes his voice to come out two octaves too high, but his girly tone is drowned out when more than a few of the others call out:

"To Princess Rapunzel! And her Thief's new Baby! To Rapunzel and her Thief's Baby!"

"Still just 'her Thief'? Have I no moniker of my own? Ouch, that hurts. Hey! Keep it down guys! You'll wake the patients!" Eugene may have thwarted Big Nose's pressing questions, but he may have opened his own new can of worms.

"So you _**did**_ have a real live dream in you, after all, Thief! It took you long enough. Me and the guys were beginning to think you had a problem." Hookhand comes sauntering down to the bar in his pajamas and night sleeping mask at the raucous commotion down on the tavern floor.

"Better late than never to increase the surplus population!" Fang mockingly comments with a snide snicker from him and each of his nodding rodent friends on his shoulders.

Silent Vladimir, in turn, slaps Eugene so hard on the back that the father-to-be almost heaves.

"Now, it's our Big Nose's turn to start his dream a-baking in the oven, too!" An eavesdropping Attila peeks his metal covered noggin in from the pub kitchen where he had been a baking fool all night. The talented cupcake man had been getting the wedding cake for tomorrow finished.

With sweet Hilde the bride and syrupy Big Nose the groom in sugar figurine form seated in a rowboat as the cake topper, the cake had to be decorated in time for the planned outdoor sunset reception to be held in the Dancing Forest near the stream where an actual rowboat was awaiting their romantic rendezvous.

"Aw, guys. Please don't tease me about this." Humiliated, Big Nose' big red nose was not all that was blushing now, as the noisy fellas begin to serenade the idealistically romantic, tender man of the hour.

"Come on, Big Nose! That shiner of a fancy ring you've been showing off that your family sent you for your little Brunhilde is worth at least another round of drinks! And a song, to present the double celebration, eh, Daddy Rider?" Hookhand, toothily sneers towards Flynn after throwing a knife to get the ever present, otherwise unnoticed accordion player slacker to shakily start his musical instruction.

Then, right on cue, the extra large tank of a man named Vladimir picks up Eugene by his shoulders to hang him by his shirt jacket on the elk head trophy's horns where it was adorning the wall above the key missing, holey and beat up piano beside the beer barrel vat.

"No no no no no, boys. I still don't sing." Flynn holds his hands up, though knowing resistance was indeed futile around here.

"You don't sing, huh? Then dance for us, Daddy-O!" Several of the pub thugs stick out various sharpened objects to make their point.

_Here we go again…_

Flynn mentally comments drolly with a sleepless sigh as each of the rowdy Snuggly Duckling attendees swat off Shorty to fill their own glasses full of beer barrel offerings that were spilling out from Hookhand's thrown blade.

So there they were, right beneath Eugene's knife avoided feet and unenviable stretched apart legs that were just long enough to dance for their enjoyment on the vibrating up and down, bashed about piano lid. The misused instrument was still melodic somehow nonetheless, as Hookhand sadistically begins to tickle the ivories with his silver hook in a pounding rhythm beneath Flynn's dancing feet, until the poor man is finally let down to collapse splat on the piano lid.

But the thief"s eyes light up when, down below, Gunther and Thor wrestle an abashed Big Nose until he produces from its velvet padded ring box case, an intricately handcrafted pure gold and silver inlaid engagement ring. The large and ornate betrothal ring had at its fancy stylized gold peak, a delicately embossed and decorated house, surrounded by ribbons and flower designs that had been created with love for a young couple to signify the blessing of a happy home they would make together.

"Wow. Now that's a ring and a half, Big Nose." Eugene whistles loudly as his greedy eyes drink in the designer golden ring's ostentatiously decorated sight.

It causes the man to feel a pang of past guilt for only acquiring for his Rapunzel a plain cheap gold band of flawed cubic zirconia as their engagement ring. The penniless, jobless thief who had given up his trade, had pawned his first Christmas present from the royal family—a fancy brass and gold plated buckle belt, since his vocation at the time had been banned by his blushing bride-to-be.

"My Aged P of a father had been working and working on it for a year and just finished this week! He's a bit of a perfectionist and wouldn't settle for anything less than the best for his only son. Go figure. He's been going on and on about it since I first proposed to my Hilde. So now the wedding will be complete. Good old Aged P." Big Nose sighs dreamily with a languorous smile at the lovely thought of finally fulfilling his lifelong dream of settling down with his own special little lady.

A sticky fingered Flynn Rider can't help but pilfer the genuine high filigree gold, Prussian Jewry's jewelry, just wanting to hold something so precious for a while that was so bright and shiny.

"Good old aged P!" A slew of pub thugs chime in salute to Big Nose's 'Aged Parent' as they lift their friend up in the air with a cheer.

"This really does call for a song! Too bad you can't sing, Thief." Retrieving the swiped gold ring back from Flynn's palm with his hook, Hookhand sneers in Eugene's bedazzled face. Then the piano player slings another one of Fang's hidden knives into the wall again above that poor accordion player's sniveling head.

"You're getting married in the morning!" Hookhand's gravelly voice begins the song's chorus as he plunks down to his piano bench seat begins to play a humorous marching tune.

"This may be the day that fulfills all of your dreams." Attila's thin metallic voice echoes in Big Nose's wistful ear.

"You're getting married in the morning!" Hookhand repeats loudly right in Flynn's disgusted-by-his-morning-breath face.

"But before you get to row down marital streams," Gunther's high vibrato takes the next line of the impromptu song.

"There's something to do to get the girl to linger!" Fang's throaty tone hisses.

"Must slide that ring around her finger!" All of the Snuggly Duckling thugs chorus from around the lively barroom with each made up line.

"Watch her gleam and shine that ring so proud!" Vladimir's low bass creates the next verse.

"While the preacher asks for your vow!" Bruiser joins in here, imaginatively as he was still knitting the final touches on the concealed sweater-for-two.

"Like an anchor around your neck, her apron strings too tight. Your happy days of freedom vanish clear out of sight." With the dim view of married life, old Shorty's dizzy pitch warbles out the interlude.

"So slide that ring 'round her finger!" The disorderly gang torments Eugene as each stick a napkin ring, metal nut or washer of some sort on the picked-on and spun man's battered fingers.

"Although you might regret it, make sure that you don't miss!" Hookhand and a pantomiming Ulf act this one out with live Flynn as the guinea pig 'bride'. As the rowdy crowd of folks all pass around the whopper of a golden ring, they each try to put the big gold band on. But it wouldn't fit any of their enlarged nobbly pinkie fingers, save for Eugene's nimble ones.

The gang all raucously laugh at their unwitting victim when a new entrant to the obstreperous scene makes his lyrical presence known.

"Then seal the forever deal with a lasting kiss!" The beautiful perfect pitch, perfect range, perfect tenor rings throughout the pub from somewhere in the loft above their heads. Each pub thug turns to see a semi-delirious, ether affected, dizzy, yet right on tune, Hans Westergaard slide down the stairwell banister to toss his soaring vocals into the merrymaking fray.

Ever the accomplished performer, Hans throws a romantically amorous kiss directly at the ice sculptured voluptuous female Cupid that artistic Gunther had been chipping at for the wedding presentation reception tomorrow.

Eugene is gape-mouthed astonished when Hans, in a trancelike dreamy state, agile leaps onto the stage to sit at the piano that Hookhand had abandoned momentarily to help decorate Eugene's big thumb with a bent spoon that the former seaman fashioned with his powerful hand.

And in his lightheaded, ether induced hallucination, the Danish Prince starts playing a harmonious fluid rendition of Handel's uplifting "Air in G major" with all of its titillating notes and playful interludes of variation, and semi-quavers to the right and left handed orchestral arrangement.

The light and airy Andantanio's upbeat tempo that Hans plays from memory has the entire barroom stunned into intrigued listening silence. Then the accomplished pianist since his lonely childhood closes this lovely classical piece that was oft played at weddings, with a brilliant crescendo, soon followed by pleased applause.

"Bravo! I can't believe this amazing guy is related to you, Thief!" Even by an impressed, not too broken-nosed at being shown up at the piano keys Hookhand, who puts his hands together in enthused clapping, for this unexpectedly talented little brother of the thief he elbows in the coughing gut.

"Thank you, thank you, gentlemen." In a faraway fantasy realm, the young man with so many hidden talents, stands before his stunned and approving audience. Then they all cheer and whistle enthusiastically for their newest friend and new rondo buddy who was unashamed to sing along with the boisterous bunch.

"You have got to be kidding me." Flynn's eyes droop in heavy-lidded incredulity at the sight of Hans being applauded and slapped on the back in friendly acceptance for his participation by the Snuggly Duckling team.

_Unbelievable! Even these pub thugs like you better, Sideburns! Why is it that nobody ever likes me?! _

Flynn scrutinizingly marvels at his charmer of a Lillebror's uncanny knack for gaining a stranger's trust that he himself was sorely lacking.

_Think you'd better give me a few pointers in that charm department, Kid_.

But in the next second, Eugene notes that the comely and popular new Maestro's wobbly legs were about to give out after Hans gives a flourished bow. Eugene scrambles to make an intuitive diving leap across from the bar stage, sliding across the musically discordant keys to catch his weak brother's fall.

"Slide that ring on her finger!...Princess Elsa, would you do me the extreme honor of becoming my wife?" With Big Nose's extravagant ring that had somehow been passed into Hans's deft hand, the delirious proposal question that had been practiced so many times for proper delivery and elocution in every daydream and nighttime fantasy for practically as long as the boy Prince could remember, slips from Hans' soft lips.

His fuzzy mind envisions Gunther's icy blue white life-like size ice sculpture statue whose feet he had fallen at, as Elsa of Arendelle's lissome visage, just before he passes out again in Eugene's responsible arms.

"Okay, enough bachelor night party for you, lover boy. Let's break up the festivities for now, guys, and let these two dreamers get some proper shut-eye, so they're bright eyed and bushy tailed in the morning for the important big event."

Feeling like the only sane man in the room, Eugene expertly shakes off all the faux rings from his fingers as he ambles from the stage. Noting how a similarly weary Big Nose was falling into his beer, Eugene slips the fancy ring of a gold family heirloom back into the groom's slumbering ring case and back into his jacket pocket.

_How's that for a changed man, Darlin'? I've been so reformed by your good influence that I'm actually__returning__gold jewelry to its owner, rather than stealing it for my own worldly gain. Gotta be a good role model from now on to make our kid proud_…Eugene magnanimously thinks as he carries Hans back up the Snuggly Duckling's back stairs to get some final hours of restful shut eye after that flamboyant musical display.

* * *

"Are you sure I can leave you to handle this, Anna?" Elsa's tentative voice almost cracks when she watches her little sister chase a giggling Olaf around the throne in Arendelle's throne room, until both the girl and the summer hayfever prone snowman were both breathless.

"Ah-choo!" A loudly sneezing Olaf sends his prized carrot nose flying in a direct path at Anna's yellow rosette decorated circlet tiara that she had first worn at her wedding. The projectile root vegetable knocks the pretty tiara off kilter until it falls over one of Anna's blinking eyes.

"Sure. No sweat." Positioning the gold and pink jeweled tiara back securely on the crown of her head, Anna brashly shows off her overconfidence by plopping down onto Elsa's throne and crossing her legs over the edge of the large chair as if she owned the place.

"Oof!" Just then, the wily carrot that had balanced itself on a chandelier above is blown down in a wisp of wind until it lands squarely upon Anna's unsuspecting head, in doing so, knocking her straightened tiara crooked again.

"See? All under control." The mischievous young woman states assertively, shoving the carrot back into Olaf's 'brain freeze!' head, as if nothing happened.

"Whew! That was a close one! I wouldn't want to go on my picnic with Eliana nose-less." Olaf goes from dapper boyfriend to silly talking ditz in a frost-frozen second.

"I'm cool." Then he wanders off, petting back his slicked back branch hairs as he leaves the throne room.

"Oh, Anna. Please take this seriously. Everyone will be looking to you for leadership while I'm gone." Straightening the still off-center tiara on her sister's head, Elsa uses her icy prowess to gently swat off Anna's crossed ankles from disrespecting the throne with her feet slung over the side of the velvet corded arm rest.

"You worry too much, Elsie! Everything will be fine here! Kristoff and I can handle the people. They're our friends! We'll take care of everything on this end! You just focus on taking care of Papa and Mama for the next few weeks up in your North Mountain getaway's 'spa treatment'. When you come back here, Arendelle Castle will be all spruced up, ready for its King and Queen again. Everything will be right as rain in no time, you'll see!" Always full of sunshine, Anna leaps up from the single throne to hug her big sister's reservations and qualms away.

"You really think it will only take that long for me to help Papa adjust?" More in her sweet tentative voice than her harsh commanding elder sister tone, Elsa allows Anna to move her towards the Castle's front entrance. There, Kai and Gerda had already assembled a small contingent of their most trusted fellow servants. After giving a short explanation of requirements of complete rest for the retrieved King and Queen, the chosen team agreed to travel up to the North Mountain alongside their miraculously return monarchs, without leaking a word to anyone in the village about it, just yet.

"I know it! Even my new mother-in-law, you know, _**the**_ _**Snow Queen**_, believes in you, Elsa! Papa just needs some rest before he's ready to come back to Arendelle. So don't rush him! Sit back and enjoy the private family time with our parents, showing off all the architectural artistry of your breathtaking Ice Palace. Meanwhile, Kristly and I can use the opportunity for honeymoon _take two_, right? So Take Your Time." Anna winks to her instantly blushing big sister while the piquant Princess waves coquettishly over to her hunky husband she knew had psychically overheard her, judging from the blush creeping up Kristoff's thick red neck.

Kristoff clears his throat while he goes back to discussing plans with some of the castle builders to get the royal workman to reopen and cleanup the dusty spiderwebs from the original throne room that had been closed up since her parents' unfortunate accident and untimely demise.

"How are they doing? The coming home to Arendelle after five long years away, never knowing if they were gonna make it back to not, must be kind of overwhelming." Anna asks, suddenly going thoughtful. Kristoff soon appears, sensing her mood change as he readjusts that crooked tiara one more time, followed by a tender flick beneath her chin to wordlessly cheer her up. She gives him a sweet appreciative smile as she and Elsa then walk side-by-side through the castle up towards the royal main bedroom.

The minute they had arrived back in Arendelle, energetic Gerda had rushed through the front door to race through the King and Queen's rooms to give a quick fresh flower airing. The dutiful servant woman was glad that she and faithful Johanne had always kept the missing rulers' rooms dusted and aired out, if just to keep their beloved memory alive.

"Papa came to consciousness just long enough for him to be in disbelief that Kai had left Johanne in charge of Arendelle in their absence." Kai's younger sister named Johanne, Agdar's old nanny, was hardly the snobbish, staid, and starchy King's first choice to run Arendelle. Although, the scoffing monarch, even as he was slipping back away, was laughing with Mama at the idea of the stern, prickly lady's maid as decisional head of the kingdom for these last three weeks.

Elsa and Anna both break into chuckles as well at the thought of their uptight servant friend running Arendelle, titillating giggles until the pair had arrived at their parents' bedroom.

Looking in each other's eyes at the significance of opening the door and finding their loved ones inside again, the Arendelle sisters, arms entwined together, push open the double doors.

And share a smile to find their handsome, kind eyed Papa patiently seated on the bed, folding clothes his wife hands him into a trunk while their pretty little Mama scurries about between her closet and dressers that the fashionable Queen had been separated from for far too long.

"You all right, Papa?" Anna asks, strangling arms around Agdar's sitting neck after running some tickling fingers along Idun's tiny waist, almost making the off-balance Queen drop her arms full of scarves, gloves, and that dreaded corset in her feisty daughter's wake.

"I would be better, if your mother didn't require transferring her entire wardrobe into this one singular trunk." The King's baritone was pleasantly warm as his teasing eyes smile over to his beautiful Queen, who was beside herself all morning with choosing from her outdated clothing choices for a summer to be spent in a winter North Mountain setting.

"Oh, you don't have to worry about clothes, Mama! Elsa can make you an exquisite designer ice dress that just melts off when it's time to wash! Ooh, and you don't need that nasty thing, either!" Anna impetuously declares and sings candidly open before both her parents as she tosses aside to the bed beside an amused Papa the despised female torture device, a.k.a. the 'corset.'

"Anna! Propriety! And I think my ice gowns would be too cold for Mama to wear, silly goose." Feeling like melting herself into the floor, Elsa, feeling responsible for raising her sister these past few years, chides her crude younger sibling to speak so frankly blunt in front of Mama - and Papa too! - about such delicate feminine subjects as corsets and melting off clothing in this prudish Victorian day and age.

"How about one for Papa, then? He can take the sub-zero frost, _and_ he's still got a nice figure." With a mischievous glint in her eye to a jaw-dropped Elsa, Anna teases her respected patriarch, causing Agdar and Idun to both stifle raised eyebrow chuckles at their irreverent daughter's hilarious behavior.

"Just as we thought, our little sunbeam has not altered one bit, my dear." Although his refined sensibilities had just been put through Anna's tactlessly outspoken ringer, King Agdar was glad to see his little hoyden, who took after her mother in Idun's youthful days, had not at all been jaded by time nor being thrust out into an unfamiliar world.

"Praise the Lord, that both of our girls turned out so fine." Idun says, turning from her closet to caress the porcelain white face of her sheltered, yet strong-willed Elsa as her first child was quietly helping her mother choose outfits. In an agreed smiled nod, Agdar leans his pounding head against Anna's warmly hugged arms around his neck.

"Yes, Idun. God has been good to us, to give us such loving children. We are so proud…_huff_… of you both…_Argh_." Agdar's composed face abruptly cringes as he cradles his left arm. The King immediately rolls up his jacket sleeve to inspect the summer heat reactive pallid blue-white it was phasing into again.

With startled wide eyes, Anna feels her father's sudden cool breath against her neck as Elsa closes her eyes to regulate the overcompensating surging ice in Agdar's veins.

"Elsa. We should be going soon." Queen Idun could see that, try hard as he might, even as her stoic mate had put his whole mind to it all morning, it was growing more difficult for her husband to restrain his cryokinetics as the warmth of the noonday in southern Norway's Arendelle wore on.

Elsa had tried to keep this room especially chilled, but Arendelle Castle was not as well insulated as her Palace in the North Mountain that would serve as a better setting for her father's reconditioning and recuperative rest.

"I'll get Kristoff to bring down your trunk! I bet it's real heavy as all get-out with Mama piling all those clothes into there!" Anna hustles out of the room to fetch her strong strapping guy once she leaps off from where she was sitting on top of the trunk lid, for Elsa to use her ice magic to seal the ornery trunk shut from popping open with all of Mama's clothes.

"Don't you think it would be preferable for Anna to join us at that Ice Palace of yours, Elsa dear? She is just a child still, after all. And to be left in charge… with the responsibility of Arendelle, by herself with that…mountain man…" Once he catches his breath under his daughter's temperate assistance, King Agdar begins to argue one last time of the unsuitability of leaving Anna alone to the whims of that rugged Ice Harvester commoner.

"Papa. I can assure you that _Snow Prince_ Kristoff is a good man." Using Kristoff's newly acquired title, Elsa attempts to ease her Papa's mind, seeing what direction his thoughts were traveling.

But the fact that young Master Bjorgman _was_ a _**man**_ he would be leaving alone with his innocent daughter was what was bothering this overprotective father's already overtaxed mind.

"Exactly… But Anna is far too young to be married. She doesn't know her own mind yet. I wonder how long…" Trailing off from adding the word 'annulment' to their discussion just yet, Agdar knew young men from his Navy days well enough to simply give in to the fact that his precious little, naive Anna had married this lowly common mountain man in his fatherly absence. He would hardly be inclined to allow such an inappropriate match, no matter how highly recommended that this '_Kristoff's'_ bloodline from the Snow Queen herself came, it was just too much…

"Agdar. If you look back to remember, _**I**_ was only _**sixteen**_ years old when a brash young man came and swept me off my feet. My handsome Prince married me soon thereafter, when I was years junior to Anna's age now. And we turned out quite a content and happily suited loving couple, I believe." Idun calmly states her younger daughter's side of this longstanding argument every father felt in passing his precious child's safeguard to another man.

"Well, certainly you were a more mature sixteen, then, Idun." Try as he might to sustain his judicial tribunal, Agdar then realizes that his resistance was futile when his wife merely chuckles at him.

"Was I? Picking flowers and running roughshod over the countryside? You are too funny, min alskare. Not a word more about this, you silly man." The mother of the house orders her royal husband, smacking his tight rear end as he stands from the bed, like the never-too-mature-to-enjoy-life Queen used to playfully do. Just the same as the unchanged sixteen-year-old girl he met once upon a time at the beginning of their own fairytale.

After Anna rushes back in, totally unaware of the conversation concerning her future, Kristoff sheepishly bows his red cheeked head to the King and Queen as he enters their bedroom behind her. Anna simply points a finger down at the trunk, and the large muscled man, back in his grey and teal summer tunic and vest, wordlessly lifts up the heavy awkward case that would've taken at least two normal footmen to handle the purveyance thereof, as if it weighed next to nothing.

Elsa at Papa's side and Anna at Mama's, the girls help their parents downstairs, before the excited eyes of the well-wishing servants. The sisters usher their parents through the back castle door exit where even more multiple servants and helpers were coming and going, carrying all kinds of provisions and supplies in and out to the entourage of waiting royal carriages.

"I'm gonna miss you guys so much!" Anna says in her '_I'm the baby, gotta love me!'_ sweet voice as she hugs her Papa, whom Kai emerges from the prepared carriage interior to help prop up Agdar on his other side. The King stumbles out through the promenade in a slow-moving, concentrated manner as he walks out into the summer heat of late July.

Once at the carriage, with Elsa's ice, a maintained King Agdar pauses mid-step to wrap his littlest child up in a big bear hug that she loved as a tiny girl. Not quite able to spin her around high in the air he did then, when he was off to his Naval service, Papa still was able to offer Anna the same warm smile and goodbye kiss.

Agdar nods to various faithful servants to keep the kingdom watched and protected while they were away. All while giving Kristoff a cold shoulder warning, wary glance when the mountain man courteously bids Anna and Elsa's Father a safe trip.

"Yes. Thank you, for your kind consideration, Kristoff. My husband and I are **so** very grateful that you are here to stand beside Anna in our time of need. We are forever in your debt for all that you have already done for our family." Queen Idun, amused and slightly ashamed at her curt, overprotective husband's treatment of the sweet faced young blond, picks up her ill mannered mate's slack. She shakes Kristoff's stuck-out offered hand to Agdar in both of hers affectionately in his stead.

"Thank you…uh…Your Majesty." Raised a commoner his whole life by Saami traders, mountain men and trolls, Kristoff often forgot to add the polite address. But he catches Elsa and Kai's wide-eyed prompting in the corner of his eye.

"'Mama'. Please feel free to call me 'Mama,' too, Kristoff. Just like Anna does, because you're part of her, so you're part of our family now, too. " Idun tenderly squeezes Kristoff's big hand in her small one. The Queen surprises the reddened Ice Harvester, causing him to go all wide-eyed and speechless in shock when the diminutive Queen of Arendelle steps on her tippytoes to plant a motherly kiss on the twenty-three-year-old boy's cheek.

"I personally became acquainted with how your real Mama cares for you and would want me to embrace you as my own child." She speaks from the heart in her unique experience of sharing her physical form with the timeless Snow Queen, whose own maternal soul Idun had glimpsed.

"You're the best Mama ever! You know that?" Anna had happy tears in her eyes at her Kristoff being accepted by her loving parents (at least one half) as she rushes to embrace her sweet mother.

"I know. Now you be a good girl and listen to Johanne, my Flutterbudget. And eat your vegetables." A chuckling Idun kisses her wildflower Anna and nuzzles their noses together with the same nutritional caring and maternal warmth she did when they were the small little girls she would sing to bed.

"I trust you to take care of our Anna." From his carriage seat that helpful Kristoff assists in helping the stiff older man into, King Agdar finally relents to meet Kristoff's honest eyes with this relying bond of trust.

"I will, Sir." Kristoff answers sincerely and securely with a sure nod, the men's eyes intersecting as the blond young man aids Queen Idun into her seat beside her husband.

"If anything really difficult comes up, Anna, be sure to send word." Elsa rejoins her family after having a word with the castle stable groomsman about saddling up a certain horse for the younger Queen to personally ride up to the North Mountain.

Elsa hugs and kisses her baby sister tenderly before turning to leave, with a nod to Kristoff and many of the other servants of her kingdom left behind to care for Arendelle.

As Elsa mounts 'Prince Hansome' - AKA Hans' fjord stallion 'Sitron' - her eyes glaze over to where she could just make out a certain cocoa brown haired Prussian Princess. Rapunzel was skulking in the sunlit shadows of the Castle promenade, silently watching the family ready for departure.

"Cousin Rapunzel!" Elsa calls out, just about to prompt Sitron to meet Rapunzel halfway, when the tensed barefoot Princess retreats off into the rear garden tree line.

_Sigh._

"Please give Rapunzel all my love and well wishes, Anna." Composing herself, Elsa merely speaks the niceties. Even though a thousand other words were caught in her dry throat that she longed to ask this cousin who had grown so close to both she and Anna that the Arendelle girls considered Rapunzel almost a third sister.

Perhaps Rapunzel had something to hide from Elsa. And maybe she was right to keep that secret hidden… Maybe Prince Hans told his new sister-in-law he wanted nothing to do with her troublesome, ice-powered cousin, after all.

Elsa considers sadly the uncertainties of her budding – perhaps wilted – romance with a certain courageous Prince from the Southern Isles.

"God be with you, Anna. Please take care of each other, Kristoff." With a fond wave goodbye, the Queen of Arendelle, astride the golden coated, black and white mane, fjord horse–_**his**_ horse–gives the carriages containing her Mama and Papa, Kai and Gerda and an army of servants and provisions for weeks of an extended stay in her North Mountain palace the go-ahead to follow her lead.

"Let us begin, Sitron." As Elsa addresses the horse in its original owner's name, Sitron cocks his inquisitive head, looking backwards curiously. He had not heard himself be called by that name for a long time since he and his beloved master had parted ways. The whinnying fjord horse had cause to wonder along this crossing now, how his beautiful new mistress discovered his true identity.

Upon fearless Sitron, whom Elsa had trained as her own reliable steed, the Ice Queen races towards the waters at full gallop. Her mental ice powers, which had expanded since this incredible journey's end, instantly frost freeze a thick solid path across the empty fjord towards the other side of its banks, on a direct course towards the North Mountain palace of Elsa's Ice Kingdom…

* * *

_Moments after Elsa and the__North_ _Mountain__bound carriage train disappear around the mountainous bends…_

"Okay! Kristoff! Sven! Olaf! We have a mission! Find me Cousin Rapunzel! We have to have a serious talk…"

Once the hoopla of the remaining servants and castle grounds caretakers scurrying back to their normal household duties settles, Princess Anna's smiling face turns all foreboding and sober.

She pounds a fist in one hand for effect, as Anna tries to toughen up and look intimidating enough to scare the truth out of her skitterish cousin, whatever it may be.

* * *

"What're you doing up there, Cousin Rapunzel? I've been looking everywhere for you!"

At the sound of the sudden voice breaking the still silence, Pascal the chameleon nearly jumps out of his yellow backed skin from where he was taking a noontime snooze. The reptile goes all colors as he starts to tumble down from where he and Rapunzel had been cowering in a tall, old, oak tree.

Luckily for the frightened lizard, the multitasking girl's quick hand reached out to catch him in the nick of time.

Wiping back the veil of her red-eyed tears, the Prussian Princess peers down from the twenty-five foot tall bough that the emotionally spent girl had been perched upon.

She had been this way for a while now, her pretty face buried in her knees as the lonesome brunette was crying out for her missing love's support and guidance as she withholds a lonely secret.

"Olaf? Did everyone else leave?" Rapunzel sniffles as she calls down to the unmistakably single snowman that she spies the base of the tree.

"Not Anna. Or Kristoff. Or Sven and Svala, for that matter. And me and my girl, Eliana – Oh, you have to meet Eliana! We're still here!" Olaf the snowman pleasantly counts off the names of his friends on his branchy fingers as he projects his silly voice upwards for the well-balanced girl to hear.

"Boy, it must be fun to sit way up there in that tall, tall tree! Gee, I wish I could climb, too…" Olaf attempts to motivate his three mounds to climb up the oak's bark, but he only succeeds in slipping his twigs along the rough bark.

"Hold on, little guy! I'm a-coming! I'll get you up there, Olaf! Hop on my back!" Anna's melodic lyric soprano sings from out from nowhere.

Rapunzel curiously looks around from her high vantage point to see the orange haired Princess come rolling over the hillside and kneel down for Olaf to jump on her back.

"This one was always my favorite tree to climb, too! I named him Mr. Oakly when I was little! Mr. Oakly was so big and sprawling and endlessly strong that he could reach up so high in the sky! How did you know he was my dear friend?! You must be psychic, like Kristly!" All of Anna's tough-guy-ness is siphoned into her adoration of nature, as the lonely little girl of yesteryear often turned to the wonders the great outdoors to be her quiet, nonverbal companions while growing up.

Like a little monkey more than a graceful Princess, Anna of Arendelle capably climbs the thick trunk of the erect tree until she was at even eye level with her weepy cousin on the rambling thick branch.

Rapunzel smiles at the quaint thought of naming a tree. She rubs her tears away as Anna crawls towards her, making the entire limb shiver and shake with wobbly energy.

"So, how's the weather up here on Mr. Oakly?" Anna, after catching her breath and keeping her balance on the branch, tries to remain diplomatic with her emotional cousin.

"Nice." Rapunzel stifles a sniffle as Olaf hops from Anna's back and swings on her pair of braids down to the main tree limb's green offerings.

"I like climbing trees." Olaf announces in awe of his lofty surrounding as he carefully waddles sideways and reaches up to investigate the higher branch parallel to his snowy head.

"This is like being in a real treehouse, isn't it? When we were growing up, I always wanted to build a treehouse on Mr. Oakly with Elsa, but she just didn't like coming outside and playing with flowers and trees, and the critters and bugs like I did. She only liked outdoors for playing in the snow when we were really tiny. I loved that too!" The prattling Princess of Arendelle dallies with a creepy crawling caterpillar that was inching its way up the tree branch right over her head. She giggles with glee at the ticklish memories it brought back.

"Ooh, come here you fuzzy wuzzy widdle cattypilly… you cutie you –Ohh!" Olaf, in trying to catch his new caterpillar friend that he accidentally knocked off the perpendicular branch above, plummets from the twenty-five foot high tree limb to fragment his three dissected parts across the ground below, his personal snow flurry confused as to which one to stick to.

_**Splat! Splat! Splat!**_

"Olaf!" Rapunzel and Anna both cry out, banging their jerked heads together to watch their fallen frozen friend carrot nose-dive down.

Poor Olaf is dashed asunder, all while the resilient caterpillar merely clings to the next branch that its rows of sucker feet descended to cling to.

"It's all good! Just got a get my butt back in shape before my hot date with Eliana! You girls try to have fun up there without me! Come on, torso, arms and butt! Doubletime reconnect fast! Eliana's on her way! My PSF (personal snow flurry) can sense it! And you know how she gets when you're tardy!" Under the pressure of love, Olaf was muttering to his disobedient unruly body parts to collect back together pronto. It was as though they seemed particularly inharmonious and love-confused with one another at the thought of meeting with the chilly snow girl.

"Hee, hee hee." "Hee hee hee." Rapunzel and Anna girlishly giggle together at the funny sight of the snowman's scrambling best attempts, once he collected himself back together, to dress up. Olaf tugs on a spur-of-the-moment fashioned leaf bowtie to spiff himself up to impress any female heart, even a thoroughly snowed-in one like his Eliana's.

Speaking of feminine hearts, now that Olaf had literally broken the proverbial ice…

"You really are like a sister to us, 'Punzy. Elsa and I love you to bits." Anna sincerely said, hugging an arm around her brown-haired cousin warmly as they laugh together with their four gangly legs dangling and kicking over the tall bowed oak tree branches like little girls again.

"Aww. I really love you guys that much, too. You're the little sisters I always dreamed of growing up with, but never had." Rapunzel feels all familiar warm and fuzzy inside, more than the morning sickness that she had been wallowing in, that had driven her to the liberating height.

Which was really no sweat for the girl who spent her entire life looking out a seventy foot tall tower's high-altitude window.

"And this crazy adventure has made us **so** close, hasn't it? But like Elsa and I discovered the hard way, _**close**_ sisters should _**never**_ keep secrets from one another! Don't you agree, Big Sister 'Punzy?" The blunt girl slides in that not so tactful adage, although she did truly feel that way inside.

"Oh yes. Secrets aren't very…conducive to sisterly…love...oh." Rapunzel, guilty herself of holding back a hidden secret, bit her lower lip until it was a blood drained pale pink.

"Then you should _**confess**_ to your _**loving**_ little sister exactly _**where**_ a certain _**Mr. Hans Westergaard**_got off to! Not the mention your own cut-and-run hubby Eugene. Right, Big Sisty?" Anna transforms from a sweet wheedling baby sister to a tough-as-nails prosecutor in a few seconds flat.

All at once, she ceases plucking at the green stem leaves of the summery dandelion she had carried all the way up here, to ruthlessly huff, puff, and blow at the fluffy pom-pom until not a single petal was left on the naked stem.

"But Hans made Eugene and I swear not tell Elsa…he said he didn't want to be a burden on her or your family…" Rapunzel, after a long lip-bit silence, exchanges a look with a convincing Pascal to ante up the silent deceit that had been eating up at the pregnant young woman inside for the past few days.

"Yeah. I know all about that Hans had been frozen solid by Elsa and he didn't want her to feel guilty and all. But we all saw him after that, back to flesh and blood and fine. What I want to know is: why did that Casanova just take off and leave my poor Elsie hanging – If that jerk breaks her heart this time, after all she's been through… I'll never, never-ever forgive him again!" Conjecturing at an uber-speeded pace, Anna feels quite easy discussing these trials of the heart with her new 'sister' Rapunzel, especially in the freeing open air altitude of their shared treehouse hideout.

"He didn't **mean** to leave!" Crying out a pitch too fervently, Rapunzel felt the need to clear her self-sacrificing brother-in-law's good name from being so reviled and ridiculed undeservedly.

"Hans just had to go." More quietly, Rapunzel, ashamed to betray his deathbed promise, tones down her frenetic voice as she averts her eyes from Anna's inquiring ones.

"But why? Why did he leave so suddenly? Couldn't he have stuck around to say a proper goodbye at least, and be done with it?" Anna stubbornly demands, grabbing her cousin and shaking her by the shoulders, not satisfied with the '_he just had to go'_ defense, at all.

The lugubrious tears that begin to stream down Rapunzel's brilliant green eyes glisten with more agonized melancholy than Anna had ever seen expressed before in them.

"Because…_**Sob...**_Hans was dying, Anna! _**Weep...**_When he was driving the ship to the Lofoten port, that evil pirate snuck up and stabbed him in the back! _**Sob...**_And he begged Eugene to take him away…_**Sniffle.**_..So Elsa wouldn't be sad. _**Sob...**_Eugene said he would try to get him help… But it was a very, very bad wound to his stomach…And he was so weak and bleeding so much... **_S_niffle.__**..I don't think he was going to make it…" _**Sob!**_Just about able to choke out in between sobs of her heart-wrenched words, Rapunzel conveys all the hidden clandestine concealment her beleaguered heart had been covertly avoiding her cousins, Aunt, and Uncle, as not to be questioned.

Pascal offers his girl a big oak leaf to wipe away the flowing tears, knowing the compassionate lass would breakdown at first questioning.

"Hans was stabbed…? He was dying…?" The dreadful realization hits Anna like a ton of cold bricks. Luckily Kristoff, upon his flying reindeer buddy, was there just the right moment to steady his tipsy Arendelle Princess from falling off the limb she had been perched upon and pull her and a teary Rapunzel onto Sven and Svala's sturdy backs.

"Kristly?" On the verge of tears herself that she couldn't quite explain, Anna buries her face to her man's strong muscular back. Her mind, not prepared at all for this revelation, was racing as fast as the beats of her palpitating heart.

"Is Hans dead already?" Anna, in shocked disbelief and regretful sadness that they would never see that annoying Red of a Danish Prince again, was almost afraid to squeak out the words into Kristoff's tensed shoulder traps. Her radiant heart instantly aches for her sister and how poor Elsa would react to this terrible news, were it true.

"We're going to go find out. Come on Olaf!" Trained tracker plus nature's Wind Whisperer Kristoff scoops up the just reconstituting snowman and plops him onto Svala's back, where Rapunzel and Pascal on her shoulder were already situated.

"Eliana!" Kristoff's determined voice calls out for the snowgirl down below who had been coming around the hillside impatiently waiting for Olaf at their late picnic rendezvous not so far from the Arendelle castle courtyard. "Tell Johanne that we'll be back soon! Just a few days probably! And don't let Elsa or her parents find out that we're gone! Got it?" The Snow Prince orders the intelligent snowgirl as Eliana nods and waves back.

"I'll be back for some snowdling real soon, my Frosty Sugarplum!" Precariously hanging off the flying reindeer above, Olaf sends a wildly waving Eliana a wet blown kiss as he, Sven, Svala, Pascal join the trio of human to rush off right to another adventure.

Throwing caution to the winds, Kristoff takes Anna to race through the clouds to find out the ultimate fate of a previous enemy of her kingdom, and of her own heart, once.

The same man who currently held the love of her sister captive, perhaps now for all time…

* * *

_Greetings, 'Frozen: Again' Friends!_

_I hope you all were in a singing mood (unlike our Flynn-er __Eugene__ ^^) for this songful chapter! FYI: I scripted the fun lyrics to the pub thugs' newest song, 'Slide that Ring on Her Finger' (that even our medicine-ed up loverboy Hans tossed in his tenor voiced punchline) But to keep the rhythm musically recognizable, I set the lyrics in my rondo revolving head to the catchy old Lerner &amp; Loewe 4/4 signature time tune from 'My Fair Lady' of "Get Me to the Church on Time'.Which is basically a lively raucous barroom chorus melody based on the same marital bliss outcome. ^_^ Have fun singing along!_

_So we meet with Olaf's girlfriend Eliana in this episode! I'm yet a little vague on her looks and clothing (if any) to describe, but I wanted to start including her into the Frozen Again scene. Olaf could do with a little lovelife, can't he? ^_^ If you've heard any further personality traits attributed to the new snowgirl (or Tangled TV series' 'tough as nails handmaiden/ confidante to Rapunzel, Cassandra as well), do share, please! ^_^ Just trying to keep ahead of the curve!_

_Even good old Sitron made an appearance with Elsa today! She seems to have embraced Hans' horse as her own. Wonder if he and his original master will get o meet up again..._

_So, did you enjoy this installment? New plot twists are being laid as, returning to Arendelle, Elsa takes her folks to her __Ice_ _Palace__ and leaves Anna in charge of Arendelle. But when Anna finds out from Rapunzel that Hans was gravely injured and didn't just walk out of Elsa's life of his own volition, that feisty go-getter gal is on the move again to set things right for her forlorn sister!_

_Stay tuned to see what more excitement lies in store as 'Frozen Again But the Greatest of These is Love' Act V continues!_

_God bless! Thanks for reading and reviewing!_

_HarukaKou_


	67. Chapter 66 - I Am My Beloved's

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act V**

**Chapter 66**

**"I Am My Beloved's and My Beloved Is Mine"**

When the morning sun awakens over the dancing twisting forests of Prussia, the Snuggly Duckling Pub thugs were already abuzz with wedding date excitement.

Although most of the lifelong bachelors had never even entertained the thought of taking on such an enterprisingly questionable endeavor, they would enthusiastically work hard in making the dream a reality for their fellow former criminal brother. Even if his romantic notion led to the frightening step called 'marriage'.

But this much awaited morn that dawned on the Prussian shores not too far inset from Kiel Bay's section of the Baltic Sea was a bit of an overcast one, much to the idealistic natured groom's chagrin.

"Just my luck! That traveling soothsayer forecaster predicted this final day of July to be a beauty! Oh woe is me!" Big Nose decries the cloud covered darkened sky above his negatively shaking head as he gazes forlornly above the twisted trees of Corona's dancing forest.

"Ha! You fell for that old geezer, Big Nose?!" The weaselly puppeteer named Fang snorts after he and several of his rodentia sneeze in unison at the bounty of flowers that Tor and his patched up ulcer managed to artistically set up along the forest lane with sprays of white roses, hydrangea and morning glories.

The big bulging stomach-ed, burnt orange haired brute of a florist rolls his eyes to the heavens when his perfected flower arrangements are unceremoniously sent askew all over the bridal pathway by the hodgepodge of hayfever driven bow-tied ratty entourage on Fang's now disheveled shoulder. When an agitated Tor stands to his full six foot four height from his kneeling position, his dressy shirt, several sizes too tight, follows suit to flip up over his now exposed belly button naval.

"Ohh! This can only happen to me!" Big Nose hangs his head at the disruptive scene, burying his big nose in his hands. The groom was looking quite dapper – as far as a lanky, large nosed awkward man could be called in a stretch – wearing a formal white wedding suit beneath his traditional white robe kittel.

"I guess we weren't all born to look like gorgeous runway models in any fashion." Vain Flynn Rider comments drolly, while recalling mirrors that didn't lie of how fine he looked at his own wedding ceremony some blissfully wed five years back.

"Speak for yourself, T'ief." Maybe Job was picking up the teasing nature of Flynn Rider's bad influence upon him after their time spent together. Or perhaps the tall, muscular Caribbean man, who did truly look quite dashing in this new dressy/chic tunic just his size, that designer Gunther brought to the clinic to share with the injured friend of the Princess, was being serious.

Eugene couldn't be sure, either way, as deadpan Job clears a path through the milling about crowd of people for his svelte trio to pass.

Elder brother Eugene helps a slightly stumbling Hans through the seats towards the gathered group of klutzy Snuggly Duckling attendees and several well wishing Corona citizens, whom the reformed villains had befriended since Rapunzel welcomed them into her kingdom. Looking up to the front canopy covered altar from his choice seat, Eugene smirks. He was glad his fashion sense, if no other advice that passed in their drunken, card-playing revelry last night, had convinced the normally bare, knock-kneed pub thug groom to at least don a decent pair of pants. Skirt armor was not exactly commensurate to a cultured marriage ceremony of this mid-19th century.

But could the Snuggly Duckling men truly pull off a civilized affair like this without incident? Eugene was not going to put his money on it as he glances around this section of the corded-off forest quickly filling up .

"The outdoor reception will be spoiled if it rains! How can my Hildegard and I start out on a happy life with a dark, dreary, foreboding raincloud hanging over us?! Boo-hoo!" The somewhat superstitious Big Nose quite emotionally begins sobbing onto Bruiser's warm comforting shoulder as a tearful eyed Ulf - _Or did the make-up coated pantomime clown always look that brooding, forlorn way? _\- offers the anxious groom an endlessly long handkerchief from his similarly ill-fitting suit jacket pocket.

"Hey, chill out, Big Nose! Weddings always are a sticky, crazy, chaotic event. Just look at my own with Rapunzel, and we turned out pretty fine. You'll get that happy ending dream you've been searching for, too, no doubt." Biting his wagging silver tongue, Eugene offers. He must've felt quite magnanimous as the only representative of the Crown present, due to King Friedrich's recent poor health and his own sweet, bleeding-heart-for-sadsack-cases Princess' absence.

"Really?" Bucktoothed Big Nose smiles, wiping away his sniffled tears and gratefully looking up to the tall and handsome thief, who was more experienced in such matters.

"It's living up to the expectation afterwards you should be worried about." Eugene, stroking his dark stubbly goatee like a wise old man, just can't help himself from tacking on the snide remark, which flusters poor confused Big Nose to no end.

Big Nose was already upset that his dear friend Princess Rapunzel wouldn't be here to attend his most important day. He and Hilde had already delayed their wedding ceremony as long as possible, awaiting their benefactress. But the Law dictated that a proper Jewish wedding couldn't take place in all of August this year, so this last day of July would be a it for another month!

When asked about Rapunzel and Eugene's tardy whereabouts a week ago, kind Queen Arianna advised the blessed event to continue nonetheless.

The prim woman refused to believe that anything detrimental could have befallen her precious only child again, although she somewhat feared the sea voyage crossing the Skaggerak in the first place. That fierce section of the cruel ocean had claimed her dear little sister Idun away five years before, so pensive Arianna had to convince herself that her daughter and son-in-law had simply and obviously stayed on to visit with their cousin Elsa to strike up a much needed friendship after her little niece Anna's wedding had taken place without problem.

Queen Arianna did wish she could have attended Princess Anna's wedding herself, and see her beloved long-lost sister's child's important celebration firsthand. But her husband Friedrich's weak heart condition and general poor health, that kept the good ruler of Prussia bedridden nowadays, prevented such an extended sea voyage.

The devoted wife was never far from her ailing husband's side. Her great love and worry made the anxious Queen almost too protective and watchful of her Friedrich's condition, lest she lose him, too.

_But the_ _show must go on, right?_ After Flynn had vividly explained to the Snuggly Duckling crew all the exciting turmoil and adventure that had happened up in Norway involving himself and his own blushing bride, they all concluded that Princess Rapunzel probably would find Big Nose and Hilde's simple outdoor wedding ceremony a tad dull anyway.

Big Nose had to appease his romantic heart with that, especially after all the other Snuggly Duckling guys insisted that only a summer wedding would be counted as lucky. Besides, they were sick of their quixotic and overly romantic friend's sighs and dreamy ranting harangues and moonings over his 'treasured love, Hilde'. By now, they all wanted to get him roped and married and off their hands before they all went stir crazy in their homey tavern.

"My family's travelled all the way from Bavaria to attend this special occasion! They've been here a week already! And for my folks, time is money." Frugal Big Nose grew up in a home full of hard working, money-minded goldsmiths and jewelers in Bavaria. The profession of selling custom made jewelry was the family business specialty that he would often dabble in between stints of jewel fencing incarceration.

Big Nose's sisters and Aged P father came to see their younger brother tie the marital knot at long last with that 'true love' little lady he'd been dreaming of all his life.

And they came to make sure that he would seal the deal with the ornate decorated gold ring his father had personally handcrafted for his mother – _God bless her departed, sainted soul_ -years and years ago, waiting for that special day their only son would do the honors to become a whole man.

"Come on, Big Nose! I bet the storm cloud will pass soon and everything will turn out hunky-dory and sunny-side-up for you and your Hilde-girl on that boat ride we've got planned for the wedding's crescendo." Giving discouraging Flynn a crooked grimace, Hookhand comes barreling towards the anxious groomsman. The musician pushes his trusty piano onto the platform Attila and Gunther had fashioned for the instrument's al fresco concert.

The hunchback pianist runs a short hook down the ivory keys to a jaunty quick jingle of 'Here Comes the Bride' just to make sure his pianoforte was still in tune after he and Vladimir had moved it here to the twisted Dancing forest's wedding location.

Jumping on the closed piano lid, fluttering eyelashed Fang and all his rats embrace Shorty and pretend to be lovers rowing a make-believe rowboat with umbrella oars, in ridicule of the bride and groom.

"Aw, shucks. Don't tease me at my wedding to my true love, boys." An instantly blushing Big Nose causes the several Snuggly Duckling members, all scurrying about to get the outdoor wedding on, to burst into laughter as they lead the nervous groom away.

"A blessed day for true love, indeed." Surveying the giddy scene from afar, Hans Westergaard whispers under his breath with a secret yearning burning in his own heart.

"So, Lillebror… Does all his cheerful festivity make you feel more in the mood to discuss with your big bro anything _special_ you've got planned on your mind?" Flynn Rider glances sideways at the softly spoken words of the redhead Prince.

Hans glances at Eugene, but merely looks away without saying another word with a lost expression. While not quite suffering the hangover headache Eugene was enduring, the Danish Prince had been fairly silent all morning.

Eugene had finally obtained that high proof, copiously endless glass of whiskey after a _fair_ game of poker with Shorty and the gang at that late hour after he returned to the bar last night. Upon return to their shared loft, the overhung man had found his little brother pondering in the early morn, staring longingly outside the Snuggly Duckling attic window at an unattainable daybreak.

So, thinking that Hans could use some social company, his big brother, though loathe to join in himself, decided to roust out the depressed young man to attend the festive wedding going on just beyond the river by the mysteriously twisted trees of the glen.

Eugene himself had considered going home to his castle in Corona pick up some fresh clothes first.

_'My Castle in __Corona__'. Gee, that sounds stupendous._ The half tipsy man mused with puffed up pride, until his throbbing head pounded in his woozy skull something fierce again.

The new shirt Rapunzel had picked out for him in Salsbrucket, however stylish Flynn Rider looked in it, was rather dirt stained and sweat stenched, his one thinning pair of sleek pants starting to reek with embedded white horse hair, but the thought of returning to his said castle in Corona in this state under Queen Ari's critical, questioning eye early in the morning wasn't all that inviting for the hung-over man.

_Maybe I'll just give them a quick rinse in the tub._

"How are you feeling, Hans old buddy?"

"Doin' all right, Pal?"

"Lookin' slick, Hans!"

"Don't let that stupid brother of yours push you around, Kiddo!"

Several of the pub thugs call out solicitudes and give thumbs-up to their new friend as they walk by. The pub thugs were busy setting up for the wedding as they greet Hans with warmth and caring for his welfare whenever they passed, without giving Eugene as much as a fleeting glance. Hans calmly nods back with a noble smile to his new companions.

_Damn! How did you still manage to come up smelling like a rose, looking debonair no matter what you wear, and beloved by all, Lillebror? Old Bruiser and Killer seem to not only have spiffed and shaved and spiced you up squeaky clean, but they also seem to have found the time to fully wash and press __your__ Navy jacket and white naval issue slacks until they look bleached and sparkly new! How those magicians can even remove blood's most persistent stained, I'll never know. And since your fascinating song and dance number last night, I believe you have endeared these ruffians to have taken a real shine to you, Sideburns._

_All our years together and they still they never give me a 'how do you do'. That's gotta hurt._

Not only a little jealous, Eugene ponders these weightless thoughts to himself as he turns to scan charmer Hans Westergaard's neatly shaven, sideburns carefully intact, svelte figure after glancing dismayed to survey his own disheveled, heavily 5 o'clock shadow form that no one seemed to care a wit about here.

"Okay… Since we've been unwittingly dropped into this happy occasion… As older brother I do feel the need to perhaps…converse…with you on a tender subject, Lillebror…" After clearing his throat, Eugene was just sidling into the touchy topic that was burning a hole in Hans' jacket's secret pocket.

_I checked it was still there this morning, Handsome. Can't be too careful when waking up in the den of thieves…_

The self-described petty pilferer settles Hans into his mid-row seat with Job's helpful hand, behind Hildegard's old mother and little brother and several of her friends from the village. Ulf the mime had spent the morning positioning and repositioning the chairs under the artistic eyes of Gunther the exterior designer. They had placed the audience chairs in front of the chuppah canopy and hung the white talus prayer shroud blessed by the Rabbi that the boys would hold up for the traditional Jewish wedding.

Just then, startling several of the guests, and making a questioning Eugene jump, Hookhand begins to loudly play a stirring interpretation of the recently composed "_Treulich geführt_" ("Bridal Chorus" in German), from Richard Wagner's new opera Lohengrin.

The drab sky amazingly clears a bit as the Prussian Jew Rabbi leads Big Nose the bridegroom and Killer, who would be the high-pitched cantor today at the ceremony, down the greenery path into the canopy. Ulf, Bruiser, Tor and Vladimir had been assigned to hold the white prayer shroud high up over the marriage ceremony taking place inside the canopy.

With the somewhat uneven, gauche, big musclemen involved, it was all little shaky at first. But the four men finally managed to put together in artistic celebration for their friend.

While the Rabbi goes through reading the names of the couple written on the marriage document both signed and then directs them outlined the room and the responsibility for and to his bride, Big Nose looked about ready to explode.

But once Aged P leans over his genetically large nosed similar face to lift the bride's veil and kiss her blushing cheek with a smile, the look that crossed the ancient old man's one-eye squint that had constantly been attached to a jeweler's magnification tool all his life, causes Big Nose to finally breathe.

"You have picked a brilliant gem of the first water, son." Using high-quality language for a gemstone, the gold and jewel expert Aged P's crumpled over form uses his cane to bat on his son's arm proudly, as he gives Hilde an approving toothy grin.

"Don't I know it… _Sigh_…" Big Nose goes all googly eyed and practically drooling over his demurely smiling bride who was game enough to wear his signature brass helmet and medieval long sword at her white robe belt side, as per the Prussian Jewry tradition of the day.

After all, that helmet was instrumental in how the couple first met and fell in love at first sight.

"Now it's time to join and drink wine together before the groom's presentation of the ring to his new bride." The heavily accented Rabbi claps twice and brings Big Nose back down to reality, awakening his best man Shorty at the same time.

"I do!" The small drunk immediately starts to where he had been leaning a-snooze against a nearby tree, twisted like a pretzel, just in this glen of the dancing twisted forest. Shorty's right hand was holding out the large gold band in all its intricately engraved glory with delicate gold overlays and filigree. His drunken left appendage was reaching to take the wine goblet away from the disgruntled Rabbi.

The Jewish religious leader purses his lip irritably as he tries to continue in his duty of invoking the prayer over the blessed wine to present to the groom. But the old drunk was persistent, as the red fruit of the vine splashes about all the white clothing in the struggle. That is, until Hookhand abruptly ceases his stirring piano playing to toss his golden hook across the room at a cupcake tray wielding Attila, who at once stomps across the room to squarely bash a produced frying pan down on the misbehaving Shorty's flattened head.

"You got me." Comes the conceding wobbly legged man's inebriated last words before he puts up his guilty hands that had already pocketed the big gold ring. Then he sinks backward into that _tall glass of ice water_ sculpture of a lifelike, voluptuous winged angel Gunther had created for the wedding.

Luckily Fang and his crew of rats were right there to rifle through and snatch back the concealed ring out from Shorty's torn apart shabby suit clothes as the old crook continues to rest in the lovely ice sculpted woman's melting arms.

"Ah, good old frying pan memories." Flynn whistles low with the nostalgic comment, unbothered by the madness. Hans, on the other hand, takes in the disturbing scene with a nervous chuckle at his brother's side sitting in the audience.

"Speaking of more recent memories after those doctors had undressed you… Boy, do I know a secret about you, Kid." A smirking wickedly, heavy-lidded Eugene leans over his excruciatingly thin and wiry lean younger brother's shoulder to conspiratorially whisper in Hans' instantly red shocked ear.

"To…_what_ are you referring to, Storbror?" Mortified under Flynn's wicked implicating smirk, wide-eyed Hans gulps at the degrading insinuation of his vulnerable, exposed anatomy before scrutinizing eyes at the operation yesterday.

"Just a _little_ _something_ interesting we found on your person." Flynn, like every other male ever born to a family of boys, seemed to enjoy making his little brother squirm. "Don't worry, I put it back, just as we found it. Hakuna matata."

"Storbor! Is it not—a-a-a crime—here in Corona to…_rifle_…through a-a-nother man's private possessions? Hardly the act of gentlemen when a man is unconscious and defenseless!" Astonished Hans, after dismissing any other debased meaning, uncharacteristically stumbles over his heated whispers, his hand automatically darting to the sword hilt affixed to his side for steely comfort.

"Yeah, maybe. But the laws don't apply to us here, Sideburns. We're a load of crooks and ruffians, down in these parts. Not proper gents. No secret off-limits stuff flies here for long. So get used to it, Handsome." Flynn gives in to the fact with a shrug in Hans' appalled face as the Danish Prince hastily places his long fingers into his jacket interior. Not trusting Eugene implicitly, as no one should, Hans feels around for that expensive piece of fine jewelry of his own specified design that he had sunk most of his decade-long Naval service salary into in hopes for a favorable outcome. He sighs audibly in both relief and disappointment to find it yet present and unoffered to his heart's desire.

"Now, pay attention here, Lillebror. You might pick up a few pointers of how our bad habits and unrefined, uncouth and un-obscured around-the-beaten-bush pluck could land you an icy prize beyond measure." Mature married man Eugene Fitzherbert, while sliding in a life's lesson in there somewhere, redirects his red-in-the-face and down-in-the-mouth younger brother's attention back to the blissful, if not flat-out insane, wedding scene.

_But who doesn't play the fool when it comes to love? _Eugene's own mind wanders to his Blondie now Brownie _liebling_ as he mildly focuses back on this ceremony's happenings.

* * *

"Thanks, Fang." Big Nose quietly says in gratitude when the pointy-toothed pub thug gives up the fancy gold family heirloom over to its rightful owner. But not without himself and each of the dozen rats on his head, neck and shoulders salivating at the jackpot of a real gold and diamond encrusted ring.

"Ahem, yes thank you, Mister… Fang." The upright holy Rabbi tries to ignore the iron skillet smashing violence, drunken ring bearer, and ill-mannered wedding guests. Not to mention the rodents. He continues on with the ceremony nonetheless by handing first Big Nose, then to Hildegard, the consecrated wine that each partakes from the same goblet in drinking.

Big Nose, with a proud smile to his Aged P, then slips the ornate gold band that belonged to his mother on the young woman's ring finger. This special ring represented the wholeness that two separate people achieved by their marriage and the hope for an unbroken union future to come.

_"Harei atah mekudah li."_

"Behold, you are consecrated to me with this ring, according to the laws of Moses and Israel." Big Nose speaks the Hebrew words that made their covenant implicit in the ritual of the groom placing a ring on his bride's finger, without an actual exchange of vows beyond this short phrase in the traditional Jewish ceremony.

Before the Rabbi under God, Big Nose secures the marriage vow when and says:

_"Ani l'dodi, v'dodi li."_

"I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine." The hopeless romantic says the holy pledge with a lump in his throat.

_"Ani l'dodi, v'dodi li."_

"I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine." And Hildegard, beaming from ear to ear, follows suit. Declaring her wedding pledge reply that would now and forever seal the deal, the young Prussian girl had memorized the traditional Hebrew marital phrase that could be no more beautifully stated.

She and her dearest Big Nose exchange a sweet true love kiss, making this pub thug, who had a dream for romance, to reign supreme and complete.

_"Mazel Tou!"_ As one, the crowd lifts their multitude of voices to shout the congratulatory Hebrew sentiment that Aged P began to sing out. The proud father and his children lead in the Jewish glass breaking tradition that symbolized the destruction of the temple and a man's short life on earth even amidst the happy occasion where sorrow and death could not be forsaken.

With all the raucous smashing of glass, and then cake in Big Nose's face by Hilde going on, the jolly pub thugs continue to torment an obstinately unsympathetic Flynn Rider by throwing their glasses at the subjugated man to again dance for their amusement. A nonplussed, cross-armed, stoic Job and distant-eyed, softly thoughtful Hans look on from the laughing, clapping and highly entertained audience.

And just in time, the sun starts to peek through the storm clouds for Big Nose and his special little lady in their rowboat down the stream to be launched by the rowdy, noisy, and disorderly Snuggly Duckling gang who really meant well. The guys were still singing and dancing and cavorting around with the victimized Eugene at the center of it all to send their pal off.

Down the stream Hilde waves back as a blissful Big Nose was rowing his gondola in his _yichud_ \- seclusion of togetherness for honeymooners - as all their wedding guests hooray and applaud the happy scene.

But those in the cheering crowd could not be aware that there was a dark hooded man with a dark purpose lurking not so far away in the dark shadows of Prussia's twisted Dancing forest, portending some of that sorrow to arrive far sooner than anyone expected…

* * *

_Hundreds of miles to the north of eastern __Prussia__'s shores, at the crystalline ice peaked Palace beyond Arendelle's __North_ _Mountain__…_

Once the royal entourage had arrived at the frozen Palace, Kai and Gerda had ushered the others into the rear, multiple fireplace heated kitchen wing and cabin section that Kristoff and his mountain men colleagues had built for the Queen's second Palace last summer. The Ice Palace addition served as the servant's comfortable workplace and quarters in this perpetually frozen cold North mountain region, mainly so Anna could come and stay with her sister up here for their getaway summer vacations.

With Kai and Gerda and the others busy at the task of setting up their many volunteer workers' stations and living quarters, Elsa was left to care for her astonished parents.

There was a lot of explaining to do as she introduced King Agdar and Queen Idun to some works of her icy genius, especially after the frighteningly monstrous tall Marshmallow had opened the huge set of curvilinear designed doors and greeted the startled royal couple to the Ice Palace.

"So… What you think?" All a-tingle with anticipating excitement, Elsa wasn't exactly ice fishing for compliments. But after her royal parents had taken in, wide-eyed, Elsa's imposingly pristine white, tall spired Ice Palace as it loomed closer to their horse-drawn carriage, since they first stepped inside, both her mother and father had been conspicuously silent.

Neither staggered Agdar nor stunned Idun had added much more than a gasp or thought provoked murmur or two as their bedazzled eyes drank in their daughter's palatial ice architecture creation.

"I think… No, I always knew…that you were born to be an artist, min spadbarns." The Queen Mother pauses at the ornamental columned hallway entrance, looking up in awe at the spiraled staircase of Elsa's own unique design. The ice arcade was lined with breathtaking icicle drop chandelier fixtures, marbleized verglas ice floors and delicate snowflake encrusted stained-glass windows beneath a brilliant blue white oculus skylight at the ornate palace's vaulted ultimate peak.

"Wouldn't you agree, my love?" With a warm smile, Queen Idun breaks the proverbial ice at last as she squeezes Elsa's hand before tearing her eyes away from the glorious sight of architectural beauty to look up to her King.

Agdar was leaning on his wife's arm for more than just physical support as he was wandering around in shock, to survey this wondrous Ice Palace's entire spectrum during Elsa's lip bitten grand tour before he was prepared to justify his reply.

"Simply breathtaking, my Snow Angel. You never cease to amaze me with your innate ability and creative magnificence." The speechless King Agdar finally says quite eloquently, as he gazes from the reflective marble floor to the Ice Palace's starburst cathedral ceiling with delicate hanging chandeliers and exquisitely decorated spiral staircase in between that was almost magically floating in midair suspension.

The King was impressed truly not only at the beauty but also at the architectural perfection played in Elsa's handiwork. The finely crafted, yet strong ice balcony was a work of art in itself to the man who studied structural design in his fascination with shipbuilding youth. And there was even more to discover with every step into the attached glorious upper rooms that were adorned with a million little ice created detail that only a genuine artist would appreciate to include.

Agdar slowly moves on his reinstated legs through the tall, lunette window, glazed glass ice double doors that were so delicate and thin yet so symmetrical they were balanced perfectly to function faultlessly. Out onto the balcony of his Elsa's Ice Palace, King Agdar gazes in awe over the entire frozen vista of the North Mountain location to where his kingdom of Arendelle in the far smoky distance lay far below.

"We are well proud of you, Elsa." There were tears of pure admiration in his gleaming icy eyes when Agdar finally turns around to address his remarkable daughter.

"Thank you, Papa, Mama." Those tears were reflected quickly in Elsa's shimmering blue orbs as the unsure girl finally finds recognition and acceptance from her cherished parents of her rare gifts, once shunned.

"Such immense control and genius it must have taken to mentally conjure the structuring in your mind and use your vast cryokinetic powers to accomplish such breathtaking construction. Your creativity has far exceeded anything I could ever achieve." Her father's overwhelmed senses were full of utmost admiration as he takes an assertive, rather than a cautious step towards Elsa, coming back in from the balcony ledge, and his weak legs at normal stride falter for him to grab the edge of the parapet nearby.

"Papa!" Elsa was just about to rush to her father's side but his extended hand halts her as he continues to stubbornly hobble forward from the upper chamber towards the icy staircase landing.

"Truly you are more fit to be Arendelle's monarch. I am glad, since I am declining in my old age." With a cold northern wind whistled through his chilled heart, a wanly smiling Agdar says in a rather depressed state after he is barely able to stand on his own two legs, let alone stride across the room and walk back down that tall flight of winding stairs without Idun's balance or Elsa' ice projected assistance that purveyed him up here to the second floor in the first place.

"Papa!" As the King's new leg almost gives out, Elsa uses a bit of her ice magic to bolster him up as the disgruntled at himself King lets out a grunted sigh to slump down upon the slippery ice staircase's top step.

Elsa cries inside see her once robust and vital parent so easily give up. Before, in their childhood days, Elsa and Anna's Papa could do anything, uncomplainingly happy to provide for his sheltered family. From hands-on household chores like replacing a broken window little Anna threw rocks through; teaching his difficult eldest child to dance a waltz and shoot skeet until Elsa was fluidly proficient in both; chopping down and bringing in to set up almost single-handedly a humongous Christmas tree that the girls would take turns with their Mama in decorating; or carrying heavy trunks of clothing he had brought home from the naval yard to his trio of lassies to explore the exotic fashions thereof.

Papa could even wrangle a stable full of horses he fully enjoyed the singular responsibility of grooming, re-shoeing and exercising, with only a limited number of servants permitted in Arendelle Kingdom's self-imposed seclusion over that lonely decade.

And now to hear her Papa so lackluster in energy and distraught of spirit, King Agdar's attitude disheartened his little girl who still yearned to look up to him for strength.

"Is that so, decrepit old man? At the ripe old age of two and forty, you don't sound at all like that foolish young hero who was so full of himself to prove to the world he could do anything he set his mind to do. Where is that gallant and strong, cocky Norwegian crown Prince who wanted to show off his remarkable magic ice prowess to impress a starry eyed young girl of sixteen? Hmm?" Queen Idun had just had enough of her husband's wallowing in self doubt that had again crept into the bitter cold ice he allowed now to swim freely about his heart, unrestricted in this cold Ice Palace setting.

"Have times changed so much? You wished to teach Elsa self-control of her unmanageable ice? I think your daughter could teach _you_ a few things about the self-confidence it takes to reach high goals. That is a much more significant tenet to learn, your Majesty, before you waste away to senility. Now get up off your high horse and be my King." With a touch stopping Elsa from using her powers further to levitate her dejected father, Idun knew her man inside and out well enough to recognize when he needed to be mentally coddled and even more necessary when he required to be verbally spanked.

Agdar loved Idun as his own soul, to take it just exactly as his beloved meant it. When he looks up through the ice clouding his mind to the beautiful clear warmth of hers kneeling down to encapsulate his translucent icy eyes, Idun lands a puffed white breath kiss on her love's needy lips in support for his first day of training.

"Yes, my Queen." King Agdar bows his head to his love's sovereignty. With new purpose, the Ice King focuses his mind to use his swirling ice powers inside to cryo-reinforce his own legs enough to walk down the challenging slippery and winding steps again without faltering, albeit slower and more purposefully this time.

The confused Marshmallow down below at ground-level was watching all the while the human drama. At Elsa's command, the snow monster was standing by, fully prepared to catch should Papa's step go amiss.

"There. Lesson number one. 'Put your foot down'. Papa will be fine if we leave him alone now to process my request. Your first step in learning how to deal with men on their stubborn days, my darling." Re-wrapping the warm woolen stole about her shoulders victoriously, Idun squeezes an arm around her nervously chuckling star pupil as the perfectly composed little mother strolls arm in arm with her daughter.

Idun was already planning when she would be ready to teach inexperienced Elsa lesson number two: 'Make them come begging for more'. Her elder daughter's tentative relationship with a certain handsome Prince who she let get away, may require that particular lesson sooner than later.

"While Papa digests that tutorial, let's you and I have some fun, Elsa. There is so much we have to talk about! And I can't wait to see your ice fashion show that Anna was speaking of. You have quite a tall and lissome figure, young lady, to let go to waste." The fashionable mother says with high regard approbation for her elegant child's graceful style. "We'll change you into something more comfortable than that constricting dress and tight bun hairstyle. Something more befitting the Ice Queen who is mistress here in her glorious Ice Kingdom."

"But Papa probably won't like–" The somewhat intimidated, and a little dejected, young Queen of two kingdoms starts to rebut her mother's tempting offer of the freedom to be more herself in her own habitat.

"Papa has a lot to learn about compartmentalizing his raging emotions, my big girl. That is a large part of what we brought him up here to teach." At least, in this chilled environment, the Ice King could focus on learning to control and figure out how best to utilize the icy magic running rampantly through his veins. Rather than constantly worrying of body overcompensation in the natural heat of summer weather conditions, as he would have to down in Arendelle Valley.

* * *

"All right, sir. My Elsa created you as well? And a more exemplary job she did of it too, rather than that sorry excuse for a meager snowman I have already encountered. You and I must make proper introductions." Watching his wife and daughter disappear into Elsa's Ice Palace bedroom in the corner of his pale blue eye, Agdar begins to address the gigantic snow monster left to babysit the Ice King's slow journey down the winding staircase.

Agdar pauses to look at the icy snow creation's white mass. He was impressed by Marshmallow's size and volume density, if not the silly name unbefitting the creature's potency as Agdar had overheard Elsa address the gargantuan snow creature earlier.

"How is it you were given such a foolish moniker anyway, Snow Beast? I will have to talk to your illustrious mistress about that inadequate misnomer." An unruffled King Agdar calmly addresses the sixty foot tall snow creature as if it were normal conversation with another human being at his stature level.

"And I'll have that tiara/crown from your head, Snow Beast. It belongs to the nation's monarch alone." The authoritative figure of a King, acting again like he should, holds out his ice blue white hand expectantly demanding with a pursed lip beneath his debonair mustache.

"Hmm? Ahh." Deeply bellowing, Marshmallow had become accustomed to his shiny gold little prize that he found after all the drama was over. His creator Queen Elsa had, in a moment of rebellious anger, thrown this Arendelle crown across her newly formed Ice Palace and she didn't have the heart to take it back from her faithful servant yet.

"Thank you." Now at the ground level of the staircase's open westwork expanse, where the entrance vestibule surmounted into the large room opening of the nave's marble ice floor, Agdar was just about to accept the feminine crown into his hand from the berated and browbeaten Snow Beast ten times his scale size. That's when a sudden horde of hundreds of mystically stacked snowballs reach up to his 6 foot two tall arm level.

"What manner of madness caused my dear girl to create the likes of you? And why so many…?" A curious, amused Agdar wonders aloud with a crooked smile at the multitude of pattering feet snowgies that emerged from every nook and cranny corner of the spartanly furnished Ice Palace vestibule. There, each hidden snowgie of frozen boundless energy had been hiding in inquisitive wait to spring upon this new and interesting arrival unannounced.

The Ice King's curiosity increases when he kneels to the ice marbleized floor to inspect the mute creatures more closely. Hundreds of playful snowgies swarm around him to likewise investigate the fascinating newcomer with an icy aura in bouncing enthusiasm as their kicked up snowdust tickles his nose—

_Ah-choo!_

* * *

_Somewhere between Arendelle's North mountain and __Corona__'s Dancing forest 500 miles to the southeast…_

"Hmm? Huh? Isn't your chest exceptionally hairy tonight, Kristly? Mmmm…Can you get me some milk and cookies? Those snowman shaped cinnamon graham ones would be yummy…" In a morning hungry, sleepy delirium, Anna Bjorgman opens her groggy eyes to only find, in a panic, that she was in the middle of an empty place that she never seen before and not basking in the warmth of her new hubby's bare chest.

"Everyone's lost, except me…" The orangey caramel haired Princess shivers at the unhappy thought of being a small child again in Arendelle Castle's many vacant rooms wandering about in search of a nonexistent friend.

"Homn?" Svala's dry reindeer nose tickles Anna's lonely cheek where the girl had been slumbering upon the lying prone female reindeer's back.

"Svala! Sven! You're here too!" Relieved to not be without a friend, a disoriented Anna had pulled the resting, knelt down reindeer she was lying across with a blanket laid atop her. Sitting up and stretching her arms out, Anna rubs the sleepers from her eyes as she abruptly recalls just why she might wake up in some unfamiliar place.

"Hans…" The tentative young woman reflects upon the unsettling revelation her cousin Rapunzel had unveiled before. The idea that Prince Hans of the Southern Isles may be already dead, distressed Anna of Arendelle more than she cared to admit, even to herself. Because the true heart in Anna knew how the tragic news of his demise would play havoc in her beloved sister Elsa's blossoming love.

Knowing that her quiet, reserved and thoughtful big sister as she has come know again so closely, Princess Anna saw that, for whatever reason, even against her own better judgment in allowing it, Elsa had fallen in love. And Anna was just as certain that in losing that elusive and complex mystery of this life called 'Love', Elsa's fragile heart may never recover again.

So, as devoted little sister and best friend, Anna would move heaven and earth to try to prevent that double tragedy from unfolding. Even if it meant bringing one Hans Westergaard back into Elsa's life, alive and well. That was honestly the only solution that Anna could come up with to heal her sister's broken heart.

_I am going to find out what happened to that stupid Hans! And if he's not dead, and that Red just ran away…I'll kill him for hurting my Elsie!_

Her own thoughts ever indecisive as to her actions pertaining that certain redheaded Westergaard, a distracted Anna jumps to her feet. The blanket over her slides off and falls down upon a moving lump of something alive unknown on the strange barn ground.

Putting on a brave face, Anna doesn't shy away or run. Instead she kicks the living lump nearby where both tired flying Rangifers were resting until it rolls further away, wholly wrapped up in the obscured blanket.

"Whoa, dizzy! I'll have some extra frosting on those yummy cookies Elsa baked, Anna!" Olaf's muffled voice comes out as he tries to untangle himself from the blanket he was covered up in, his gangly stick arms protruding.

"Oops. Sorry, Olaf!" Just then, suddenly the ginger hair on the back of Anna's neck stands up when she had the disquieting feeling that she was being watched.

"Olaf!" Frozen in place as her eyes dart around, Anna's urgent whisper awaken the blissfully sleeping rather intimately snuggled close together Sven and Svala to stir from the restful repose, their furry heads shooting up at her alarm.

"Olaf, Get up! Get up! We're being watched! Where is that Kristoff?" Now fully aware of her surroundings, an indignant panicked girl realizes that she and Olaf had been left asleep atop the reindeer in some unfamiliar stable barn on a bed of sweet smelling hay, with Kristoff and Rapunzel both missing.

Her heightened senses knew that some strangers peeking in the barn peephole at her might be the culprits to explain where her husband and cousin had disappeared off to.

Anna shakes the back to snoring, out-cold snowman from the blanket until his heavy, dizzy eyelids flutter open at last.

_YAWN!_ "Anna!" Olaf announces his morning greeting as jubilantly loud as always, forgetting that he'd just been kicked around already. But he is halted by Anna clamping a shushing hand over the snowperson's single tooth mouth.

"Shh! Olaf! We're being watched!" Anna stiffly projects her forced voice behind her falsely smiling teeth.

"Oh!" The scatterbrained snowman vociferously calls out when he spies the many multiple pairs of eyes peering through the barn door knotholes, looking at them just as startled.

"We're being _watched_!" Whispering now, big black eyes dilate as wide as possible as Olaf follows Anna's determined gaze. But it was a little too late to be convincing that he was surreptitiously unaware of the half dozen pairs of eyes blinking back at them.

"Okay, Olaf. Here's the plan. You do our rolling snowball B maneuver over to the left side door and I'll be ready with this pitchfork here for the incoming attack with Sven and Svala as my backup crew."

'Born ready' Anna of Arendelle stealthily moves forward after the strategically barked whisper to her snowman compatriot. With one nimble, inconspicuous hand, she reaches out for the hay-gathering farm tool leaning again the empty stall when she gives Olaf a tapped nose signal to prepare to –

_B maneuver! Go!_ Taking a deep breath, Anna's purposeful fingers signal to her snowbound friend, who knocks himself purposely apart. Olaf then performs the pit maneuver that game-on Anna had trained her eager snowman partner to accomplish during their many competitive snowball fights versus Kristoff and Sven.

The dissembled snowman rolls his three low grounded snowmounds under the radar until he is down directly at the barn door. Reconstituting back to his full four foot plus tall height, Olaf salutes to Anna of his readiness to pull open the barn door latch handle that he could just reach up to on his snow shoe tiptoes.

Pitchfork swiftly secured in hand as she tips her head to Olaf to open the door, able-and-willing-to-defend-herself Anna courageously rushes towards the shore as Olaf swings the door open wide—

"Eeek!" Six tiny little boys, of all shapes and sizes, squeak out in terror at a stunned Anna who looks quite dangerous and bloodthirsty with the sharp pointed weapon raised in her charging hands.

Anna stops just short of the doorway skewering when she sees the scared silly children frozen in place.

"Hey!"

One chubby curly brown-haired child closest to the door, mistakenly wrenches off and grabs up one of Olaf's sticking out snowball feet to chuck the vicious snowball right at Anna's head with perfect aim.

Quickly ducking from years of snow play practice, Anna is just narrowly missed, as Olaf's foot is catapulted and sent to smash high up and into the far dark corner of the unfamiliar barn stall.

"Little boys? Hey! We won't hurt you!" Anna, upon seeing their terror-stricken faces, immediately drops the devilishly creepy pitchfork to clatter to the barn floor boards as she races out the opened barn door. Blinking against the temporarily blinding sunlight in chase of the screaming away children, Anna pauses to catch her breath, leaning on her knees to watch the boys one by one jump into a nearby river they had been swimming in.

"Oh!" One of the smaller children with short stubbly legs that didn't make it to the riverbank with the other retreating boys, skids to a stop. He trips on a rock in the open courtyard near the river trail that led to another brick building with a Christian cross at the Clerestory pinnacle of its roof peak.

"A convent school?" Anna muses to herself after reading an engraved plaque affixed to the edge of the story overhang on the building up ahead. She looks at the Renaissance style edifice not too far away up and down, realizing that the little boys were students here probably having a lunch break from their swimming lesson on the other end of the riverbank.

When she catches up to the seven-year-old child, Anna kneels down to see the he was hurt bad. The shy boy shrinks back away from her touch, but boisterous Anna knew how to handle that.

"That's just a little scratch. I've had worse ones! Like that time when I was eight and my sled stopped short when I hit an un-iced patch. I went skidding the rest of the way down the hill on my cheek! It was a bloody mess, I'll tell you that! And it hurt! Wow! But I couldn't wait to get back out sledding the moment Mama and Papa would let me again. My name's Anna. What's yours?" Just like a ray of sunshine, Anna's smile disarms the sniffling scared boy to look up into the storytelling of her inviting blue-green eyes.

"Lukas. Lukas Rigborg. My Mama Daphne is working hard to bring me to France where she is working as the ladies maid for royalty. She sent me to this charity school because we don't have enough money yet and my old grandmother's close friends with one of the nuns here. Did you know that Mother Superior was sent here from the big Castle when she was a little child too?" The inquisitive minded, talkative seven-year-old opens up as Anna digs into her pocket for a handkerchief to clean up that skinned-knee wound she unwittingly caused.

"Well, Lukas, that is one impressive snowball arm you've got there. I bet you don't mind a little manly pain since you are braver and tougher than all the other chicken boys put together. You've got a lot of guts to throw a wild snowball at some crazy braided madwoman attacking with a pitchfork." Winking at him as she pulls her own braids and sticks out her distracting tongue, Anna had truly a compassionate and friendly soul. The Norwegian Princess smiles at the poor boy as she ties the makeshift bandage around his bloody wound with a nifty tourniquet around it.

"There! Good as new! Just like Mama would fix my boo-boos for me! Oh! I have to sing Mama's song to make it all better!" Anna recalls how many times Queen Idun had delightfully harmonized over her clumsy child's cuts and scrapes and bruises.

"_Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me!"_ Anna's lilting sweet soprano mimics her mother's melodious tone as she strokes the boy's cocoa hair in a motherly fashion that caused both lonely children to become tearful for the memories.

"Does it hurt too bad?" The field nurse with the ginger hair helps the wobbly lipped boy up to his feet.

"Nah. Just, my Mama used to sing me that when I was a little kid, too. But I'm a grown-up tough guy now. I'll be providing for her soon." Lukas answers, jutting out his plump chin as he pretends to be older than he was.

"Yeah! Me too! Tough guys are the best sort, aren't we?" Wiping the sentimental tear from her eye, thinking how lucky she was to have her own dear Mama back home waiting for her again, Anna agrees wholeheartedly. She dusts off her own grass-stained skirt and leaps up from the gravelly path with a bounce to her step.

"So, Miss Anna. Are you one of the unmarried royal ladies come to be our new teacher nun, too?" Suddenly trying to figure out who this girl was, no longer shy Lukas brushes an errant strand of brownish hair from his blue eyes. He ignores his aching knee to walk beside the pretty young lady who took time to care of him.

"No. I'm no nun! And never a teacher!" Anna giggles at the thought of ragamuffin, wild, loud, and nutty her being either an orderly, soft-spoken and devout sister of the church or an intellectual and strict school marm.

"I just recently got married. My guy is here, somewhere. Kristoff must've gone into your school to find out where we are and left me sleeping peacefully in your barn after a long ride with my flying reindeer and talking snowman." Anna says honestly as she and little Lukas walk hand-in-hand back towards the barn section of this four wing complex of the Lutheran convent Anna's eyes were curiously scanning.

"Flying reindeer… And a talking snowman?!" Lukas' beady eyes on his chubby cheeked face bulge out at the outlandish suggestions that so candidly spill from this interesting older girl's mouth.

"Oh sure! Come in the barn and I'll introduce you to Sven, Svala and Olaf. My sister's the Ice Queen up where I live in Norway and my new husband is the Snow Prince. He can talk to animals and shoot golden arrows and do all kinds of cool things. Magical stuff happens up there all the time." Anna calmly explains as if these people and abilities were everyday occurences.

The no longer limping in his excitement Lukas was now racing back into the barn.

"Wow! I always dreamed to go to Norway to see reindeer and if the Snow Queen really existed like the story books say!" The pudgy youngster clasps his hands together when he catches sight of Sven and Svala, already on their feet and complacently munching on some sweet hay stalks.

The jaded pair of reindeer give the excited child a somewhat bored look.

"Sven, Svala, say hello to my new friend Lukas. Lukas Rigborg. Lukas, this is Sven and Svala." Anna introduces the boy to the male and female rangifer who each snort back in unimpressed greeting as they continue to chew.

"Olaf? Olaf?! Where are you!? Come meet Lukas!" Anna smiles in an almost proud, motherly way down the brown haired lad.

_Hey, this is good practice for when my kransekake cake promise comes true. Right, Kristly?_

The Arendelle Princess reminisces of the Norwegian tradition of the spiral ring cake that predicted how many children would offspring from her union with her studly Snow Prince Kristoff Bjorgman.

"I can't!" Olaf's voice rings from somewhere high up in the rafters of the high ceiling-ed stable barn.

"Why not? Where are you?" Anna calls up to him, perplexed as she shrugs to the boy.

"Because I can't find my other foot! I've looked EVERYWHERE! I'm never going to walk straight again! Boo-hoo!" A panicked Olaf was close to tears to be so long parted from one of his missing few body parts.

"Oh, poor Olaf!" Anna fully sympathizes with the freaking out snowman. "Sven! Svala! Come on, Lukas! This will be fun! Like a treasure hunt! Let's go help Olaf find his foot that you threw away with that big strong arm of yours!" The chummy Princess who got along well with all kids, squeezes Lukas' somewhat squishy plump bicep that had slung Olaf's snowball foot so fast and hard against the school stable's back wall that it got away.

"Time to go and play! Follow me on Sven!" Never losing her shine, Anna's childlike mischievous eyes twinkle at her reindeer pal as she hops up on Svala's back and the pair tread air through the expansive stable.

"Whee!" Lonely child Lukas laughs a happy sound as Sven in turn scoops up the small boy and airlifts a bit off the barn floor to zoom across the still air to the thrilled child's delight.

As the two pairs of reindeer and giddy riders glide through the open barn in search of Olaf's runaway appendage, Lukas' keen eyes finally spy the white snowball he had thrown earlier, trembling in confused fear.

Right in the vicinity of the direction he had thrown it, Lukas locates the snowball that had flown over a newly constructed partition between the reinforced barn roof that led to a blocked off royal stable part of the original Bishop's palace stable this convent had been built upon on the other side of a high high shelf entablature.

Problem was, neither Sven nor Svala could find a way through to that closed off stall to retrieve Olaf's foot. They fly up as close to the boarded up area's slight opening.

So, what's a feistypants Princess to do? Olaf's trembling footie was bouncing back and forth on that high shelf in anticipation as Anna reaches out for it, but just couldn't stretch that far.

"If I hold onto you, Lukas, you think you can reach Olaf's silly snowball foot?" Anna asked, judging that only required a few more inches to secure from someone who had smaller framed shoulders to fit through the enclosed superstructure.

"You bet." Without a second thought, the brave little lad fearlessly steps out onto Sven's wide forehead as Anna transfers herself to grab onto Sven's single antler with one hand and Lukas' extended plump paw in the other…

_STRETCH!_

Between three of the reaching out human/reindeer chain, the snowball foot is able to get a running start to hop across Lukas' pudgy arm and across Anna's head, onto Sven's back and finally over to Svala, who flies down with it to comfort a weeping snowman balling for his lost part.

"All right! We got it! Good job, Lukas! Let's go!" Anna congratulates her new little buddy with pride. But a small brown leather booklet still on that shelf was calling to him –

_I can reach it! Maybe there's a treasure map in it, and I'll find buried treasure for my Mama!_

"Ahh! Help me!" Lukas had stretched out just a little too far in the circus-like balancing act that the gravity of his weight tips from Sven's balancing forehead.

Quick on the draw Anna needs all her upper body strength to hold onto the weighty child's body dangling over the other side of the stable partition to a 25 foot drop below.

{"Anna! I'm coming! Don't let go!"} The golden voice echoing through the barn rings through her mind simultaneously with the most beautiful sound she'd ever heard, belonging to the most beautiful golden man she ever met.

Zinging across the air, Svala returns with a strapping Kristoff Bjorgman, who quickly grabs hold of his straining wife and pulls her straight up and back, along with the young boy whose arm Anna doggedly refuse to let go of.

Kristoff envelops them both up in his massively strong muscles, clutched to his chest as Sven flies the group down to the safety of the hay covered ground.

"Anna! Don't do those crazy stunts while I'm away! What if I didn't get here in time?" Kristoff glances from Anna to Lukas as she quite motherly ruffles his shock of cocoa brown hair when they touch down.

"But you did!" The caramel cutie hops up to kiss her Kristoff's red cheek '_good morning' _with a dismissive response to his anxiety for her gung-ho safety. Anna was too wrapped up in her own adventure to remember to demand to know her husband and Rapunzel's whereabouts up to this point.

"You okay, Lukas?" Single minded Anna instead asks her little friend who was no worse for the wear._ Thank you, Lord. _

Kristoff genuinely smiles at Anna's evident caring and relief for the child's safety. Though she was impetuous at times, Kristoff was pleased to see a glimpse of how good a mother his Anna would be as she unfailingly held onto that little boy's hand, even if it bruised her bright red wrist.

"Yeah. No problem. That was fun! Let's get some toast and jelly now!" The smiling back village boy relieves all of Anna's fears by enthusiastically dashing over to meet Olaf, who had been reinvigorated to be reunited with his absent foot. So now, the happy as a clam snowman could do a celebratory jig with his dance-loving new friend.

"What on earth were you reaching for anyway that almost got you killed?" Anna asks the boy who was dancing along with Olaf, his instant friend after a warm hug to the young hero who rescued his missing foot.

"Oh, just this old notebook. I thought it would be a map of buried treasure. But it's nothing special. Just some kid who went to this Fattigskole's sketchbook of copied Scripture art." Having too much fun with the tap dancing happy snowperson to care much about that old hand written tome, Lukas Rigborg casually hands the book over to Anna whose own feet were tapping to join in the giddy jig along with Olaf, Lukas, Sven and Svala.

"Sketchbook pad of Scripture? Hmm…That sounds interesting." Anna noncommittally begins to flip through the artistically stunning charcoal sketches of some youthful artist's well done notepad full of pencilled artistry of many Biblical scenes.

There was a thrilling depiction of David versus Goliath, an impressive Noah's Arc and the dove, the glorious Ascension of Christ, even a spiritual rendering of Michelangelo's Hand of God, among so many other Bible and Masters' brilliantly recaptured beauty. The pictures each had a matching Biblical verse describing the scene beneath on each well worked page.

But the one sketch most of all caught Anna's total stock still attention away from the toe tapping scene was the familiar sight indeed.

It was obviously the most treasured sketch here, from the way it was so painstakingly slaved over from the looks of several pages of practice on different sections, until the final page merged them all together into one perfected artwork.

It was a drawing of a sweet family; a father, mother, and two young daughters that had been copied out from a certain naval times newspaper publication of the Admiral and his young family overseeing the launch of the new naval craft of his Sjoforsvaret.

"Hey! No way! That's us!?" Freaking out to glimpse the well drawn sketch art of the undoubtable figures of Papa, young Elsa and toddler Anna herself sleeping in Mama's arms, from over a decade and a half ago.

_But who on earth would want to trace some old newspaper of our first family photograph way back then?_

Anna studies the talented artist's labor that managed to capture each of her dear family member's expression to perfection. The child genius had especially paid attention to Elsa's delicate facial features that had been worked over and over from the previous practice pages until it was nearly undetectable which was the illustration and which was the real daguerreotype's flawless perfection.

And beneath the finished family drawing, the particular Bible passage beneath read:

_ '__Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds us all together in perfect harmony.'_ Colossians 3:14

Impressed and a bit bewildered, Anna is literally floored when she turns from the last page of the sketchbook, dated Year of Our Lord 1834, and sees, addressed in the corner, of Paakstraede and Adegadde to this Fattigskole school in Odense, the drawing pad book's inked over thick lettering of a proud nine-year-old artist's fine nib pen that most clearly stated:

**'This sketchbook belongs to Hans Westergaard.'**

"What?!" Anna cries out, sinking to her knees to the hay coated ground at the startling revelation. Her over-reaction causes Kristoff to drop the bucket of water he had been bringing for Svala and Sven in preparation to leave.

The sketchbook portrait of the Arendelle family that a young Prince, who had been sent away from his home and longed for one of his own to contain as much love as that fairytale family portrait drawing, had been hidden for a long time. For nearly seventeen years, the once treasured booklet had been covered in cobwebs in the stable little Hans spent most of his time with his runt horse Sitron here in this Lutheran charity school that had been founded as a convent for unmarried women of Danish nobility.

And now in Anna's stunned hands, the neatly transcribed sketchbook of the past just narrowly misses getting splashed and blurred by the muddled present.

It was all there. The real true love of a yearned for family life that young outcast Prince Hans' longed for in storybook tales to be his. A love that he would never find in the unhappy life he was born to in Egeskov, so he forced himself to grow up to be a perfect man that some other family, some other Princess would fall in love with.

And not just any old family and castle in the sky Princess Fair would do. Young Prince Hans Westergaard seemed to have his sights set on Elsa and her Arendelle Bernadotte family for nearly as long as she's been alive.

_Whoa, that's deep. And a little creepy.  
_

Turning through the pages again rapidly, intrigued Anna sees beneath Elsa's single sketch the calligraphy embellished phrase, much too overly sentimental a title for a detached Westergaard child: _'Someday my beloved will give me a Home filled with Love's unity.'_

And beneath another sketch page on the opposite side, crammed with all the hundreds of intricate details within Elsa's beautiful eyes, were the overly romantic words:_ 'I will be her beloved and my beloved will be mine.'_

_Always were full of yourself, Mister! But you can draw pretty good, I guess._ Anna's candid thoughts must admit to herself, whether or not she wished to hear it. She stares blankly at the back cover again and traces her finger over the name and address inscribed in deep ink there.

_Hans Westergaard._ _Fattigskole school, Odense, Funen, __Denmark__._

_So, this is where Hans went to school when he was young? This charity convent school? Why? Didn't his rich royal family in the Southern Isles want him?_ Anna's thoughts begin to spin around her affronted brain and go racing faster than Olaf's retrieved tapping foot doing pirouettes…

* * *

_Yichud_ – a togetherness seclusion in Hebrew

_Mazel Tou - _Congratulatory 'Good luck!' in Hebrew

_Hakuna matata –' _No worries' in Swahili, made famous from Disney's The Lion King

_min spadbarns_ \- my child Swedish

* * *

Greetings to my special Guest reviewer! Thank you so much for your kind words about our Helsa cover art illustrations!

That is so funny! I was already planning on replacing it with that new stunning one of our beautiful Frozen couple you suggested this publication weekend! ^_^ So as you requested, Guest-sama, here it is! I hope you enjoy it!

Didn't my big sister Setsuna do a dazzling job on depicting this gorgeous scene (yet to come in story *_^) of Hans and Elsa tearfully embracing one another? It is a truly emotionally charged part of our Hans x Elsa fairytale romance! I only hope I can describe the scene in words as perfectly moving as the portrait demands when I reach that juncture! :) It is coming soon, I promise! Our lovelorn Hans and Elsa are close to a relationship breakthrough!

God bless you all, my Frozen friends!

Please do review!

HarukaKou

P.S. Did anyone guess where little Lukas's Mama _Daphne_ who went to France to be a lady-in-waiting/ maid comes from?

You got it! "Cinderella II: Dreams Come True" She's the short and plump lady-in-waiting who's kind, fun-loving and friendly. Much like Anna! Guess that's why Lukas liked our Feisty princess! ^_^ The brown haired, pleasant smiling faced, sweet middle-aged woman who loves to dance and eat toast and jam would be much younger in 1851 with a small son and some undisclosed attachments to the Big Castle in Denmark's Southern Isle called Egeskov...Hmmm...


	68. Chapter 67 - Stolen Promises

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act V**

**Chapter 67**

**"Stolen Promises"**

"So! How about one last piece of wedding cake to fatten your skinny ass up, before we hit the road tonight, Lillebror?" Flynn Rider's garrulous, cocky voice rings across the open air wedding reception that had been set in the hidden recesses of the Dancing Forest of Prussia.

He turns around from the 'punch' bowl he had been hording to hold up a leftover plate of Attila's 'all-you-can-eat/ stuff-in-your-mouth' frosted German wedding cake goodness from the refreshment table.

"Hey, where are you anyway, Good-lookin'?" The stubble-chinned, handsome rogue peeks his head down in between an intriguing collage of gnarled tree trunks that had inexplicably grown themselves into a curling spiraled menagerie all throughout this section of the well-named 'Twisted Forest'.

Big Nose and his Hildegard's wedding had gone off without a hitch. _Actually the poor naïve bugger got himself hitched and roped into that whole marriage debacle—but them's semantics._

But after the remainder of the Snuggly Duckling gang had merrily seen the happy couple off in their rowing-boat-down-the-stream, it all went downhill from there.

At least in Flynn's sardonic eyes.

He felt he had manfully endured, for the sake of the bride and groom's blessed day, more than his share of ribbings and jibes from their vindictively violent villain-filled room of wedding guests.

In celebration for their Snuggly Duckling brother's conquest of his long-awaited dream, they all ate, drank, and were merry at his expense.

But the former thief turned dashing Prince, still suffering from a slight hangover from the previous night's festivities, had enough holy wine in him to not care one way or another. Even the long bearded, reverent Rabbi, once disrobed from his sanctified vestments, had somewhat joined in with the lively scene of dart throwing, tattoo branding, line dancing and constantly imbibing through it all, group of giddy ne'er-do-wells in – ahem – celebration of the holy event they had just partaken in.

He meandered tipsily around the melee of drunken bodies of exhausted partiers snoring loudly from where they were strewn all over the festive scene of undone messy ribbons, smashed apart flower petals and inebriated rats lying across the mostly vacated reception area.

Eugene sifts through the mess in search of his missing younger sibling who, soon after the nuptials and seeing off the blissfully married couple with noisy singing and raucous dancing, had quietly disappeared from the rest of the Pub Thugs' fun and games during the reception's aftermath.

**_BOINK!_**

"Oops. Sorry to wake you from your snooze, Hooky. But have you seen my illustrious little bro around? I seem to have misplaced him." Landing drunkenly on a discordant B flat on the piano's keyboard, Flynn had accidentally tripped over Shorty's prostrated knobbly legs sticking out from under Hookhand's traveling pianoforte where the old geezer had passed out way earlier in the boisterous drinking party.

"I saw him praying by the ice sculpture, back in the glen." Puffed up that his work was being so recognized by such a gent, Gunther, as an artist, was not-so-secretly honored that the Thief's more intelligent and classy brother had a discerning eye for art appreciation.

"There's your answer, Thief! Now, I've gotta get these soused louts whipped back to the Snuggly Duck before nightfall. You and Mr. Hans better start to pack it in, too. Before the big, bad goblins of the Twisted Forest, that come out at a sultry dusk such as this, come to claim your blackened soul, Rider. Ha, ha, har, har, har!" As the sneering piano player plies his wares in an eerie deathly dirge from Bach, the ex-seaman is joined in his cackles by a kicked-awake into gear Fang.

The sharp-toothed man had been sleeping against the string instrument's opened lid. Each of his entourage of rat friends, that had been taking a drunken snooze inside the shaded compartment thereof, are rudely awakened by the piano's abrupt vibrating strings they were previously bedded upon.

Ulf mimes the poor rodents' deafened shock as he silently follows Hookhand and Fang push the piano back towards the tavern to the east of the forest. The instrument was still playing spooky music all the while it dissolved into the falling darkness, just to irk Flynn.

Bruiser and Killer had already taken Tor back into their 'Leave You in Stitches' clinic for some late night gastric medicine required for his recently operated on ulcer. The big man had not heeded Bruiser's warnings not to over-indulge in alcoholic beverages, nor Killer's instruction not to engage in any raucous break-dancing. So now, as a result, Tor was suffering the consequences of another peptic ulcer.

That left a pan and dish clanging Attila and artful Gunther to clean up the rest of the party supplies and bring in the chairs.

Loathe to leave his new friendly flying horsies, Vladimir is soon employed to do a majority of the heavy lifting. The biggest thug of all drags the loaded down party goods back to the pub all at once with the, by now, grass stained wedding white chuppah veil they had used as the tent in the ceremony.

**_Hoot! Hoot!_**

"Eeek!" Alone in the glen, an owl's pair of creepy unblinking eyes, attached to its disturbingly twisted **180**° angled head, pierces the quickly descending darkness. It spooks Eugene to let out a feminine pitched shriek and grab hold of the nearest human body in arm's reach.

"Don't wrinkle da suit, man. It was given me." Eugene's eyes widen to realize that he had reacted like a scared witless rabbit after being egged on by Hookhand's gravelly voiced, haunting taunts and spooky chamber music. So much so, the grown man had turned in fright to hug Job.

The dark-skinned Carribbean had kept himself to himself all this while, unnoticed in this festive party scene. Save for Gunther, who thought that the former pro-wrestler looked so stylish in the grey suit, the artist gave the threads to the shirtless Carribbean who was attending to the peacefully slumbering puffball of a sheep.

It had been the strong, silent type's duty to keep Rapunzel's little lamb safe from being turned into a late-night wedding BBQ treat of grilled lamb chops. The baa-ing fuzzball was particularly being eyed by that knife-wielding Fang and his gaggle of salivating rats, so it ran to Job for protection.

"Wrinkle? Who's wrinkling?" With a toothy grin up at the deadpan Islander, Flynn

chuckles nervously as he straightens Job's indeed mussed new, well-dressed suit front.

"He he he…" As he sniggers to himself, for some reason, the lifelong crook couldn't shake the feeling of his every nerve ending tingling with innate fear that something unsavory and foreboding was closing in.

"Let's go collect my brooding kid brother, Job old pal. He's probably sobbing into his beer over trying to abstain from that temptress Queenie of his. But you and the Kid both need a rest before we start out on the road. Especially if you're to be in tip-top shape to be presentable enough to meet my in-laws in the morning." Flynn stresses every syllable of the word _pre-sen-ta-ble. _He was already sketchy on how prim, demanding, dear Queen Arianna would react to his coming home with these two wounded, strangely depressing, somewhat un-socially adequate men.

And _without_ her pregnant daughter in his care, whom Eugene had been regretfully at odds with these past few months, that her affectionate Mom would no doubt be privy to the ins and outs of the sordid affair thereof.

"I'm hoping my normally lofty and verbose little brother—_whom everyone seems to fall in love with, for some odd reason_—can charm that strict, critical-eyed good lady enough to let me off the hook for not being the most stellar example of a husband in not properly caring for her precious baby girl these past few tension-filled months." The proportionately penitent perpetrator begins to air out his guilt for getting involved with that cracked pirate in the first place. And more importantly, letting Rapunzel and her kind family down when the young woman expecting her first child needed him most.

_Once a louse, always a louse…_

"Mother-in-laws are tricky creatures, let me advise you well, my fine Caribbean friend, should you ever embark on such a treacherous, yet in the end, extremely rewarding endeavor." Flynn Rider says with a swaggering hand on his hip as the pair walk along.

"And I would not blame Arianna one iota for blaming my poor judgment for her daughter's recent melancholy. Of course, being the father her grandchild should give me some gravitas, once I explain that Rapunzel chose to stay on with her lovely cousins up north now that they got their Mom and Dad back. Oh, and that thrilling little factoid should help smooth things over, too! I'll slide in how her sister, the diminutive, lithe, lovely Queen Idun, is alive and kicking again. That should make old Arianna happy enough not to slay me. Probably." Eugene weighs the consequences of returning back to Corona palace as he converses with a silent Job walking beside him in the darkened tree crowded glen.

"Right. But the returned parents might make explaining my acquaintance with that wicked pirate a little dicey. Hmm…Maybe we'll stay on here for a few days more while you two fellas recover…" Chickening out under the imagined explosive glare of Rapunzel's mother's flashing blue eyes, Flynn brightens a tad when he catches sight of Hans in the midst of the thicket.

Hans was kneeling before the melting form of that icy beauty that Gunther had sculpted for the wedding reception. The Danish Prince's hands were folded as if in deep thought. The in-scale ice angel's extended forehand pressed against his temple, as if in his dazed, remorseful mind Hans Westergaard was asking the melting, teary-eyed angel-like ice statue—that reminded him of someone dear—for some comparative forgiveness.

"Who's there?!" Hans ashamedly wipes away a stray unbidden tear for the happiness he yearned for, but would never allow his soiled heart to even try to capture. Even more so now that he personally had fallen in love with the too merciful and pure Queen Elsa.

Spinning on his heel with a start, Kommander Westergaard was obviously experiencing the same edginess as his big brother.

The dashing Prince of the Southern Isles leaps up from his kneeling position on the ground to his feet, his well-versed naval sword already drawn and readied.

But before Eugene had the chance to ease his uptight Lillebror's spontaneous agitation with a pair of upturned defusing hands, in the dusky darkness an earsplitting scream echoes through the Dancing Forest's twisted trees.

A woman's scream.

The boughs bent down to the ground, tangled in an utterly strange enmeshment, trip up the unidentified female hurtling through the forest glen coming directly towards them.

In a haze, all in white, the ghostly visage wandering through the, by now, almost totally dark forest rushes straight into in an unsuspecting Hans. The mysterious woman throws herself into his arms so abruptly he hadn't the opportunity to pull back, nor react defensively with his sword.

Good thing too. For when he squints in the dark down to the baffling figure that had just run to the sanctuary of his embrace, Hans lowers his sword behind him.

"Prince Hans! Help me! Oh, help me!" It was Hilde, Big Nose's new bride. The young woman, still enshrouded in her once pristine white wedding robe garb – that was now soaked wet, and sickeningly blood and dirt stained – was breathlessly bedraggled from all the thorns and thistles she had madly raced headlong through the grove's darkness in a heedless panic.

"Please calm yourself, dear lady. I will protect you, on my honor." With a steady voice that engendered unruffled tranquility, Hans immediately comforts the feverishly trembling all over woman with his tender, steadying embrace.

After protective Hans gives a swift search of the eerie ebony perimeter with wary, guarded eyes, Hilde collapses against his chest. Her hysterical tears, after a few moments of his empathic stroking, abate into soft sobs.

"Please don't cry. A bride is not supposed to cry on her wedding day." Hans cajoles the woman softly.

"But…Nozzy..Oh, my poor Nozzy…" Incomprehensible, Hilde trails off in indistinguishable tears.

"Take your time in explaining. But, pray tell, where is your husband?" Only a few hours since he himself attended the happy occasion, Hans' curious emerald eyes peer around to Hildegard's tear streaked face. His sympathetic disarming words whisper in sweet dulcet tones, as not to distress her further.

"Why am I not surprised to always find you with a woman dangling in your arms, Handsome?" His droll mouth downplayed the precipitous danger, though his amber eyes were filled with foreboding apprehension. Flynn Rider announces himself to the disturbed scene with an ironic twist to his lip at the pathetic, anxious soap opera being portrayed before him.

"What the hell happened to you? Where's Big Nose, Hilde?" Not half as smooth with gentle, soft words as his younger sibling, Eugene asks the pertinent question. His sepia brown hair, thick stubble, and swarthy complexion going all business, gives the former thief a dark look of consternation as he bears down to grip the shaky girl, shaking her shoulders.

"I don't know! They took him! These men I never saw before came out of nowhere and cornered us just as our rowboat was coming to the shore near the estuary upriver. And they took my Nozzy away…And it's our wedding day…_sniffle sniffle..."_ A violently shivering HIlde returns to her weeping against Hans' welcoming chest as the tough young Prussian girl becries her long-awaited for happy day's unhappy ending.

"Who were they?! Highwaymen?!" Eugene demands, his eyes going wide. As a former thieving criminal himself, he couldn't believe that the large nosed moderate ruffian had become the victim of some common robbery on his wedding night. Due to his good nature, Big Nose was actually the last pub thug that Eugene would suspect to have many old enemies who'd want revenge on the naïve, dreamy head-in-the-clouds petty pilferer. Big Nose certainly was not the type to create bad blood grudges with past acquaintances.

_Speaking of blood relations… Maybe his jewel sense and gold money changing family…_

"They just snuck up on us out of nowhere! But they didn't want our money! So I doubt they were simple robbers! After they grabbed my hand and inspected my wedding ring for a few seconds, they didn't even want it! My poor Nozzy got a bloody nose for standing up for me. But all they seemed to be interested in was my ring, Prince Eugene!" While still leaning on Hans for support, a confused Hilde turns to Eugene.

"How many of them were there?" Eugene asks, his mind racing through the mental mugshots of who could possibly be responsible in his thieving head.

"There were at least three or four of these big brutes, all wearing hooded cloaks. And tall black boots, sort of like his." Hilde motions her head down towards Hans' tall slick footwear. Then she screws up her face up in her best attempt to recall any further details of the frightening events of some hours ago that her blurry-with-tears mind would rather forget. But if it meant her Big Nose's safety, she must steel her sensibilities to face it, and remember as much as she could to help find clues to lead to him.

"They certainly were foreigners from the unfamiliar language they were speaking. Definitely not speaking Prussian. Save for the one who seemed to be the leader, who did most of the talking to Big Nose while the others held me back. They gagged and tied me to the rowboat again so I wouldn't put up a fight. My poor Nozzy was beside himself, struggling against the bigger villains. But they threatened me with daggers if he didn't cooperate." The plaintive eyed girl, after taking a deep breath, rationally relates her frightening tale to the interested pair of brothers.

Out of the corner of his competent eyes, Hans watches the dark man named Job silently leave the tree covered thicket without saying a word.

"If they didn't want to steal your money or your fancy gold ring… What did they want? Can you remember anything else, Hilde?" Eugene asks again, looking for valid motive. He only had a sneaking suspicion that Big Nose's past family dabblings in jeweled larceny may have had a hand in this inexplicable vengeful act.

"I think they wore black capes with hoods that had matching golden symbols on them."

"What was the symbol like, Madam? Can you elucidate further?" Hans asks, trying to piece the clues together of who the aggressors may be.

"I don't know… Oh yes! It was an anchor…with a snake wrapped around it…I think... And a fancy gold crown on top of the anchor…When he grabbed my arm to inspect my ring, the man in charge had a deep scar across his wrist that led to a bulge at the back pinky side of his hand. Here, like it once had some kind of deformity beneath his single glove." The round face cute girl pounds a fist to her head and closes her eyes as she remembers more vividly the answer to Hans' question. Hilde points a traced line with her finger along the outside edge of her left hand, her sweet face contorted in confusion at her own strange detail recollection.

Hans' eyes look askance momentarily. Then his solemn brow darkens gravely.

"They took my Nozzy away. And then the ruffians left me in the boat, and pushed it downstream. I think I was floating adrift in the stream for a long time. I couldn't tell how long! It just seemed like forever until the boat washed back here and I managed to free myself from the bonds they tied around my wrists. All I could think was where to go for help, because I had no idea where those rotten ruffians took my Nozzy from there, even if I could row the boat back! What if we can't find him? What if it's too late? What if they kill him?! I'm so scared." Hildegard was trembling dreadfully at the idea of losing the love of her life, just as their lives together were starting.

After a pause, Hans Westergaard speaks, with the cool, calm and collected deportment of commanding leadership.

"My lady, I advise you to return to the Inn and apprise the others there to notify the authorities back in Corona of this offensive transgression." Hans, his well articulated eloquence as persuasive as it was emphatically assertive, cannot restrain himself from taking command in rendering aid to a disadvantaged female in need.

"My brother and I will immediately give chase to these malfeasants who have inequitably disrupted your union and abducted your new spouse. Please, make haste to the Snuggly Duckling. Hookhand will understand what do to when you tell him he must inform Corona's Royal Guard, so they can begin their inquiries here on this front—if my suspicions are actually incorrect." He reassures the nerve-wracked girl and she nods, trusting him implicitly to the task he's placed on her thin, yet sturdy, shoulders.

"What? Are you crazy? Go at it alone?! We haven't the faintest clue as to where we're heading in this gung-ho fashion you're apparently enamored of, Sideburns! Remember! You're a freshly injured man yourself, Kid! I won't let you go traipsing off into the dark dangerous unknown again with your gut in that condition. Not when we have a perfectly suitable law enforcement unit back in Corona. The Captain of the Guard, Schmidt – _I can assure you, personally_ – is a darn dogged lawman. He's almost sadistic – believe you me – in his obsession to apprehend the criminal element. And his dang horse is no better, _or worse, if you're on the criminal end of the chase_." Eugene recalls, not so fondly, his own memories of tromping through the woods, dangling off trees and swinging off vines, sword fighting with frying pans, etc., all at the receiving end of a certain aggressively relentless equine force of nature named Maximus.

"We really should go to the authorities this time and leave serving justice and the non-citizenry responsibility of racing around rescuing reformed crooks to them…" An exasperated Flynn Rider goes off on a quickly spit out tirade of all the reasons he and his valiant, nutsy little brother, _under his care_, should not go out on another dangerous limb of daring adventure on their own –

With a resigned sigh, Flynn watches Hilde dash off towards the Snuggly Duckling as Job and the trio of the Snow Queen's flying white horses named Flurru, Snædís, and _Nýsnær_, all come bounding into the dusky thicket, right on cue with authoritative Hans' driven indication.

"We must act. I believe I may just know who the malefactor may be, Storbror. Unfortunately…" The Southern Isles Prince, with a pondering expression on his thought provoked features, easily alights onto his choice of one of the white mares' back.

Snædís, which meant '_Snow goddess'_ in the Snow Queen's Icelandic tongue, lifts her elegant head high and whinnies in satisfaction to be useful to her equestrian qualified master once again.

"Oh! Why not! Let's us good-looking, three musketeers go charging off to danger for every damsel in distress we meet in the road, and save the day as heroes once again! What the hell!" Eugene, after giving the last remaining horse's own wet nudging nose a shove, followed by a pursed lip and deep sigh, decides to let his courageous, oft denied, soft side kick in. His long legged form finally slings over his flying horse's back until he was astride his mare Flurru beside a sideways glancing, smirking Job who was riding the third horse parallel to him named _Nýsnær_. The two men on their steeds flank their bold leader, the audacious youngest member of the daring trio.

"_Les Trois Mousquetaires, eh?_ (The Three Musketeers)? Then 'All for one and one for all'! 'After all, we are men, and it is our business to risk our lives. Come, Aramis, Porthos!" Fully equal to this flamboyant role he suddenly throws himself into, superb actor Hans recites some famous lines from Alexandre Dumas' famed novel of French royal guard adventurers who lived and died by the sword and musket.

"If you say so, Kid." Shrugging to one another of this crazy Dane's French flight of fancy, Flynn and Job exchange a bewildered look from where they sat astride each of their horses, unaware of the newly scripted historical novel's comparative.

But a cocksure, smirking back Hans, who always relished in his theatre performing arts in days of youth, takes on the lead role as clever D'Artagnan. This dashing red-headed hero breaks the Snow Queen's three flying horses, Snædís**, **Flurru, and _Nýsnær,_ into a run across the thicket, out of the glen and into a clearing where the flying mares and their brave riders take flight to the sky, where a new adventure into the vast unknown beyond the blackened, moonless sky northward awaited…

_'I do not cling to life sufficiently to fear death…' _The quote echoes in Hans' daring, yet despondent mind as swift as the wind whistling amidst fragments of memories' past splendors…

* * *

_Fattigskole, __Odense__, __Denmark__._

"You guys seem to be having fun." Her own feet tapping as she enters the convent's stable barnyard, Rapunzel's sweet timbre voice says as she approaches closer to where Olaf, Sven and Svala were dancing along and singing a merry tune with the little boy named Lukas they had made friends with.

Tthough her own insides were a bit too uneasy queasy to partake in the happy jig, the loving Corona Princess still yearned to be dancing along, too. But she knew, with a new baby on the way, she had to start to set her priorities straight and be the responsible adult in the room for her unborn child's sake.

_Oh, well. __Eugene__'s not here to laugh at me for 'spinning like a silly top' dancing anyway. Though it's not half the fun, is it, Anxelin?_

Rapunzel sighs inwardly to the tiny babe that she was grateful to count as her constant companionable company now that her Eugene was away. Though the small child, yet growing incrementally inside her day by day in her womb, was not fully formed at the moment, Rapunzel recognized that this child had been blessed by God to be their little miracle of life.

And even if this pregnancy made the young woman often sick, moody, ill feeling and weak, Princess Rapunzel of Corona wouldn't exchange her promise of love, in the form of Eugene's baby, for a thousand and one days of good health.

She was going to share this child's creation into this world with the man she loved more than life itself – her wonderful, funny, dreamy husband Eugene – who loved her back, she was so sure of it, every bit as much. She was never surer of Eugene Fitzherbert as she was again now. Even after all the distrust and uncertain separation, and then with everything they had been through together in the face of danger, Rapunzel was at last certain of their undying love, although they were physically parted again.

_I'm so proud of you for taking care of your little brother, Eugene. I love you all the more for it. I'm sure we'll all meet again in happier days ahead, soon. Then there'll be no more crying, or hurt, or sadness, Anxelin._

Rapunzel smiles and closes her eyes to send her handsome hero all her faithful fond affection and true love.

"Feeling better?" Kristoff asks a nodding Rapunzel, as he finishes loading the supplies that he had bartered with the kindly, yet savvy, Lutheran nuns in the Fattigskole school earlier, in trade for him doing some work chopping down a dilapidated old tree that was teetering dangerously near the mission charity school wing of the courtyard complex.

Kristoff had taken an airsick Rapunzel for quiet rash and stomach medicinal relief into the convent upon first touchdown arrival. The responsible Ice Harvester had decided to land his pair of reindeer who were growing fatigued after the long continuous in flight journey.

After striking a deal with Mother Superior Sister Clarice, the industrious young man set his muscles to work in trade for fresh supplies and boarding for the night for his entourage.

Of course, the sweet blonde boy hadn't the heart to awaken his peacefully napping Anna from her slumber in the barn where she lay so comfortably with Sven and Svala on a stack of fresh hay beds. Olaf vowed to keep a close eye out, the literal snowman plucking his charcoal orbs out to display his keenness to stand as faithful watch guard in the stable barn over his sleeping companions.

Of course, Kristoff never imagined that his Feistypants of a girl would get herself into such adventurous trouble to need rescuing in the seclusion of a quiet barn as she did.

All to retrieve Olaf's tossed aside snowshoe and find something else precious along the way, too.

"Wow, who drew that? It's beautiful." Rapunzel walks over to where her cousin Anna had been pouring over a leatherbound notepad to look over the ginger girl's shoulder at the artwork.

A lifelong artist herself, Rapunzel was bowled over impressed at the attention to detail in the subjects' eyes and facial features, not to mention the perfectly proportional, in scale body physicality – hands, arms, necks – that even a seasoned illustrator such as herself still found most challenging.

"Guess." Is all a droll voiced Anna answers. Her silently rolling eyes, pointing up to the heavens confused her Prussian cousin greatly. But Anna just couldn't help but feel that the gifted redhead lad had _far_ too many talents.

When a dumbfounded Rapunzel shakes her head, giving up the quiz, Anna slaps closed the sketchbook and points a finger to the name that had been carefully printed on the back cover, out by hand in bold, yet still childlike, handwriting: **HANS WESTERGAARD.**

"Hans?! No way! And I thought I was going to surprise you when I found out from the convent nuns up in the charity school wing that –" A deflated Rapunzel was just about to burst with excitement at her intriguing discovery when Anna cuts her off at the pass.

"—Hans went to school here when he was little. I know." Anna smugly shrugs her shoulders, as if she could care less as to _that_ Hans' early life—although the younger Arendelle Princess really was interested, more than she cared to admit.

"Yes! He did attend the charity school here. And Sister Clarice – who's a very nice Mother Superior, the dear elderly lady – even showed me a special plaque from Hans' graduation as his class valedictorian from his primary education here. They said Hans had the highest scores in aptitude, reading, mathematics, even Bible study memorization, than any other student before or since." The brown-haired young woman says with a tinge of pride for the Prince she'd come to know so well, who just happened to be Eugene's younger brother.

As for Anna, she merely rolls her eyes again.

"Practically all of the older nuns remember him from when he was attending school here, after Hans was sent here by his family when he was only four and a half years old. They essentially raised and educated him here after his father and brothers practically abandoned him and his poor little colt here. No one in the family ever even visited him all the years he was here. But the nuns all had glowing reports of such an intelligent, prized student and well mannered young man who always impressed them with his genius and skills."

"Would you like to meet them, too, Anna? The sisters of the convent are really the sweetest old things, who love to drink chamomile tea with honey and quietly chat by the fireplace about their dear students. See this pretty little teacup? They gave it to Pascal because they liked showing him off to the school children in class." The brown bobbed hair female points to her chameleon friend and his new prize of a tiny handmade porcelain china cup with the painting of Holy Mother Mary on it.

Accustomed to living in a secluded cloister of sorts herself, Rapunzel, had she not fallen madly in love with a poor sinner boy named Eugene, might have considered becoming a holy sister of the cloth, too. After seeing and being impressed how contented and peaceful these royal women who had remained unmarried old maids or unwanted outcasts for one disowned or disgraced reason or another, had found solace in the blessed sisterhood in sanctified union with none save Almighty God the Father above.

"And hear more women who fell under _Master_ Westergaard's undeniable charm swoon and fawn over that, that… That Red?! _Don't I get enough of that around here? Between you and Els—Never mind_…" Anna murmurs under her breath.

"No, thank you, cousin. I'll pass." Anna, while in a sisterly mission of mercy, still had a tough time trying to separate Prince Perfect Hans from the sophisticated scoundrel of a villain who cruelly poured cold water over the fires, dousing her love for him.

Literally.

But that frigid memory is warmed in Rapunzel's bedazzled eyes and gushing words when she pauses at a particular sketch of Old Testament Bible hero Joseph being thrown into a deep pit by his ten brothers. Each of the brethren had such details on their angry faces and bitter expressions of pure jealous emotion that Rapunzel was both wowed and moved by the depiction.

"I still can't believe how exquisitely he drew Elsa's eyes. As if he captured her soul reflected in each sketch. And how old was he when he drew these? Age eight or nine? Now, that is raw talent." With the impressed compliment, Rapunzel smiles at boy Hans' artistry, despite Anna's confrontational attempts to deride the Danish Prince. "With all those amazing drawings, though… Poor boy must've been very lonely. Believe me, I know how important your creations become when they're the only companions you have growing up." Pascal pats his emotional girl where the compassionate reptile was perched on Rapunzel's slumped shoulder.

"Oh yes. _Poor boy_. But he did get Elsa's eyes right, I'll give him credit there. It's almost as if…" Upon flipping through the sketchbook again at a rapid rate, Anna was astonished at how Hans had cleverly duplicated yet subtly altered Elsa's eyes focus to change from page to page. So it appeared as if the young girl were looking up from the scene to see her illustrator.

Namely young Prince Hans.

_I'm beginning to get the feeling that you really were smitten with my Elsie since you were a little guy, weren't you, Westergaard? And it wasn't just for her kingdom, was it, Red? You needed love… Was your home life so bad, that you'd do anything – and I mean anything – to get away from it? Guess we're going to find out…_

Anna considers this ponderous thought, purposely trying to steer her mind clear of a more morose outcome as she keeps up the façade of her anger towards Hans to give cover.

Kristoff intuitively hears her voice in his heart as he goes to load her, Rapunzel, Pascal and Olaf on Sven and Svala's backs after the group had all waved and hugged farewell to Lukas and the nuns in the distance with the promise to visit again soon.

_But if Hans was hurt so terribly, not knowing if he'd live or die, where else would he go? Where else would any one of us go?_

_{"_Something tells me that he'll go there, Kristly_."}_

Anna's blue-green eyes meet Kristoff's cocoa brown as he looks back at her over his shoulder where she was clinging instinctively to his muscular back. The double reindeer traverse the sunset towards a tall spired Renaissance water castle standing in all its imposing, surreal fortress glory where it was looming in the not-so-distant, dusky vista.

Having not much to go on beyond Anna's own gut instinct, Kristoff directs his reindeers in that direction. The Wind Whisperer's connection to the animals of the land and beasts of the air and sea was only a confusion of dubious sightings that could not clearly see through the original Wind Whisperer Ragi's aura of wind sheltered speed that carried Hans on swift wings to the continent.

On the invisible wings of the wind that the Snow Prince commanded, a fully rested Sven and Svala cross the dark sky to find out if Anna was right.

* * *

_The __North_ _Mountain__, __Norway_

As one snowgie attempts to stand perfectly erect and still, a second slippery customer appeared to be doing its best to not tumble off the first one's rounded shoulders.

But when another crowned set of double stacked snowgies move precariously toward the former pair, they all begin to lose their balance, the entire tipsy crew about to teeter over and fall –

"Oh, no, you don't!"

**_WHOOSH!_**

A sudden gust of cold air magically whips around the front Palace entrance way to encase the quartet of stacked animated pawns into two stiffened frozen pillars of ice. All four of the snowgies' teeth start to chatter in frost frozen place.

King Agdar smiles to himself rather smugly at the ease it took for him to aim and focus his powers, yet not disturb a single one of the other pieces on the massive chessboard.

"Mmmrr, mmrr, hmrrn, hmrrn!" Of course, his none-too-pleased opponent in the friendly game of draughts (checkers), was a Marshmallow snow monster more than ten times the aristocrat's height.

But that didn't intimidate Agdar Bernadotte in the least. After all, the Ice King had created the verglas raised chessboard floor in the Front Hall vestibule of Elsa's incredible Ice Palace. _And_ he also created the girl who made this entire winter wonderland edifice, _including_ Marshmallow and every mystical creature within it. Agdar puffs up with fatherly pride at the thought.

The scattered, playful snowgies, once the authoritative King had laid his strict rules down, were only too excited to join in the new game that Idun and Elsa had suggested to entertain the recuperating man. The brain stimulating and cryokinetic power training activity would be good for Papa's mind, rather than just whiling away the time brooding.

It had been a little tough to teach Marshmallow and his enormous, not so tactile, snow fingers to grasp the theory of checkers' diagonal space-hopping across the sixty-four, alternately pure snow white and grayish with hoarfrost generated squares adjacent to each other on the checkered floor.

But the clever King of Arendelle had eventually succeeded in driving home the base rules of the game to the not so simple snow monster.

Once Marshmallow – who, by the way, haughty King Agdar had _officially_ renamed 'Snow Beast', for his own sanity's sake – ceased just grabbing up the squealing, wriggling snowgies from the chessboard in the only way he understood to control his tiny pets that Kristoff and Olaf and brought up to him one day, at Agdar's objective phrase of 'capture the pawns'.

"Now, take note, Snow Beast." Mentally using his cryokinetic energies to coax his double snowgie crowned pawn to hop over two successful single ordinary pieces that belonged to his opponent, Agdar arrogantly smirks at the board that the experienced draughts/ checker player practically owned.

"Hrrggh?" Poor, outwitted Marshmallow moans as two more of his snowgie checkers, were cold frost telekinetically lifted from the checkered squares to be placed in Agdar's already crowned pile. The Ice King had constructed an ice box to hold the captured pawns, bouncing up and down energetically wanting to play again on his side of the stairwell in the elaborate Ice Palace.

"Your turn, my friend." While King Agdar was a gentleman of heart, he also owned a combative, competitive male spirit, that his wife and daughter were glad to see rearing its magnificent head, more than the depressed cool nonchalance he had been displaying but yesterday.

Aware of their concern for his well-being and striving to be more himself again for all their sakes, Agdar did find this competition that his Idun suggested and Elsa set up, invigorating.

_My girls know me more than I know myself sometimes… They understand just what I need… I am a blessed man, dear Lord. Thank you._

King Agdar's smirk turns into a smile of grateful pride as he gazes upward towards the upstairs bedroom of this extraordinary Ice Palace that his Elsa envisioned it to cold reality.

_I do wonder what my lovely ladies are up to up there, all this time…_

* * *

Up in Elsa's second story grand bedchamber, the current Queen of this kingdom and her Queen mother had been doing some long-awaited for bonding…

Queen Idun had put her lithe, picturesque daughter in a fashion show for her own enjoyment. Her motherly insight realized how prim and proper, tall and elegant, a bit of a show off Elsa enjoyed the art of glamour in the oh-so-feminine love of dress up fashion as she did when she was a little girl.

Now the twenty-three-year-old young woman had the shapely figure of a model, not to mention the ability to create her own artistically aesthetic habiliments and raiment from just the visionary gift of her imagination to strut on display.

She then had a feeling that her once constricted child could use an unconventionally liberating fashion show to ease the tension that was evident, for the loving mother at least, on her talented child's refined, yet secretly forlorn brow.

"Come now, Elsa, don't be shy." After glimpsing more than a few either tastefully imposing, or decoratively pictorial, ice formed garments that modish Elsa had personally fashioned and luxuriously tailored around her graceful body, Idun was excited to see something more deservedly striking.

But when the platinum blonde comes out with yet another beautiful creation after beautiful creation of cultured and stately, majestically exquisite ice clothing with long royal capes and tall collars, Queen Idun's patience was waning.

She had been seated for almost an hour as audience on Elsa's soft snow bed that Kristoff had laid a special insulated linseed impregnated waxed cotton, used in ice harvesting, over the bed for Anna to share with her big sister on sleepover nights, so as not to let her cute bum get too chilly.

"I am waiting for something bold and exciting, min skonhet (_my beauty)."_ The Queen, while indulging herself on a box of her favorite expensive Belgian chocolates she hadn't had in years that Kai had purchased at the King's bequest for his sweet-toothed love, had watched Elsa's dainty feet peek out for a split second before pulling back in behind the changing screen.

Silent, almost frantic rustling comes the reply.

"Is there a problem, Elsa? Do you need some help buttoning up or tying something?" Idun glances around, then surreptitiously wipes her sticky chocolate smudged fingertips on the wet rim of the ice bed's tinkling icicle canopy to dilute the dark chocolate mess she finishes wiping to her indigo, fancy trimmed dress skirt.

With a guilty giggle, Elsa's sweet Mama, who still owned that youthful, naughty streak, was always hands-on ready to attend to her children. Idun loved both her girls and tried best to be a good mother and play along with all of their interests and dress-up play times.

"I – I'm not sure if this one was finished yet… That's all." Elsa's timorously nervous voice proved to Idun that her self-conscious, introverted daughter, though she had come a long way since the old days when the reticent teenager would barely make eye contact with her parents, never mind others, would give such an ostentatious exhibit of her ingenious and innovative ice apparel.

"Well, let me see, and I'll tell you if it needs more work. That is what mothers are for, right? Giving an honest opinion, whether you want it or not?" Idun's wittiness constantly tried to bring Elsa out of her shell. But the withdrawn nature of ice's cold demands left her child with uncertain inhibitions, as hard as her mother tried to free her of it.

But that didn't mean Idun ever gave up. On the contrary, the former Queen and the new one both shared a passion for elegant clothing and fine trendsetting designs.

Little hoyden Anna may not have cared if she showed up at the dinner table in her beat up and ripped, hole-y clothes that often embarrassed her father in front of important guests and drove her demurely matured, modish mother mad as the messy ginger hair baby turned into a messy ginger haired teenager. But her quiet and tidy platinum blonde little girl always had a flair for refined style and keeping her primly proper self neat and clean at all times.

_Oh, how I have missed my little girls…_

Tears were biting behind Idun's passionate maternal eyes when she thinks about these five past, lost years when her children, just blossoming into young ladies, were at a critical juncture without the guidance and help from their parents.

Elsa's self-imposed isolation and aloofness were already a major problem that Idun had every intention of addressing when her stubborn husband was finally ready himself. After months and months of working on him, Idun's King was just about prepared to open up and share all of his past issues and struggles with the ice with their similarly gifted daughter.

And then the four of them could be a normal family again.

But a shipwreck and a pirate changed all that.

Now, thanks to the courage and bravery of so many new friends, their family had a second chance again, if they all learned to just open up…

_Anyway! Enough of dredging up the past! I'm getting as bad as my husband! It's the future we should look up to now!_

"Elsa, are you eventually coming out with that one, dear? Or do I have to go back there…?" The positive influence mother stands up from the surprisingly comfortable 'snow-bed' and its linseed waxed cotton mat that gave Elsa's snowy mattress a rolling, sloshy feel that the Queen found rather…luxurious…

_Perhaps, we could have the same bedding in our __Ice_ _Palace__ guest room, Agdar…_

Plopping down again on the soft snow mattress, Idun smiles coyly. At the ripe old age of thirty-nine, the just turning middle-aged woman could still look forward to later nighttime bedroom fun on a snowy-bed such as this. Elsa and Anna's chuckling mother, who still had a for zest for life, pops one more sweet centered dark chocolate bonbon in her mouth to tickle on her warm tongue.

As Idun opens her eyes after indulging in such sumptuous bliss, just then, Elsa hesitantly steps out from behind the screen wearing a stylish, yet dramatic; exquisite, yet provocative; grandiose, yet engaging, brilliant snowy satin white and silvery and crystal encrusted tight body-hugging gown that flared into an icy layer of breathy puff chiffon at her shapely ankles.

The delicate point-lace design of the off-the-shoulder gown's thinly gold and silver thread spun, nearly see-through center front panel consisted of a rather daring – especially for this stuffy Victorian age – gauzy ice diamond studded triangular dip that displayed the finer points of this Ice Queen's curves in an arresting, titillating, yet stately manner.

The entire icy white fashion aesthetically pleased the eye in a sublimely artistic way that Idun found quite incomparable.

The tall young woman takes a few steps in her tall four inch high ice heels, nervously chuckling before her mother with a sheepish, bashful look on her prettily pink cheeks.

"Oh, Elsa. Min Skonhet." The Swedish word for 'beauty' spilling from her awed lips, Idun has a hard time catching her breath for all the dazzling white loveliness displayed before her.

The staggered Queen backs up to trip down onto the snowy white bed in an ungraceful plop. Her thin hand reaches for her throat to steady her astonished chest. She looks upon her gracefully poised elder daughter's unconventional, tailored sculpt, adorned with just the right amount of iridescent glitter and bejeweled crystal wonder from Elsa's diamond ice, from well turned petite toe to her shining, majestic platinum tresses in a queenly chignon.

"That is the most thrilling and breathtaking wedding dress I have ever laid my eyes upon." The thoroughly impressed older Queen finally is able to find her voice after several moments of simply staring at her gorgeous, attractive daughter in profound admiration.

"Wedding dress? Oh no, Mama. This wasn't meant to be a –" Embarrassed beyond words by her mother's genuine insinuation, Elsa blushingly glances her averted eyes down at the delicate embroidered lace arms and low-cut off the shoulder, lacy breast top section of the form fitting, flared bottomed frosty gown that she had just recently completed the icy design.

The young woman had been herself wearing something akin to this so many times in her nightly dreams these past two years. When the fantasies always ended with her love's tenor voice calling out for her to be _his beloved one_…

"I'm so pleased to see, that even if you weren't consciously admitting it aloud, your heart is ready to entertain the thought of sharing the warmth of your love with a forever mate in the Lord's most sanctified sacrament between a man and woman." Practically clapping her hands together in glee at the fortuitous revelation that she always wished for her difficult oldest child, the doting mother speaks her most prayed for hope for both her children to find the true happiness, as she did, in a loving husband's embrace.

Queen Idun trips across the icy bedroom to give Elsa a warm hug.

"Mama, really! It's only an ordinary white dress! I am the Ice Queen, after all!" Stumbling over her words as she shakes her head in denial, Elsa felt the need to justify her fancy lacy garb. But her chuckling Mama would have none of it.

"Though I'm sure we will turn more than a few stuffy heads with your chic design, my darling – _your conservative Papa included_. But I am certain, from the way he looked at you, that your Prince Hans will doubtlessly be impressed to show off his one in a-million glamorous diamond of a Queen wearing this daring wedding gown." Petting the soft, silky frosted folds of Elsa's translucent skirt base plumage that she was kneeling on the icy marble floor to fluff out, Idun winks, continuing to tease her baby's dreamt of future marital bliss to be secured for her once unimaginably withdrawn and introverted daughter.

"He's not **_my_** Prince, Mama. I don't even know if he cares for me at all!" Elsa's high-pitched coloratura soprano chirp cries out so loudly and so abruptly sudden in her own despondent frustration that Idun worried that her fragile minded Papa would hear the discordance and come running up the glassy stairs to see what the problem was.

And thusly cause so many more issues that the Queen didn't relish dealing with right now.

Fortunately, just at that moment, Marshmallow must've just scored his first checker point. The Snow Beast's merry laughter rings throughout the Ice Palace somewhere down below where he and the King were competitively playing at the challenging game of draughts.

"He didn't even say goodbye…After all, no one would want me…I'm a freak…Why would I ever expect anything more?" Now the tears in Elsa"s eyes rolled down her cheeks until they smudged the lavender eyeshadow. Her broken voice and opened dam of tears bespoke of the girl's sincere heartbreak loss and utterly honest yet unexpected love for that absent young man.

Idun jumps to her feet to hug her exquisitely dressed-to-kill, yet lovelorn child to her own motherly chest that keenly felt her offspring's heartache and pain of the uncertain unknown of this inscrutable separation.

The girl who once vowed to never be seen crying openly, weeps into her Mama's deep brown hair and warm comforting arms.

_I believe I saw it there, in both your young, devotedly-in-love eyes._

"My darling, beautiful one. You are our lovely little girl, _not_ a freak. Don't ever say that! But if you wish for 'more,' then…you must find him, and discover if his love is real and true as I believed it to be. Find out _why_ he left so suddenly. I'm sure there must be a good reason." Idun gazes seriously at her confused child with a steady assurance that Elsa's blue eyes desperately needed.

"I know it's frightening, but if you ever want to have peace in your heart, Elsa, you must be willing to take this chance for love. Life is full of pain and also full of joy. Both aspects come to every life and we must meet them head on, keeping the peace of God in our souls, and the love of our family, in our hearts. Love is a risk worth taking. To love so deeply, so fully, and be loved as that in return—there is nothing like it between two human hearts! If you attain it, it will give your life such joy and completeness. But you must put everything on the line to uncover the promise of such richness of a treasure immeasurable, beyond all other wealth. Remember, Love is the greatest gift our Creator ever designed for our lives." The Arendelle Queen speaks with a wisdom beyond her own years, for she has had much time in solitude to ponder on such intensely deep subjects and all those hours alone in that dark, dank cavern, with only the Lord to speak to in her time of trial.

"Such a love comes only but once in a lifetime, my dearest, for each of us. Don't let your chance at something so precious go. Don't let the tender, fleeting promise slip away from your heart and be stolen by fear, lost forever. If only you could grasp hold on tight to it in both your hands. With all your heart, your shimmering icy butterfly may finally unfurl and take wing." Squeezing Elsa's cool hands and kissing their palms with a mother's love, the loving Queen's lilting soprano whispers softly to play her tremulous child's tearfully reverberating heart strings, searching deep into the ice crystals of Elsa's eyes for the love that was still evident there for her lost prince.

So Queen Idun begins to devise in her quick mind an audacious plan to bring that Danish Prince Charming back into her previously untouchable daughter's life…

_And please love my girl tenderly, dear Hans..._Idun sends a thought to the motherless boy, wherever the sky had taken him, as only a mother could pray…

* * *

_min skonhet_ \- my beauty in Swedish

_Flurru_ – Icelandic for flurry

_Snædís_ – Icelandic for snow goddess

_Nýsnær_ – Icelandic for new snow

_Les Trois Mousquetaires_ \- The Three Musketeers in French: a historical novel by Alexandre Dumas written in 1841.

* * *

Hello, Frozen friends! How's that for a salute to Mama's everywhere? Happy early Mothers' Day to every Mother and her child out there!

Isn't Queen Idun a wonderful example of motherhood? She wants to share now in every part of Elsa and Anna's lives, to make up for the lost years. Idun truly loves her children with all her heart, prays constantly for their happiness, and will do anything to make their futures be filled with security and joy. Sound familiar, like yours? ^_^

Even Rapunzel and her unborn miracle 'Anxelin' were having some mother/daughter moments! Just a reminder of how long before we came into this world, our Mothers were already caring for us!

Most of us lucky ones have been blessed to have a Mama like that to uncomplainingly care for us, sweetly play with us in childish silly games, and generally bring her songful smile to uplift our spirits all throughout the days of our childhoods,

So, as this week leading up to her one day of the year for her maternal recognition for all she's sacrificed and given to her children unselfishly progresses, be sure to let your dear Mother know how much you appreciated her Godly attentions. For surely, she had been preordained by our Creator above to give us both the blessings of a boundless life's possibilities, and her forever, unconditional love.

Now, what about this new mysterious adventure our Three Musketeers (you asked for it, Eugene! ^_^) are embarking upon? I wonder where these endless plot twists will take us to now…

Please review your take on the dicey matter!

And please have the happiest of Mother's days spent with your cherished Mama! It's this upcoming weekend already, so don't miss making her some little handwritten note/card or little homemade gift created with love, or even a long phone call to brighten her day. Our generous Mothers need no more than to hear how much she's loved and appreciated in her child's sincere voice to feel God's love for her heartaches, compassion and sacrifice along our journey to adulthood.

God bless all our old Mamas and young Mothers-to-be out there, too!

Happy Mothers' Day!

HarukaKou


	69. Chapter 68 - Checkmate

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act V**

**Chapter 68**

**"Checkmate"**

"Whoa." The young woman's jaw drops in awestruck amazement.

Her ginger braids flapping wildly on the wind have to smack Anna of Arendelle back to reality, as she and her significant other race the sky on reindeer-back some twenty kilometers east from the Fattigskole charity mission school.

But Egeskov Castle's monk's brick and carved stone, moat surrounded fortress exterior was redoubtably disquieting to say the least. From its double drawbridges that connected the main palace's foreboding frontage to its peaked triple conical towers, to the 200+ rounded arch windows with black arcading around its numerous gables, the sprawling complex of long buildings of the double walled sixteenth century Renaissance Water Castle was ominous.

Nevermind its ornate maze gardens, impressive topiary and perfectly groomed bushes of the lush greenery and rows of fuchsia and purple flora. All surrounded the reflective moat that gave the pristinely picturesque, imposing castle set amidst the body of dark water a distinct air of cold un-approachability, even on this warm summer day.

But approach it they must, if ever this group of answer-seeking travelers was to uncover the truth.

"So this is where Hans grew up? I heard the Southern Isles Castle was impressive. But I never imagined it would be so… so…so…" Rapunzel, as her ride, Svala, flies up alongside Sven, struggles for words while she comments on the stretching majestic splendor of the palatial landscape that she, Kristoff, Anna, Olaf, and Pascal had an aerial bird's eye view of its grandiose surroundings.

"– Forbidding?" Honest, straightforward and down-to-earth Kristoff provides the one sentiment his intuitive soul was picking up, or rather not picking up. The lack of animals and natural creatures that seemed too frightened and cringing away from in this natural habitat was creepy. The very aura of this august, lofty and lavish land was detached of spirit and devoid of warmth.

"I like it." A smiling Olaf pipes up with his unsinkable optimism to break the discomfited atmosphere way up in this stratosphere that Sven and Svala were traversing.

"Why, Olaf? The place looks totally menacing and super sinister." Anna jerks her mesmerized eyes away from the incoming, impactfully intimidating kingdom of the Southern Isles of Denmark to address her strangely naïve snowfriend.

"It's JustHans' home! I can't wait to meet his twelve big brothers, and see his exciting old haunts, and hang out in his cool room…" In his simple naïveté, Olaf's imagination runs away with him and all the warm and fuzzy feeling for Hans and homes in general that the loving snowman held in plentitude. After all, seeing the world through the snow goggles of a child, Olaf couldn't understand how growing up in such a great big, fascinating fun castle, with all its drawbridge moats, huge stables and hedge mazes to play with twelve big brothers in as the baby that _they all had to love_, could ever be bad.

"Right… His twelve brothers…" It just dawns on Anna that she, in her rash rush to search and find Prince Hans in his homeland, had forgotten about his plethora of aloof brothers. From the way Hans talked about his brethren before, coupled with the fact that they had sold him down the river to an evil pirate, she wasn't sure of how pleasant a visit with them would be. With so many all vying for their aged Father's property and title, some of them surely would be still hanging around.

The girl bites her lip and looks to Kristoff, glad she had her rock beside her to waltz right through that front door of this fearsome kingdom of Denmark and demand to know the whereabouts of one of its princely sons.

The Prince who had been disgraced and disowned. The insidious guy whom one of his victims now would do anything to see alive again.

{"Can you feel if he's here, Kristly?"} The Arendelle Princess shakes her head physically to clear it mentally as she asks her other half the query. Anna's tensed hands around his tight musclebound torso subconsciously ball into uncertain fists.

{I don't know, Baby. All I sense is that there's a bunch of people down there with some bad disposition issues. That bad mojo makes it a little harder to sift through."} The big mountain man taps into his newly recognized Wind Whisperer abilities. But he was only able to delineate that there was some unpleasant sentiments going on down there that he, as an outsider, had no inkling about.

"But we'll face them together." Kristoff reassures his plucky girl, feeling a nervousness from Anna that she rarely owned concerning their questionable welcome to this kingdom, that her own was not on the best of terms with. Papa was never much a fan of the Danes, and her dealings with Hans didn't improve those relations any better.

Anna sighs, the closer Sven was going in for a landing on the ornately pruned and trimmed greenery on the other side front of the Castle lawn, the further away she felt.

Although, practically the moment the young Ice Harvester reaches over to squeeze his young wife's fisted hands at his chest, an incoming sharp metal steel tipped arrow pierces the sky and glances off Kristoff's unsuspecting shoulder.

"Argh!" The man grunts at the stabbing pain in his left arm as the arrowhead nicks several layers of his skin's epidermis. Kristoff's flashing eyes slit as he makes a swift scan of the area below, zeroing in immediately on the darkened figure with a bow and arrow. The stranger was in an offensive stance on the roof of the connected secondary building to the west of the main castle's aqua turrets.

"Kristoff! You've been hit! WHO SHOT THAT?!" As his hot blood begins drip down on her bare arms, Anna viciously screams in horror first, then with flared anger kicking in next something fierce. The ginger girl fights against her protective husband's grip to get a clearer view of the assailant herself, even as Kristoff uses his own bulkier, well-toned body to shield as much as he could over her wriggling form.

"We've got bows and arrows with your name on them, too, Buddy! And ours are bigger!" It was tough enough for the blond man to hang onto his testy and goading, confrontational Feistypants as she shouts out dares. All the while Kristoff has to balance Anna and himself on Sven's frightened back in midflight, as three more pointed arrows zing past their staggered heads.

"Olaf! Cover for Rapunzel! Sven! Svala! Retreat!" Kristoff Bjorgman orders the split-second decision, instantly taking on the responsibility of a no-nonsense field commander. His gentle encouraging voice from just moments before is transformed into assertive man-in-charge mode.

Olaf, on the female reindeer, quickly wobbles onto Rapunzel's lap, then throws his branchy arms out across her vulnerable torso.

"No! We have to get in there! Sven! Don't turn around!" Anna stubbornly struggles to peek out defiantly in between Kristoff's shielded embrace to jut out her cute little chin. She physically fights with her larger bodied hubby to get a look at the now pair of inept archers lobbing arrow after arrow at the two flying reindeer and their riders with no caveat or reason.

As obedient Svala bows to the Snow Prince's sagacity with Rapunzel and her defending, stretched out wide snowman on board, she dutifully makes a beeline for the woods. Sven's mournful eyes gaze around the back of his head at the opposing signals of the confusing couple on his back.

"Sven! Go!" Kristoff barks out at his reindeer best friend, exasperated, as he keeps a trained eye on their attackers.

"Sven! No! Keep going forward!" Anna contradicts, tugging a hand at Sven's reins to reverse their retreat.

"Sven!" Kristoff was getting frustrated. Even if, long ago he had learned that his peppery perky Princess was a stubborn force be reckoned with.

Poor Sven flies around in a tug-of-war circle of confusion for several seconds until the friendly reindeer bull was dizzy.

**_WHIZZ!_**

But before he had the chance to decide to turn back or not, another arrow comes dangerously close and shaves a whisker off unfortunate Sven's disoriented muzzle.

"That's it." Resigned, Kristoff starts to pull out from his strapped back his own trusty Saami longbow and take aim at their attacking archer assailants.

**_T'CHI!_**

Though flying high in the breezy sky, his unbalanced girl pulling him every which way against his dizzied reindeer buddy, the Wind Whisperer takes precise aim with a duet of his prized Saami bow's bone tipped, gold shafted arrows and shoots them simultaneously off –

**_T'CHI! T'CHI!_**

Kristoff's double shot arrow flies so straight and true as the wind he commanded aids their course towards the castle extension's rise behind the façade that the twin pair of dark hooded inept archers were reloading their weapons behind. The pair were arguing loudly with one another about missing the target and which one was more skilled than the other in his marksmanship, all the while –

**_SCHKKK!_**

The bone tipped arrowhead's direct path towards the hooded archers' unprotected heart ventricle chest area takes a last-minute detour to fly upwards instead. The arrows rather flap up their two hoods from their obscured faces and pin the pair of brash, bickering, brats to the roof's front brick top façade.

Anna squints her eyes against the summer's bright afternoon sky that mirrored the distracting reflective moat below surrounding prestigious Egeskov Castle.

The one young man on the left that Kristoff had pinned to the rear stable house roof had short curly orange red hair, a fully freckled face with a ruddy complexion and a sad excuse for uneven bright orange sideburns. The other, had an oddly misshapen face with a wild blonde mane of spiked hair that was almost comical, if it was not so disturbing. Though the pair could not be more disparate looking, the reaction was twin-like duplicate.

"Hey! No fair! You've got a flying reindeer!" The two equally annoying voices cry out indignantly as they try to pull away from their capes that were secured to the wall by Kristoff's arrows.

Sven hovers near the stable house roof section of the castle, so Kristoff could get a better look at them.

The pair of men, who were older than they appeared, equally stare at the gingerbread girl and her big blond fella on their magical flying reindeer, with nothing but disdain on their not so-comely faces.

"We're under attack! We're under attack!" The pair of spoiled thirty-four-year-old men who rarely acted their age, cry out with the same impious exhilaration as they did when they were eight-year-old spoiled boys. These twins were always telling fibs on one another and reveled devilishly in torturing their littlest brother and then run to their strict daddy, cackling at their mischief.

"You just wait until we tell our Father! He's the King who will sentence you both to the death penalty for your nerve in attacking this kingdom's heroic princes!"

Princes Ruddi and Rune, now fully grown in body, though arguably stunted in mind as quarrelsome, peevish and bratty boys the same as they were as rotten kids, give Kristoff and his arrow trained on them, a turned up nose and a long, belligerent stare.

"Shouldn't you have asked who we are before you started shooting?! You boys can put someone's eye out!" Anna berates the two as if they were children, everything about them getting her ginger ire up already.

"That's not the way Father taught us to face enemies, little girl! You shoot first. And ask questions later. That's the way conquerors win!" The ugly blonde man on a warmonger rant, goads Anna defiantly, sticking out his tongue and rolling his eyes around in his unsettlingly strange shaped head, as if to keep their attention trained on him.

And it works.

Kristoff's focus was off the other sneaky twin during the yellow blonde one's odd ravings. The muddy orange haired man with double-jointed arms allows him to unbutton himself out of his black cape that he slips out from under. Laughing all the while, the burnt orange, badly barbered boy makes a wild spree down into the stable house complex to call for backup against this small, strange invasion force that enigmatically had unconventionally made it across Egeskov fortress's impermeable moat.

"You're gonna get it now, you insignificant little flying bugs! Egeskov has a contingent of military guards that will shoot your overfed flying reindeer out of the sky! And we will enjoy watching you fall screaming into the moat, as you sink and drown, like the insects you are! Or maybe, even better, the crocodiles or…or… the Nökken that we have in this here moat will tear the flesh from your bones and eat you alive first!" The antagonistically bellicose vivid yellow haired Prince Ruddi taunts Kristoff and Anna with his threats of certain doom about the fearful mythological creature lurking beneath those dark waters below.

"Eww! That's gross!" Anna wrinkles her nose at this Danish Prince's fertile, if not repulsively gruesome, imagination.

"Don't worry. He's bluffing. I'm sorry to have to break it to you, pal, but there aren't any crocodiles, or mythological sea creatures, for that matter, in these parts of the woods. I'm pretty sure." Kristoff was more put off by the thought of a deputation of armed military men, who really might be hiding inside of this fortress castle. That bothered Kristoff more than a wild, far-flung tale of evil sea monsters and the like roaring through the dank, dark waters.

_Not that I haven't seen my share of sea monsters lately…_

"Wait, wait-wait! You're Princes here?! Then, you'll know if Prince Hans has retur–" Anna, not daunted in the least by the idea of being stormed en masse by hordes of aggressive military guards itching for a fight. Nor the threat of some vindictive sea creature swirling in strangely moving shadows beneath the murky waters down there.

No, she was more intent on asking this most… _Unattractive - __Okay, he's downright homely!_ \- brother of Hans, if their youngest Lillebror had returned yet the castle he was born to.

"There! See! I wasn't drinking again, Captain Jorgensen! Don't just stand there! Fire!" Pugnacious Rune was frantic to prove his flighty story of flying reindeer carrying invaders near the capital spires after he bumped into the Captain of the King's guard doing his afternoon rounds.

The eleventh in-line Prince of the Southern Isles had raced through the complex like a blithering idiot, proclaiming the far-fetched attack to the castle guards who disbelieved this mischievous Prince's veracity.

The large set, severely square jawed and well-armed _Haeran_ trained, Royal Danish Army special forces military man, levels his army issue breech-loading carbine rifle from across where he and Prince Rune were inside the main castle's opposing tower turret window.

The experienced rifleman aims his weapon that had an explosive range of over one kilometer, directly at Sven's unaware head. The crack shot prepares to shoot the long-range rifle off, right between the reindeer hero's broken single antler it had zeroed in his sights…

"Sven! Serpentine back!" Willing the winds to help with his faithful companion to dodge away from the incoming bullets in retreat, Kristoff realizes that, with the great equalizer of gunpowder's firepower, even his mighty Saami longbow didn't stand a chance of disarming a fired bullet's missile.

"Anna! Keep your head down!" The blonde mountain man replaces his bow and arrow to its quiver strapped to his back and instead wraps his wriggling Princess up in his shielded embrace. Sven the reindeer makes a fall back, tail dive away from the apparently fully armed battlements and aggressive against intruders castle fortress.

"Just peachy. Talk about unfriendly territory. Papa was right about these war-like Danes. That didn't go exactly as planned. Maybe this isn't going to be so easy." Anna grumbles under her breath, already a bit prejudiced against this race of Scandinavian conquerors of old. She folds her disappointed arms together and grouses at her visit to the unhappiest kingdom on earth.

"Am I glad I married you! And not into that nutty, unsociable place." Anna makes a sour face at the kingdom they had just kicked the dust off their feet thereof. She squeezes Kristoff's sore shoulder tight like a security blanket.

"Gee, thanks for your vote of confidence." Kristoff mutters, tolerating his glanced wound with a smirk at his oh-so-complimentary wife.

"No matter how dreamy eyed, charming voiced, or good dancers their princes are. No matter how beautiful their castle's scenic grounds could be, I would NEVER want to end up here. And their welcome committee for visiting dignitaries sure can use a facelift." Giving Kristoff's neck nape a familiar nuzzle, a grimacing Anna seemed unfazed by the unfriendly fire that this hostile kingdom of Denmark's violent rejection offered.

But her heart was more troubled not to be any closer to finding that elusive Prince Hans, even here in his own land…

* * *

_Some time later in the Ice __Palace__, __Norway__…_

Elsa spent the morning training her Papa in the great outdoors of her picturesque North Mountain's liberating possibilities. There, the King had inspected her Ice Castle's architectural artistry from the outside with awe. Soon thereafter, the pair of ice wielders built together some practice cryokinetic slide creations; constructive Elsa then challenged her Papa to a frost fingertips' focused skeet shooting match. As the afternoon wore on, together they had some intense snowball fights of a throwback childhood missed in between training that motherly Idun enjoyed watching so much she clapped and laughed harder than she had in years.

The wonderful afternoon continued as Elsa and her Mother joined Gerda in a cooking fest in the servants' kitchen that soon changed into a womanly gentle lesson about love for the sad-eyed young Queen.

With dinner soon to be ready, Idun and Elsa had decided to wander back downstairs to see what their recovering father had gotten up to after his invigorating rehabilitation session.

Marshmallow (A.K.A. Snow Beast) had been introduced to the game of draughts and had gotten the hang of checkers so well that the blundering lummox of a gargantuan snow monster had almost actually bested the Checkers King. That is, until Agdar's cool adrenaline kicked in and he pulled off a last minute win, toppling down the remainder of Marshmallow's snowgies to magically transfer into his overfilled ice box full of bouncing up and down pawns.

But never one to give up a serious competition, or a ready contender willing to play him, King Agdar had brainstormed to switch the simple game of checkers to a more challenging pass time of chess.

In the chilled Ice Palace's Great Hall, where the huge chessboard had been set, Agdar had taught a baffled Marshmallow the new game's more complex and complicated rules.

The Ice King had outfitted a new batch of excited-to-play snowgies from the seemingly endless supply with cryokinetically formed costume gear. From ice castle rock pillars with snowgie eyes peeking out for the rooks Agdar fashioned, to holy robes and long tall hats by the ice milliner for his bishops to wear. Ice statue horses and armor helmets were created for his knights, majestic dresses and queenly garb with delicate tiaras on top of the chosen Queens (once the androgynous snowgies identified themselves as leaning more towards the female persuasion). And the royal becaped and majestic crowned atop their snowy mound heads Kings, were complete with ice formed sceptres as this ice chess match's mock coronated snowgie main piece.

"My white knight to your black rook. No chance of castling king-side or queen-side for you, Mr. Snow Beast, with both your rooks captured now." With a haughty chuckle at his own masterful playing, King Agdar almost pompously orders his snowgie chess pawn with a pointed frosty forefinger to skip and jump over his opponent's diagonally vulnerable back row piece.

So that left only the black King and a few scattered black defenders on the board to fall for the ruler of this land to dominate the match.

"Ha ha! Hand over your final rook, Snow Beast! You've only three pieces left and my board is nearly full. You are not going to come even close to playing me to a draw this time, my snowy friend. I am still the Chess King, after all! And I am coming for your Queen next. So beware." Agdar chortles arrogantly, his eyes glowing with an eerie icy white triumph, his chest puffed up with kingly pride to stand over such a victorious board.

"My, what a magnanimous display of friendly sportsmanship between competitors, my coldhearted love." Now another Queen that Agdar had set his sights on and seized a long time ago, speaks up for the lorded over, mute Marshmallow's crushed, sad-faced behalf.

"Well. You always were a softy for the losing side, Idun. Especially since you were usually at the receiving end of my victory." Feeling quite revitalized from their refreshing outdoor excursion earlier, not to mention this competitive match of wits and wills for his masculine exercised psyche, Agdar teases his wife.

"Is that so, oh honored and lordly Majestic One? May I, a simple naïve Swedish Princess, with my humble abilities, be permitted to aid this poor _Snow Beast_ in this challenge?" Idun saucily words her question to Agdar with a pair of innocent, fluttering lashed, doe-like eyes up at him.

"But of course, my love. If you don't mind much suffering as you walk straight into the jaws of defeat. Please don't take it too hard, my Queen, when you both lose." The lifelong Chessmaster talks down his life partner in the icy frigid way that made her hairs stand on end when he was so aggravatingly full of himself like this.

"Why, thank you, Your Majesty. I will try my best not to fail your expectations." The diminutive Queen smiles as she glides seamlessly across the ice floor of the Palace's Front Hall to stand by Marshmallow's plaintive side.

"Mmhh?"" The Snow Beast looks down with forelorn eyes at his tiny defender who was empathic enough to join his losing team.

Elsa, who had been lost in her own thoughts, had wandered up the stairs in need of glimpsing the memory of a certain handsome Prince who had saved her soul from committing a terrible crime in that very balcony room. But she is pulled out of her melancholy when she overhears her parents jibing one another over this not-so-friendly game she had dreamed up for Papa's combined therapy and amusement.

As she watches her father impatiently wait for his turn and subconsciously twirl his debonair mustache, Elsa softly giggles at her funny parent. But she was impressed by his dress-up fashion show of the ice costumed snowgies parading around in the box of chess pieces that she was seated beside on her effortlessly formed ice throne. Her little creations hop up and down against her skirt, plop on Elsa's lap as all of them watch together in audience to this comical satire between her mother and father.

All through those years of enforced solitude in Arendelle castle, Idun often had watched her husband and Kai play this game of intellect as serious chess partners. She had endured through many of her pompous King's gloating at nights upon winning victory after victory over the chess match with his best friend/former tutor/royal minister.

But Agdar's fragile spirit needed a boost every now and then when his competitive male soul was hungry for a good mental battle of strategy and sparring match of cunning, as chess was invented centuries before to satisfy.

Although, at those times, the Norwegian King was unaware of one little tidbit of information.

Idun let him win.

"If I may take the lead in this round, dear Mr. Marshmallow?" Idun's sad eyes melt the grumbling snow creature to metaphorically a puddle at her feet. The huge monster nods, subdued at her gentle melodic voice.

"Call him 'Snow Beast', please, Idun." Agdar's monotone baritone stubbornly stresses the renamed title that was more befitting the thirty-five foot tall gargantuan.

"I like Marshmallow." The sweet-toothed Queen mumbles under her breath glibly as her quick, intelligent mind considers her strategic options for the game.

"Now let me see…" Idun's lithe form moves around the area to study the huge chessboard. There, poor, bullied Marshmallow had left on his haphazard side of the board, only a stray Bishop that was some paces to the right of his unmoved King, and the black Queen who was standing before her King in some wild stab at defense tactics.

"It's a hopeless situation, Idun. You might as well give up this foolish optimism, my pet." King Agdar says, leaning confidently against Elsa's chair back in the midst of the Great Hall. Queen Idun appears to ignore him, her eyes continuing to assess the chessboard.

"Not bad for a creature of the ice, who never has played the game by its rules before." The Arendelle Queen comments in sympathy as she pets Marshmallow's frozen hand where he was kneeling beside her.

"Are you blind, Woman? Just take a look at that board. Your new friend there is losing rather badly." Smug Agdar says with an arrogant snigger at his tenderhearted wife's commiserate solicitude for his dumb (in the literal sense) opponent.

"I wasn't talking about _Marshmallow_." Idun replies over her shoulder dismissively to her full-of-it hubby, with an insinuating smile on her pursed lips, though her eyes never look up to meet his. She was about to call out her first move to the scoffing, indignant man who got her cutting remark's point entirely.

Elsa could not stifle her chuckle as she watches, with prayerful joy to have back her entertaining parents as they play the warring competitive game her ice created. Elsa watches from the sidelines of the board with her enthusiastic snowgies bouncing at her elegant feet, on her lap, even one or two perched on the Ice Queen's platinum head.

Insulted, Agdar shoots a frosty glance at his insolent child with his mouth open in disapproving disbelief for her open betrayal.

"Sorry, Papa." A rosy cheeked Elsa subdues the residue of her chuckles, choosing to let her woes ebb for a few moments and enjoy this spectacle before her.

"Anyway. Let us continue as dignified competitors for the remainder of the match." Snobbish King Agdar berates his wife and daughter as he overlooks his injured feelings to share a munificent smile with his favorite sparring partner, also known as his wife.

Idun's eyes twinkle back at him in that look of utter love and devotion that he craved more than any victory round as reward already.

"Yes, I agree entirely. It is our turn I believe." Idun intakes a full breath of cool air to focus on the board again before she speaks.

"Black Bishop to take third long diagonal white pawn." The sepia brown-haired Queen says quite expertly with quiet conviction as Marshmallow physically moves her commanded piece to take out one of the King's army.

"Well done, my sweet." Not meaning to be condescending, Agdar congratulates Idun's mild win to capture one of his most unimportant pawns left on the board.

"White knight to take black Bishop. Forgive me, my love, to ruin your ingenious plan. But there are no quarters for pusillanimous timidity in any formidable challenge." Agdar says in his grandiose manner, as his cryokinetics easily function to have his knight piece jump her attacking Black Bishop that was now within the line of sight to claim his White King.

Agdar telekinetically removes the oohing and ahhing snowgie that was dressed up in her black Bishop's tall hat and vespers to land in his capture box.

"I believe you are absolutely correct, min alskare. We must all be equal to life's challenges, and never back down from our dreams and aspirations when we have God-given drive to succeed in them." Idun turns to Elsa to give her interested daughter a heartening wink before the older Queen sings out, quite decisively:

"Black Queen eight spaces vertically to take the White King." Queen Idun masterfully maneuvered her own sacrificed Bishop out of her Queen's path to claim the white pawn that had been standing in the way of her opponent's King. She knew full well that her well-placed for obvious attack Bishop would be Agdar's white knight's target. In doing so, she dislodged the critical piece from his own King's defense.

That left the field wide-open for her Queen to take down his King, as Marshmallow slowly moves their black snowgie Queen eight spaces forward at Idun's musical count.

"One, two, three, four, keep going Marshmallow, dear. Five, six, seven, and eight."

"What?! No!" Caught offguard by this excellently performed classic three step series of moves to overthrow his entire chess kingdom, Agdar protests in deposed shock, hanging his astounded head to his palm.

"—And checkmate, my love." Idun's melodic strains sing out as Marshmallow harmonizes with his happy crew of cheering snowgies in the bleachers behind him, all excited for the home team advantage win.

A smiling Elsa steps in here to consolidate her mother's clever stratagem into reality by declaring:

"Marshmallow and Queen Idun of Arendelle are the winners of this chess match! Congratulations to our fine participants in an amazing competition." Elsa gives both her parents a brilliant, glowing smile.

"Are we not presented with awards, your Majesty? It is customary in this nation to reward laudable victories, I believe." Idun sends the idea up the flagpole as she moves forward towards her husband, all innocent-eyed.

"Of course." Elsa smiles amiably to her mother as she pins on some quickly formed bluish white ice ribbon that she creates in the palm of her artistic hands. One ribbon was for #1 Chess Queen Idun, and the other for her partner, #1 Chess King Marshmallow. The big snow monster gives a great big bellow and a toothy pleased as punch grin as he glows down at his comparatively tiny first prize ribbon.

"And you must make a special award for your Papa too, Elsa. Knowing his indubitable skills, he no doubt won the draughts match earlier. Am I correct, my Checker King?" The Queen saunters up to her pouty-faced husband, running a familiar warm hand along his jaw line invitingly.

"You are always correct, my Beauty." Pushing aside his disappointed defeat to revel in her healing touch, Agdar enjoyed the attentions of his jovial wife and sweet daughter surrounding him as Elsa skillfully crafts a winner's badge for him, too.

It was akin to the eight-pointed silver medal starburst and delicately faceted cross bottony designed medallion that the naval man of his highest rank of Admiral of the fleet and caliber of genuinely heroic officer King deserved and used to wear as part of his kingly uniform's attire.

The new ice medallion Elsa mentally created from memory was shimmering and beautiful in every detail. From its starburst background with cross bottony etching to the blue jewel embellishment, with a ring of ice diamonds around its white-blue-white enamel ring, this metal was identical to her father's original naval Storkors - his Grand Cross. Agdar was always so proud to let his older girl carefully shine and polish the diamond studded medal as a tiny babe, instilling her love of country's patriotism.

The silver and gold medallion that hung from his collar chain for formal occasions and the silver star the King wore for the kingdom of Norway on his left chest symbolized '_Ret og Sandhed' – _Justice and Truth. It was one of Elsa's first memories, way back when she would be lovingly held to her devoted father's secure chest.

"You remembered every last detail of my Storkor, Snow Angel." Agdar proudly breathes as he gazes down to his unadorned jacket to where his daughter was now attaching an ice version of _Den Kongelige Norske Sankt Olavs Orden_ (The Royal Chivalric Order of St. Olaf's) most prestigious badge of honor.

"I was always so proud that my Papa was strong and brave to have been recognized by the Navy that celebrated his courage and valor." With tears in her eyes, Elsa, finally able to express her emotions without losing control of her ice, smiles up at her Papa. She plants a kiss on his cheek as she ice tacks on his new medal to replace the real one that had been long ago claimed and stolen away by that ruthless pirate, who cruelly took so much from their family.

"Now you're making your old Papa blush, Snow Angel." Agdar's bluish pale cheeks were indeed coloring to a more normal shaded peachy pink for his loving child's spoken caring.

Watching the tender scene with gladness, Queen Idun gratefully accepts the cup of hot mocha which Agdar shares a sip of after Gerda comes bustling out with a tray from the connected kitchen. She had brewed the hot steaming liquid she'd made in Oaken's steam percolator for the royal family she would always dotingly care for. They both give the plump sweet-faced woman with the kind eyes a grateful smile for all she's done for them over the years.

Clearing her throat, Idun decides this warm fuzzy moment may just be the opportunity she had been waiting for.

"Speaking of deserved awards… Don't you agree, as this blessed country of Norway's sovereigns, we should recognize all the heroes who gave their selflessly valiant service to preserve and protect our nation during this most harrowing event in our history?" The wise older Queen begins to weave the plans in her web concerning duty and recognition for great deeds she knew would play at Agdar's stoic heartstrings.

"Yes, my Queen, you are so right, yet again. Those brave men—"

"—And brave women." Idun, not entirely too conventional as to what roles Victorian era females must conform to, pipes up, giving her overbearing, yet fair-minded, mate a raised brow that demanded equality.

"Indeed, my Queen. **_All_** those who gave us assistance and aid in our desperate time of need must be recognized. Our fellow citizens who paid the ultimate cost of their lives in that poor decimated fishing community in Lofoten, I will never forget. And those fearless naval officers who had taken, under bold daring leadership, steps to face down that evil pirate and the vicious fearsome sea monster he had become, must be commended for their sacrifice and patriotism. Yes, I will advise Kai to set these procedures into motion, to ensure that the Crown cares for the wounded and distinguishes those who are praiseworthy." Quite pleased with his just ruling as he gets back into the swing of kingdom leadership, Agdar begins to move from the Great Hall of the Ice Palace to the Servant's Wing to converse with his chief advisor and Royal Counselor on these matters of state.

"Although…" Queen Idun skillfully lets her singular, uncertain word dangle in the crisp cold air as she snuggles herself deep into her fur shawl wrap to take another seductive sip of her coffee imbued cocoa.

"You were saying, Idun?" Agdar pauses midstride, having that gnawing feeling that his frisky Queen had something further on her mind tonight that she wished to say outright, but was withholding back in an enigmatic tease.

"I was only considering…for their incredible bravery and sacrifice and constant help to our girls, coming to their rescue time and time again from that villain on their amazing, more than two thousand kilometer journey between Arendelle arid Lofoten, and everywhere dangerous in between…" Queen Idun starts out, assessing her husband's mood as she goes. "The first and highest awards should go to our own dear niece Rapunzel, whom both Anna and Elsa consider as a sister now, and her wonderful husband Prince Eugene who, I hear, made this all possible." Idun spins a sunshiny disposition to one Flynn Rider's debatable role in this entire fiasco/ miracle.

"Yes, of course. Our Prussian relations were both remarkable in the face of the adversity, and will receive civilian dignitary awards for their part in the effort." Agdar nods, always being fond of Idun's niece, sweet Princess Rapunzel, even if he was a little uneasy around that nephew-in-law's criminal tendencies. But he would abide by an approving, smiling Elsa that Prince Eugene could be classed as a hero in this instance.

"And of course, his heroic brother Prince Hans, who gave so willingly of himself, risking life and limb for our nation, saving both of our girls countless times selflessly. The lifelong naval officer had been inducted to our Navy by Elsa to be Kommander of one of our proud vessels, to hasten pursuit of rescuing Anna. And then, promoted later by you as Vise Admiral for performing his services above and beyond the call of duty. Certainly that noble Prince deserves the Navy's highest meritorious award for his chivalry. The _Storkors_, I believe you call your _Grand Cross_. And a knighthood, perhaps?" Queen Idun says quite naturally as she finishes up her long-winded spiel while she leads her dumbfounded husband by the arm through the vestibule into the Ice Palace's drawing room. There, Kristoff had placed a sofa near the fireplace for Anna on frosty North Mountain nights, and Gerda had already set it ablaze for the Queen mother in these chilly conditions.

Here, at **that** young man's particular name, coupled with '_services above and beyond the call of duty'_, recalls a certain suspicious kiss of life he had witnessed in the heat of battle between Prince Hans and his insensible daughter, the wary father could never forget, especially. King Agdar's chary attention immediately shoots a look at Elsa.

Her widened eyes were just as surprised as her Papa's by her bold mother's sudden suggestion concerning Prince Hans Westergaard being sworn in as a knight of their realm.

But in her exhilarated mind, considering all the innumerable heroic things that he had done for her… for her _kingdom_… Elsa could think of no one more deserving than he…

"And, of course, Anna's new husband, Snow Prince Kristoff, should also receive some commendation, as a gallant hero of our nation for his courageous services in defending our children and saving our kingdom from utter destruction. His mother, the Snow Queen, herself, was so proud of his achievements, I can assure you personally, and would love to attend the ceremony, I'm sure." Queen Idun continues on speaking, as if nothing she said was uncomfortable or out of the ordinary, all only in appropriate procedure for their royal response to commend those conquering heroes.

"Wha-a-at? Commendations? Knighthood? The Order of St. Olaf's Grand Cross?" A swallowing in disbelief King Agdar's high-pitched, cracking baritone was quite flummoxed by his wife's incredible to-do-list of ceremonial praiseworthy commendations to be passed out, especially to these two young men who had their eyes on his daughters. Here, the King was just about to put down his foot on the matter, but Idun continued on, like a steamroller over his ice skating rink.

"Oh, yes, min alskare. We wouldn't want the other royal kingdoms of our watching Scandinavian neighbors involved to view of our lack and lateness of recognition as a sign of disrespect, would we? It may cause a stir of our out of touch ignorance." Idun speaks in her most snobbish tone on the subject of showing deference to, and desire for world leaders to respect them, as she knew her uppity Agdar held much credence to.

"No… Yes... We must not besmirch the good name of Arendelle for withholding any appreciation where it is justly due. I **was** planning on holding such a ceremony, Idun, when I had fully recovered enough to return to Arendelle Castle. I know my duties, make no mistake." Affronted to be called on his lack of civic duty, the dedicated to service Admiral of the Sjoforsvaret, King Agdar was versed in protocol up and down.

He had no problem with passing out awards to the Navy men and civilians, in fact he would be honored to honor them. No, his main concern was focused on just a single one of Idun's proposed nominees. His restless fingers twirl his moustache nervously while Agdar petulantly kicks around the undesirable thought of giving his nation's highest honor for chivalry of valor to a Dane.

And one who is interested in his daughter, too. Never mind that rascal thief, whom his niece Rapunzel dragged into the family. And as for Anna's Ice Harvester/mountain man… Agdar's reverence to the Snow Queen's lineage would just have to be enough to squeak her boy by, even if the dirt covered lad was obviously raised as a commoner all his life.

_Must my wonderful girls be involved in a world of inadequate men?_

"But I don't know what we can do to save face, Agdar. Those heroic young brothers, Prince Eugene and Prince Hans had left so soon after their amazing courageous acts in a life or death struggle to defeat that vile Draugen to protect your girls, myself included, without waiting or seeking for any recognition. Before we had the chance to even thank either improperly, they disappeared. So I know not what dishonorable disrepute will befall our kingdom, should the word get out that they were not appropriately commended for their selfless - and _unpaid_ – services to our country in its hour of need." Idun knew how to play her man like a violin, as he responds exactly as she expected he would to her orchestration.

"Then we will send word for that pair of rapscallions to return to Arendelle to receive their commendations, by Jove!" Just coming short of plebian swearing, his deep voice raises in volume to ring through the still Ice Palace enough to frighten the scurrying around snowgies to hide their faces beneath Elsa's queenly purple cape and Idun's long skirt.

Agdar feels the icy hackles on the back of his neck rise at the very idea of bowing and scraping at the feet of those two young rascal whippersnappers. The one was a self-professed criminal rogue; the other a well mannered, oh-so-cultured heartbreaker.

"If you're so convinced of our kingdom's dishonor if we forgo this frivolous outdated process, Idun, then so be it. Elsa! Call Kai here to set up the arrangements and date of the awards ceremony immediately! I will be ready to perform my duty, presently enough!" Barking orders out in anger, the haughty King, who truly did hold his nation's bestowing of awards to those who deserved it in high regard, despite his biting words, must ignore his standpoint of being a jealous father to show the distinguished deportment his sophisticated wife was shaming him to forbear.

"Happy now, my Queen?" The Ice King's reddened, vexed face proved to his wife that he was acting all too normal human and overtly male to suffer too badly for their idealistic quarrel.

"What an extraordinarily grand idea, Agdar! We'll be able to kill two birds with one stone, as they say. Elsa!" It was now the Queen's turn to give an edict to her run ragged, formerly crestfallen daughter.

"When you arrive in Corona you must invite Prince Eugene and Prince Hans, who is still hopefully with his brother, to come to Arendelle for the awards ceremony, to be held two weeks from today. Your Papa will be ready by then, I am certain." The Queen looks to her husband with a sweet, encouraging smile.

"Wait! Elsa is traveling to Corona?! What – when – why?!" Sputtering out the layers of questions, the Ice King's mean temperature drops at the unwelcomed thought of his daughter, who had been working closely with them to help teach her Papa control of his ice, would so abruptly leave her own Ice Palace.

"To pick up my dear sister, Arianna, of course! Didn't I tell you last night, Agdar? It's already all been decided, my love. I don't want my Primmy to find out from anyone else's lips first! My poor older sister and old Friedrich might just keel over with the shock of our return. No, Elsa will travel to Corona to break the happy news to her aunt and her uncle personally." Queen Idun makes the decree to her monarch who holds up and then lets down his overruled hands to fall back to his sides.

"I know you're not quite up to par yet, min alskare, but I can already feel your improvement under Elsa's tutoring in this beautiful Ice Palace's environment. A little more rest, and recuperation time here, I am certain you will be stable enough to return to Arendelle and give our people a national celebration after all these long, hard, lonely years, very soon. And my dear sister will be here with her family and we can all celebrate and attend the knighthood and awards ceremony together, too! I cannot tell you how excited I am by the thought of seeing my dear Primmy again. Being with our citizens again on such a joyous occasion! I cannot express how happy that idea makes me feel. Thank you. Oh, thank you, my darling husband. You're so good to me!" Throwing herself bodily in his arms, Queen Idun, genuinely giddy inside her heart to reunite with her beloved sibling, also knew her man so very well that she mastered the art of how to manipulate her mate into resigned submission and at her total bidding by now.

"You are welcome…? My love…" Feeling a tad swept up by his wife's enthusiasm as she wraps him around her little finger in a whirlwind of new situations, King Agdar's riled up coolness melts under her tender appreciative embraces and the multiples showered kisses that were growing rather passionate by the minute.

Agdar's strong firm voice and matching resolve in rejecting those young men becomes a bit weak and frail under her persuasive gaze.

"But should Elsa travel on her own?" Like a Papa, Agdar starts to worry for his child's safety more than any other subject his overloaded mind was now dealing with.

"Agdar. Our Elsa's a big girl now. She's been a fair and beloved Queen to our people for over two years now. She can do anything she sets her mind to do. I know we can trust her to make the right decisions now. We may have made many mistakes in the past, but I praise God we didn't fail her upbringing in leading her in His ways, Agdar. " Idun gives her spiritual eldest girl a motivating smile that rests back upon her worried husband's brow which she smoothes away with tender fingers.

"'_Teach me good judgment and knowledge, for I have tasted and believed in Thy commandments.' " _Psalm 119:6

To waylay her mate's mortal anxieties, Idun recites aloud some words of wisdom from the greatest instruction Book ever written that she and her husband lastingly taught to both Elsa and Anna as children.

Agdar smiles, letting her healing words seep into his soul.

"Your mother is right, yet again, my Snow Angel. I only fear for your traveling by boat in those treacherous waters of the Skagerrak, for all the trouble it caused us all those years ago, between here and Corona." Agdar airs his justified worry at ocean travel through the very same waters that the poor ill-fated Snow class vessel HmNos_Idun_ went down in.

Even though Agdar was a lifelong seaman, who adored his Navy, the Admiral of the fleet still feared for his little girl. And that fear was starting to overwhelm him in frost crystals of ice building on his breath and brow.

"Please Papa. Don't worry. I'll be fine." With a warm smile, Elsa wipes the icy frost forming on his brow that was still recovering and learning to deal with his frozen powers.

"We already have asked Kai for the sea weather reports in that area and all is clear for the next week or two. Elsa will be safe to travel." Idun comforts her frigid love, rubbing determinedly at her husband's cold arm with the heat of friction and the warmth of her devotion.

"Besides. Who needs a boat, anyway?" The independent young Ice Queen steps her high heels in here to assure her parents by showing off her magical ice sled that she had mastered to appear beneath her feet.

"I have the freedom of the sky." The liberated girl proudly declares as she gracefully flits up the spiraling staircase to the upper section of her spacious Ice Palace's interior.

"Not without a proper escort, you don't, young lady." Calling up to her retreating form, her troubled Papa feels he must put his frosty foot down here on this point.

"Papa. Anna and I have gone anywhere we wished, even outside of Arendelle - **by ourselves** \- for these past two years. We're quite independent young women now. I truly do not require a guardian for this routine short trip to visit our Aunt and Uncle." Elsa attempts to quell his qualms on the matter with calm rational explanation of how she and Anna had become well accustomed –_and enjoyed_\- roaming outside the palace walls.

"Proper protocol dictates you, as an unattached, young female, not to mention the foremost important member of royalty, must be escorted to and from far more insignificant distances." Agdar was a man who lived by adherence to the strict moral code of the day. No tender female child of his was to go traipsing all over the map, by herself, without at least one male sentry or guardsman bodyguard in attendance.

"Agdar, dear, that is an antiquated notion for olden times! Elsa is a modern woman who, as you full well understand her capabilities, can handle herself responsibly in unfamiliar territory. And going to fetch my sister in Prussia is hardly a perilous task, even for a woman." Queen Idun chirps in, sounding quite the liberated contemporary, versus her old-fashioned husband's traditional conventionality.

"Disparage my beliefs as antediluvian, if you may, Idun, but I still do not feel comfortable with allowing my precious child to travel abroad alone, even to visit a relative. The subject is closed on the matter. Elsa, knowing your mother will protest my current frailty, I myself cannot go, so Kai will accompany you—" King Agdar would not yield on this point, as the unstable ice beginning to crawl up his spine at the anxious fear that made him rather severeand domineering.

"Oh, Papa! You and Mama need Minister Kai to manage things here…" Imagining the difficulty of speedy travel exacerbated by her older, stuffy, by-the-book guardian's accompaniment, Elsa ponders over the problem for a few moments of deliberation, when the thirty-five foot tall elephant in the room catches her attention.

Literally.

"If I take Marshmallow with me as my bodyguard, surely, you would consent? I did create him to be my strong defender, after all. And he does abide by my command instantly." The Ice Queen extols her humongous creation's loyalty and strength, gazing down at the enormous snow being with a hopeful smile.

"I…suppose that your _Snow Beast_ will be an adequate guardian to escort you to collect your Aunt Arianna from Corona in my absence. But I'll only acquiesce on one other condition." Agdar makes the decision after assessing more critically the humongous snow monster's potential qualifications and obedience to his Mistress, Elsa.

"Yes, Papa?" Elsa asks tentatively, unsure of his next query.

"You must call him 'Snow Beast'. Do not ever let anyone find out you named your frightfully large and wondrous snow creature 'Marshmallow'." The righteous Ice King shakes his head at the fluffy, sugary name Olaf gave to Elsa's bouncer. It hardly suited a tough cookie like the ice armored up, magnificent Snow Beast and, in his mind, diminished its intimidating purpose.

"Agreed." His solemn-faced daughter gives in to the impractical request, feeling Papa's rigidly frozen tree limb bending in her favor as she and Mama exchange excited glances at this theatre of the battle won. At least enough for the girl to look to the road ahead with not as much trepidation, as hope.

So, with total trust in her Saviour to show her the rest of the way through the maze of her heart forward, Elsa fearlessly leaps from her high perch on the staircase plateau to glide upon the thin air molecules transformed ice that the gifted child transforms at her leisure, to land in Marshma—eh, _Snow Beast's—_big open palm, her eyes full of far-off hope as she looks up to the vaulted skylight of her impressive palace for holy strength.

_"'But those who hope in the Lord__will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles;__they will run and not grow weary,__they will walk and not be faint.'"_Isaiah 40: 31

It was Elsa's turn now to deliver the stirring verse on her heart, spoken through her whispered, wistful lips.

_"_Just take care not to 'soar' on your 'wings' too far away from us, my precious Snow Angel." King Agdar finally relents with a sigh as he, quite demonstrative fatherly, pets his girl's platinum head when Marshmallow lowers his elevated hand to let Elsa draw near.

"And Elsa, if you do, by happenstance, bump into that young Dane again, be sure to inform him that, by not collecting his knighthood and naval service commendations that I am hereby issuing to my…ahem…_Vise Admiral…_I will personally be offended by any enlisted officer's dishonorable conduct of disrespect, and abandonment of his naval post to my kingdom." Her Papa words the veiled threat with a serious look on his handsome cool features as he, at his wife's request, considers his pensive daughter's position.

Though he tried to ignore it these past few days, Elsa's sad eyes were lonely. She had been trying to put on a brave face all while training her Papa in between breaks when she paced around the empty Palace, staring out the windows with forlorn expressions like a caged animal yearning to be free…

Agdar considers this outrageous idea of Idun's to let his big girl locate that Hans Westergaard fool.

His wife had subliminally been whispering the notion that Elsa should go run after this undeserving boy in his ear all last night. But the thoughts were still unpalatable for the protective father to process, as Agdar adds his fatherly spin to the emotional fray…

_So, my Elsa **may** require an attempt to find this Danish Prince again to achieve closure…So, when she finds him, the inexplicable boy could forthrightly explain why he had rejected her, and my Snow Angel could move on with her life._

_And when she's gotten him out of her system, then it will be just us again as a family, no further young men need apply. She'll forget all about this untrustworthy heartbreaker of a Dane…_

* * *

_Nökken_ -Scandinavian mythological water creature that is said to devour human beings who enter the waters

_Haeran_ – Danish Royal Army

_Min alskare_ – my love in Swedish

* * *

_Den Kongelige Norske Sankt Olavs Orden_ – Norwegian for The Royal Chivalric Order of St. Olaf is the most prestigious award for Norwegian Navy officers for meritorious contributions, in 5 descending orders of distinction.

_Storkors_ – The Royal Chivalric Order of St. Olaf's Grand Cross highest award, given by royalty to Naval recipients who are exceptionally worthy for heroic deeds or ingenious invention, is an 8-pointed silver star with faceted rays, bearing the obverse of the badge of the Order. In very exceptional circumstances the Order may awarded 'with diamonds', in which case a ring of diamonds replaces the white-blue-white enamel ring surrounding the central disc on the front of the badge. A designated collar is also awarded as a separate distinction of the Grand Cross to those of special merit and bravery. The collar of the Order is in gold, with five enamelled and crowned coat-of-arms of Norway, and 10 gold crossbottony featured in the coat of arms of the Church of Norway. In heraldry, a cross bottony is a symbol having each arm terminating in three rounded lobes, forming a sort of trefoil. From the religious point of view, the cross bottony can be used as a symbol of the Christian Trinity.

_"Ret og Sandhed' – _Norwegian motto of the Royal Chivalric Order of St. Olaf meaning_'_Justice and Truth'

* * *

Hello, Frozen friends!

How did you like that chapter? Some quality family time for Elsa and her parents at long last! Queen Idun is quite masterful at wrapping her King around her little finger, isn't she? Elsa should take lesson, because she may be needing a few pointers in haughty/ self-righteous man management of her own sooner or later...

I hear from several of my Guest-samas their anxieties for our Helsa. Worry not friends! Elsa (&amp; Marshmallow) are travelling southwards; and Hans (&amp; Eugene) are on their way northwards on this section of Scandinavian map... So perhaps their destined-for-one-another paths may cross again somewhere in between, very soon...

Southern Isles, here we come...

Stay tuned for some romantic fireworks and ice flurries colliding in the near future!

God Bless!

HarukaKou


	70. Chapter 69 - En Garde

_We do not own 'Frozen' or any of its characters._

"**Frozen Again: 'But the Greatest of These is Love"**

**Act V**

**Chapter 69**

**"En Garde"**

**_Somewhere between _****_Corona_****_'s _****_Dancing_** **_Forest_****_ and the Southern Isles of _****_Odense_****_, _****_Denmark_****_…_**

After Flynn, and Job, had silently flown on nothing but trust of his gut instinct behind the youngest member of their 'Three Musketeers' trio for several aerial miles in the dark of night fall, Eugene pipes up when Hans leads the party down to land.

"I don't mean to pry, Kid. But do those of us here in the peanut gallery get any vital clues as to the five W's yet?" Never one to keep his own counsel for long, Eugene whispers loudly over the clatter of the three men and their three horses traversing through the brush of some foreign land beyond the sea.

"_Who_ is it were looking for? _What_ are they after? _Where_ did they go? _When_ will we catch up? And _why_ the hell am I whispering?" Flynn Rider's loudly whispering voice poses the pointed questions to his younger brother. Hans, once alighted from his white mare, Snaedis, had been silently making his way through the wooded coppice they had landed in as if he owned the place.

"Shh, Storbror." Hans' gentle, lyrical voice chides his older sibling for causing a disturbance to the otherwise silent thicket where the trio had landed. This sheltered, tree covered area was just behind the wharf of a nearby ship's dock where they had been staking out some very suspicious characters for the last several kilometers of travel upstream.

"Hey, don't you shush me! I'm the older brother here, Handsome! Oof! Watch out, fuzzball!"

Careless and a bit aggravated, Eugene had accidentally stepped on the tail of a rummaging-through-a-pile-of-leaves Eurasian red squirrel. The cute scatter-hoarder with a mouthful of nuts had subsequently spirited up a close by tree. In its hurry, the clumsy squirrel had knocked down a thankfully empty bird's nest right onto Eugene's unlucky head. Soon, noisy birds were encircling around his crow's nest, all squawking in disdain at their habitat's upset and the criminal behind it.

"Fine, fine. Shh!" Rolling his eyes as he plucks sticks and dried weeds among bird feathers from his coiffed sepia brown hairdo, Flynn says in frustration at this totally avoidable situation by chastening the angry twittering birds flying around his dizzy head. "For some reason, animals just don't like me." The roguish thief sighs when that tender-tailed furry red squirrel vindictively tosses a cracked open nutshell to bounce hard off Flynn Rider's unsuspecting head.

"Oww." The thief rubs his noggin with a sour-puss grimace up at the perniciously chortling tree-bound rodentia and its fiendishly feathered friends.

Job stifles a chuckle. But his big smile full of bright white teeth against the dark of night disturbs Eugene's delicate insomniatic sensibilities.

"You think I'm a joke, Pal? Well, I don't find this situation very funn—Hey!" Especially combative with a grumbling, unfed tummy and lack of sufficient sleep, Eugene's flippant tongue is halted when Hans' slender hand slaps over his big brother's loud mouth to instantly quiet him. Eugene's vexed eyes widen to peer over the hedge of tall bushes as he follows Hans' gaze.

There he glimpses to where Big Nose's awkward body form was being shoved and prodded by several large men in dark hooded capes onto a sea vessel the villains were transferring him into.

"Could it be you?" Speaking more to himself in awed retrospect than anyone in hearing range, Hans falls to his knees in the darkness to crawl between the brush to get a better vantage point. He squints through the dusky night to catch sight of a curious figure moving surreptitiously in the falling night shadows, orchestrating this all from the mouth of the ship he was standing in. When the head man departs back into the ship's ebony interior, Hans mechanically rises to his feet as the steam clipper roars its engines to life.

"Right! I guess that's our cue. Good job getting us here, Kid! Let's get Big Nose out of there before that ship takes off! Job, you take the two big bruisers on the left, and I'll take down the ugly cretins on the right. Sideburns, we'll block the gangplank and stall them until you alert the Port Master Authority over there in that boathouse to arrest the kidnappers. With the element of surprise on our side, this should be a piece of cake." Eugene's quick, imaginative mind already formulates a winning game plan for their success.

"Piece of cake. Unless dose guys be armed. Which dey be, T'ief." With his deep bass Job makes the deliberate statement in his unruffled, no-nonsense terms. He points a dark finger at the obvious long barrel rifles bulging at each caped captor's side after Eugene finishes communicating his daring rescue of the mislaid pub thug.

"Do you have to go and rain on my parade, Big Guy? Okay, they're loaded to the teeth. New plan required. Suggestions, Vice Admiral? Any ingenious tactics to get us in-like-Flynn this time, Sideburns? Get it? 'In-like-' oh, neverrmind." At his pun's ill reception, Eugene looks down and is flabbergasted yet again by his kid brother. Or lack thereof.

For Hans appeared to have gone MIA.

"Oh, hell! You have got to be kidding me! Weren't _you_ the one trying to teach _me_ about the merciful bounty of teamwork, Lillebror?!" Flynn whines in a discordant whisper with a dropped jaw to watch Hans' missing slender form slink like a sly fox through the night shadows along the ledge at the dock, until the Danish Prince audaciously slips in between the quartet of guards and the lowered hatch door.

Giving a startled Big Nose a conspiring nod from where he was hanging like a bat beneath the gangplank, the agile, daring Dane silently flips his long athletic legs up top. Hans disappears into the docked ship's open hatch right behind the four large, armed guards corralling the pub thug into the waiting sailing vessel into slips into the shadows, without a single one of them the wiser.

And without missing a beat, its ominous hatch door closes behind them all tightly before those watching had a chance to say 'boo!'

"Come on, Job! We're in for it now! That crazy kid's gonna need some back up from his compadres in this reckless new escapade of his! Whether or not he wants us to tag along. All for one?" Eugene repeats the bolstering literary line that Hans had used on them before as he sticks out his peachy tan hand to Job's dark brown one.

"…And one for all." Finishing the phrase as both the loner men get into the team spirit for their little 'brother', Job exchanges a familiar handshake and a nod with Eugene as the stubbly Prussian quickly finishes untying the trio of horses from the tree line. Then the two men, in one unspoken accord, swiftly give their horses a running start backwards to fly straight up, unseen. High into the stratosphere they ride on the Snow Queen's flying mares, Flurru and Nysnaer, with Snaedis obediently following close behind, to save their gung-ho D'Artagnan from getting himself killed.

* * *

**_The Southern Isles, after sunset…_**

"KRISTOFF BJORGMAN!" Prince Anna of Arendelle had just about her fill of being pushed and pulled and held back from where she had been nearly smothered atop Sven by her loving hubby.

"Ergh! WHY did we run away?!" As red in the face as a blushing, stuffed lobster, angry Anna tumbles off her reindeer's back the moment Sven landed in the safety of the tall tree thicket of the Danish forest on the outskirts of the Southern Isle of Funen.

"Anna. Those weird guys were shooting arrows at us!" Kristoff tries to sanely justify his order of retreat to his snippy back sled-bench driver wife as she shakes her fists at him, fully on her guard in the dusky falling darkness.

"So?! We came to find if Hans is in there! Not tuck tail and run like a bunch of scared rabbits!" Gutsy Anna cries out in frustration, throwing her hands about her frazzled head as she flicks her double braids huffily out of her much animated, livid face.

"Come on! What did you want me to do?! We were under attack by those jerky brothers of Hans! I wasn't about to let you and Rapunzel be in harm's way." As they argue like an old married couple, levelheaded Kristoff was busy rubbing down Sven and then Svala after the reindeers' harrowing escape at arrow and rifle point. "Just calm down, Anna." His mellow voice adds on to settle down the girl hovering over him with her hands on her incensed hips.

"Okay. Okay, I'm calm. I'm calm." The feisty Princess physically must make an effort to take a deep breath and compose her high-strung ruffled senses, but Kristoff's smooth voice helped her down most of the way.

That, and punching the wad of blankets and pillows tightly wrapped on the back of Sven's cargo pack that they had traded with the sisters at the charity school earlier.

"You think those two were some of Hans' twelve brothers? I always imagined they would all be – _you know _– as gorgeous as Hans. Wow, what a major letdown." Changing mode from angry to curious in a whistle of the wind, Anna makes a puckered lipped face at the vision memory of those undesirable, ugly pair of nasty twin young men as compared to the winsome, fair of face Hans Westergaard.

"Yeah, they must've been his brothers, with all that threatening talk of their father, the King, getting even with us. Not to mention all those bad vibes going around that would play into Hans' story of the Southern Isles kingdom not being the most hospitable of places to live in." The blond mountain man reasons with all the verbal evidence they had just witnessed from the childish pair of grown men. Way more mature than those guys a decade older than he, Kristoff goes about pouring water for Svala in a dish that Olaf was helpfully holding up for the female doe to reach as the responsible man brushes the reindeer down simultaneously.

"But what a kingdom! They had a real live moat and a drawbridge, like in storybooks! So cool! Did you see that pretty design of the gardens on the front lawn? And…and, all those fancy bushes cut into shapes of birdies and swirly ice cream cone thingys? Hans' family must be very artistic. I would _love_ to meet them all and make new friends, and go on a tour of the whole castle estate together. _Sigh_ Wouldn't that be nice_?_" The silly, sighing snowman spazzes out in dreamy wonderment of the decoratively scenic wonderland that was Hans' birthplace, the kingdom of Egeskov.

"Artistic, eh? More like sadistic." Smirking to himself, Kristoff murmurs under his breath at the spoiled rich folk who, for all their money and wealth and power, couldn't buy some good manners. "Watch what you're doing, Olaf." Kristoff admonishes the impressed snowperson for his absurdities as Olaf absentmindedly spills some of their precious canteen water supply on the ground in his hazy, starry-eyed daydream. Fortunately, Pascal was there with his steady, multicolored clawed hands to straighten the lopsided bowl as not to spill the entire batch.

"So, how are we going to get into that fortress castle now, to even see if Hans is there? They know what we look like and won't be all that eager to let us even get close again! Ohhh!" An overdramatic palm over her whining eyes, Anna was pulling her hair out by now. She rather ungracefully plops to sprawl across the thicket glen's grass, tugging her braids every which way in her flustered state of confusion.

Kristoff merely smirks at Anna's adorable flare for the dramatics as he gently lifts forgotten Rapunzel down to the ground from her seat upon Svala for the al fresco picnic supper he employed eager Olaf and helpful Pascal to aid him in setting out for their little party.

"Maybe…" Cousin Rapunzel daintily kneels on the blanket Olaf had just methodically spread out with her neon green chameleon's assistance. The snowman had only lost his arms once or twice in a tug-of-war with the surprisingly strong lizard who knew all about long-tail leverage.

Not paying much attention to her dangled word, the pair of hungry, humming sidekicks busily help Kristoff in passing out the packed lunch that the nuns at the Fattigskole school had provided for their trip.

The Prussian Princess bites her lip as she gazes down at Anna's forlorn form writhing on the ground beside her.

"… Maybe I know how to get in." The words, all come out at once in a rush as the brown haired young maiden speaks quietly. Rapunzel steels herself to explain her ideas on how to set her intrepid notion into motion.

Nonchalant, Pascal offers his girl a cucumber sandwich half with a hopeful look in his big buggy eyes, but the bilious young mother-to-be passes yet again his attempt to get her to eat properly.

"You do!?" On the other hand, energetic, always ravenous Anna never turned down a meal as she energetically bobbed up from her prone, laid out position on the thicket ground at dizzying speed to grab hold of the rejected cucumber sandwich that Pascal politely was now holding up to Kristoff instead.

**_MUNCH! MUNCH! MUNCH!_**

The feisty Princess loudly crunches the crisp vegetable. Anna sinks her pearly white teeth into both the yummy sandwich and whatever intriguing proposal Rapunzel had for her excitable appetite.

"Ye-es…" The more indecisive Rapunzel answers timidly, fighting back her ill feeling of evening sickness to be a useful member of the search and rescue mission.

Anna immediately sits up and leans her elbows on her knees, propping up her cute chin. Her shining eyes blink up expectantly like a child waiting for a piece of candy, directly in front of her now self-conscious cousin.

"We'll have to go back to the convent so I can ask Mother Superior to beg audience of the King for me. As the visiting Royal Princess of Corona, they can't deny me safe and equitable entrance and pleasant treatment to a fellow member of royal society, less risk bad relations with my country.

"Once there, I can inquire diplomatically about Prince Hans and discover what they know of his whereabouts as discreetly as I can." The more tactful Princess explains proper protocol for visiting royalty to Anna, Kristoff and Olaf. "I believe those dreadful brothers on the roof didn't see my face, so no one will suspect and it should go just swimmingly." All three of her Norwegian friends stare back at her optimism with a mixture of excited, dubious, and enlightened looks on their faces.

"You're brilliant, 'Punzy! I love you!" Anna goes from dejected to elated in .05 seconds flat as she leans over to hug her so fast, she literally bowls over Rapunzel with a great big, tight glomp. Anna trips on a crumpled wrinkle in the blanket until she falls all over the pregnant young woman and knocks them both down flat to the ground.

"Anna! Sheesh! Don't suffocate your cousin!" Kristoff was laughing at his energized wife's haphazard antics that left her poor coughing cousin gasping for the air clumsy Anna just knocked out of her.

"Oops. Sorry." Anna says sheepishly as her strong Ice Harvester lifts the orangey caramel girl's lithe little body up from the picnic blanket where she had tripped on top of her poor, pregnant cousin.

"You okay, Rapunzel?" Knowing his Anna was sturdy as a thick stemmed summer sunflower where she was dangling woozily loose in his arms, Kristoff inquires of the more delicate pastel flower. Rapunzel nods as Olaf and Sven were already propping the Corona Princess up, no worse for wear.

As Kristoff goes to make sure - Eugene's absence left the blond mountainman answerable for his pregnant wife's care - a speechless Rapunzel waves him off with a weak smile. The already sick in the stomach girl would rather just lay there for a few moments more, collecting her thoughts.

After all their time together, Kristoff knew exactly that feeling of utter breathlessness that his overwhelmingly active, boisterous gal often left him in with her reckless behavior all too well.

"We'll go meet with the Sisters, as you suggest, in the morning, Rapunzel. You get some sleep now, so you'll be ready to face the day tomorrow." Kristoff says in his placid, gentle voice with a disarming smile at the young woman. He kindly leads Rapunzel with Olaf to the covered wagon he had rented in Odense and had laid out a sleeping bag in the back of the vehicle for her to stretch out.

With Sven and Svala on either side of the wooded clearing by the fire he started to scare off any wandering predators, and Pascal as an eagle-eyed look out, Kristoff was not worried while his responsible eyes scan the tranquil area perimeter.

Like second nature, the Snow Prince easily hefts a dazed Anna around to carry her to where he had already set up a sleeping bag on a soft bed of grass for them to share for the restful night.

"This is cozy, after a rough day." Princess Anna coos as she winds down from her uptight edginess to stretch out on the soft grassy knoll. She then nestles deep into Kristoff's comfortable arms, after he removed his shirt, to settle down in the sleeping bag beside her.

Kristoff maneuvers the snuggling girl around his body that she fit in so well to, until Anna was pressed close against his warm embrace. The loving girl instantly starts nuzzling against his bare chest under the romantic moonlight that was just beginning to peek through the dusk of early evening.

"We're good together, aren't we, Kristly?' Lulled to a slumbering calm at last, Anna murmurs, realizing and reveling in the fact that even after all the tense argumentative moments just minutes ago, both parties here loved one another so much they'd forgiven and forgotten any harsh words already.

The second-guessing quarrel was forgotten. But the man, lying closed-eyed in the tranquility of nature with his little woman wrapped securely in his arms, might still recall some other sentiments dredged up in the heated conversation…

"So… you still think Hans is '_gorgeous_ ', eh?" Kristoff says out of nowhere in the quiet still of the evening, where only the birds and owls and insects chirping in unison were keeping time with the warm breezes of the wind peacefully blowing over them.

"Huh?" Anna was already half asleep under the cool calm of serene nature, mesmerized by the tender entrancing heartbeat she had been listening to belonging one of its most magnificent favored sons.

Sensing her quiet guy's desire to converse, and his amusing unease on the subject, Anna opens her blue-green eyes to gaze up at her hunky hubby.

"Well, you've got to admit, in all honesty, that Hans is a major improvement to those two homely brothers of his, Kristly." A smile playing on her mischievous lips, Anna says to Kristoff with bright laughing eyes and a truthful guileless smile up at him.

"Hmph." Kristoff simply shrugs, feigning off his hurt feelings. It was not his style to criticize another man's looks—no matter how hideous they may have been—but he's hit a little too close to home for Anna to be complementing her former fiancé so excessively unambiguous and candid, especially in the secure intimacy of _his_ arms.

"But I know a guy who's a lot better looking than even Prince Hans Westergaard." Anna says, tilting her head a bit coquettishly with fluttering eyelids at his newfound jealous cuteness.

"Oh, yeah? Anyone I know?" The young virile man smirks down at his little wife with the returned flirt as he possessively squeezes her buoyant, practically weightless body in his musclebound arms deeper into this chest's clinch hold.

"Yep. I'll introduce you to him, tonight. And he's way beyond simply gorgeous. He's beautiful. Let me show you the ways..." Needing this release, as well as his constant loving strength to get her through her anxieties, Anna flirtatiously teases her man. She pets away his green-eyed envy with enthusiastic fingertips that trace Kristoff's every abundant muscular line as she melts into the chocolate of his brown eyes.

The feisty Princess runs her fingers through every strand of his feathered mane of golden hair as she caresses his powerful pecs with her nuzzling nose that she was leaning her cheek against his rugged and rippling bare chest adoringly.

And in answer to her previous request, Kristoff delivers to Anna a massively well-received kiss. The Wind Whisperer then goes the distance to intone some breathtaking music in his young lover's ear. His unruly golden locks cascade across his ruggedly good-looking face as their glimmering eyes, for one another alone, meet in the falling dusk of night to share a sweet smile.

That special attention to detail made Kristoff Bjorgman even more _gorgeous _to Anna Bernadotte than anyone she had ever seen before, or ever would see again.

And all thoughts of other men, handsome or otherwise, were long forgotten in the beauty of his pure velvety embrace…

* * *

**_On a moonless night on _****_Kiel_** **_Bay_****_…_**

Moving like a panther through the quickly falling dusk, Hans Westergaard carefully skulks through the steam clipper ship's pitch dark corridors. He was well-versed enough with most seabound vessels to be familiar with the English designed clipper's layout schematics.

But Hans was especially well acquainted with this particular swift-moving ocean vehicle.

For he had seen it before.

And though his main interest was to search for clues as to where Eugene's friend Big Nose was currently being held hostage on board, the clever Danish Prince's curiosity was piqued by the little eccentricities of this life that God set as punishment, or perhaps trials of contrition, before His sinners.

_'Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when His glory is revealed._' 1 Peter 4:12-13

After approximately an hour spent staking out the ship and avoiding the four or five muscled blackguards roaming the ship as they fulfilled their onboard duties in stoic silence, intelligent Hans studiously considers all of the evidential clues he had gleaned thus far. First, from Big Nose's new bride Hilde, and then through what information he had gathered upon boarding this disembarked ship.

A group of mysterious men dressed in black capes with symbols of a gold crown and anchor wrapped with a snake had taken Big Nose. They had been interested in Hilde's wedding ring, but were not common robber thieves enough to purloin it for its gold monetary value. Their leader, who had words with Big Nose that his young wife could not overhear, possessed a single gloved left hand with some kind of strange deformed nub at its ulnar side.

And this extreme steam clipper ship, with its concave hollow water line and tine out afterbody that consisted of a bow lengthened for speed, was a square rigged vessel so familiar to Hans, it was the icing on the cake.

Especially after the Southern Isles Prince had read the name of this swift steam clipper on his upper hull, confirming his suspicions.

The**_ 'Sjette Doight' _**_('Sixth Finger') _was a mixture of Danish and French languages…

_Could it be you?_

Shaking his confused head with all the extrapolated data he had collected affronting his mind that only wished to reject the conclusions screaming at him, sly-like-a-fox Prince Hans had covertly entered yet another vacant compartment cabin. The cabin veiled in darkness beneath the forecastle deck was the final one in his investigative search for the kidnapped newlywed and the reason why he had been abducted.

But not ten seconds after he had clandestinely snuck into this rear quarterdeck room between bulkheads and started rifling through its shelving drawers for clues, the hairs on the back of his neck suddenly hackle with a cold, clammy feeling.

As quietly surreptitious as possible, Hans removes an object and abruptly closes the drawer in one fluid motion. He then jerks his startled head around when he hears a ruckus down the connective corridor.

And it was drawing closer.

"I swear on my sainted Mother's grave that I don't have it, Mister! And that goes for Aged P, too! Tell your boss that we've never even seen the thing you're talking about! It's nothing to do with us, fellas! You have to let me go! I'm innocent, I tell ya! Innocent!" Big Nose's unmistakable Brooklyn-like accent suddenly rings across the hall up from the Sjette Doight's midsection hold that his captors were dragging him up from for a meeting with their master.

_This is undoubtedly your handiwork, Master. Well in keeping with your callousness to fellow man and malice to the world at large. But I have only one question: why this poor man, who would be insignificant in your cruel eyes? What has he done to deserve your wrath?_

The chaos brings the reflective Hans' razor-sharp mind back to the immediate reality as he quickly glances around this spartanly furnished captain's cabin that seemed to be their destination, as the footsteps move in closer.

_I need to conceal myself!_

His mind races as his agile body desperately scrambles around the pitch dark captain's compartment for some semblance of coverage to disguise himself from being detected when they arrived. Although, the underlying evidence of who this crime's head perpetrator was exactly was about to turn Hans' growing suspicion into cold reality in a flashback of spiteful unforgiving fate's design…

**_SHKKK…_**

_There's someone else in this room, isn't there?_

But before a frozen-in-place, covert Hans had the opportunity to process the caught-in-the-act intuition spurred on by the recognizable sound of a sword slowly being unsheathed, a terrible raspy voice whispers venom in his shocked ear from somewhere close behind…

"You were the last one I expected to see here, you worthless, cursed wretch of a devil boy. What is that they say? Vengeance is a dish best served…**_COLD_**!" In the dim dusky light reflected in the cabin porthole's glassy mirror he was facing, a horrified Hans was sure he glimpsed a shadowy spectre from his past momentarily before –

**_C-CLUNKK!_**

And the entire world phases out of time as strikingly gorgeous Prince Hans is struck by a back blow to his handsome red head by the large brass bell guard hilt of an epée sword.

Hans sinks to his knees as this furtive sneak assault from behind is punctuated by a rhythmic clapping, intermingled with a spate of inhuman cackles…

* * *

**_The Ladegården Stables. _****_Egeskov_** **_Castle_****_, 1839…_**

**_…Twelve summers ago…_**

The sound of harsh laughter was a disturbing greeting to a young lad of thirteen who had tentatively walked into the Ladegården stable house's vast area that had been converted to a spacious gymnasium.

Even before his firstborn son Kaleb had been born, King Herbert of the Southern Isles had already started building this sprawling estate"s ornamental equestrian building for the many sons of the royal kingdom of Denmark to enjoy and train.

It was this King's world-dominating determination to have many, many sons to expand his kingdom and eventually spread the proud name of the Westergaard Danes across Europe in the globe beyond.

Under their strict father's ironfisted thumb, training a small army of boys to be draconian conquerors at an early age was his intention entirely. The desire to strive to be the best and finest and most belligerent to make them overpower others had been driven into each one of the boys' minds since their birth.

From haughty and arrogant crown Prince Kaleb, to calculating intellectual Lars. Then callous, diffident Anders; as well as vain, uncongenial Ivers. Next, aloof, money-minded Mattias; to cold-blooded casanova Didrik. Down the line there's outspoken hothead Peiter; onerous, untrustworthy Tøger; reticent, manipulative Berte; menacing brute Franz; and finally the mischievous, nasty twins Rune and Ruddi.

Poor Queen Louise's nonstop string of expected pregnancies had become a yearly event for her ambitious King with the express object of bearing him proud sons. The gentle spirited woman had graced her controlling, autocratic husband with a virtual plethora of the male heirs he demanded.

An even dozen of fine, strong, strapping boys were born to vitalize the kingdom of Denmark as an unstoppable influx of ascendancy to the crown.

Unstoppable, that is, before the thirteenth last unlucky little lad was one too many for the repressed, browbeaten Scotswoman to survive.

The older nine young men all had a strong resemblance to their fine-looking father. In stature, facial features, height and strong build, the Danish King's genes were obviously dominant with his sepia brown hair, broad, straight shoulders on a robust build and chisel-cut, attractive male features.

And then there was Hans.

Since the day he was born, Prince Hans Westergaard had been small, thin of frame, and woefully effeminate. He didn't fit in at all with the studly vigorous, rawly robust and manly masculine mold of his father and his other twelve brothers conformed squarely into.

This smallest child of the house of Egeskov, some eight years younger than the closest aged twin terrors, was reminded since his birth that he killed their dear mother with the unforgivable crime of being born.

"Why do we have to bother training with the Squirrel, Master Rügen? He's just a skinny little twit after being mollycoddled by those saintly nuns and ladies of the Fattigskole all those years." The spoiled rotten ninth in line, twenty-three-year-old Prince named Berte had complained when Hans first stepped into their _private_ gymnasium, looking lost and self-conscious for being the only one wearing a prim vest jacket and frilly tie on the athlete's court.

"Why is he even back here?" Tall, beefy, third in line Anders, age twenty-nine, had commented under his snide breath as he had just swatted a tennis ball viciously at his eighth in line younger brother Tøger, knocking the twenty-four-year-old cursing boy down with an illegal maneuver.

"Just look at him. He still looks as fragile as a pansy flower." Twenty-six going on sixteen, sixth in line Didrik imagined he was a ladies man, and flattered himself with his flaunted sculpted abs he was showing off in his constant hobby of weightlifting.

Despite thirteen-year-old Hans having a sudden growth spurt in this last year, his twelve older brothers, who had gathered for their father's important sixtieth birthday celebration, were all taller—especially the gauche twins—who may not have been blessed with the comely countenance and athletic physique of their progenitor, but they certainly had his streak of cruelty.

"I'd rather not look at the strange awkward child. Just the sight of his awful red hair makes me feel rather ill." Forth in line, snobbish at the ripe old age of twenty-eight Ivers looks down his venerated Roman nose at this unwanted younger brother with vain pride.

"I wouldn't say that red hair is '_awful'_ in front of Father, if I were you, Ivers. Remember, Mother had red hair just as vibrant." By no means a sentimentalist, and never intending to stand up for his kid brother, second-in-line, thirty-two-year-old logical Lars was one of the few brothers who actually remembered what their mother had been like before the years of bearing countless sons had worn her down. Merely overlooking the various sports happening around gymnasium with disinterest, the intellectual brother pushed up his glasses with the observation.

That's when the eldest son of this royal house, thirty-three-year-old Crown Prince Kaleb chimed in. "That's right. There was a time when he loved Mother's red hair. So I would keep my mouth shut, Ivers, on that little witticism, or Father might cut you out of his will." No love lost for Hans, the eldest child at the other end of spectrum, still felt a sense of duty to his long dead mother.

"Deservedly so." Fifth in line, twenty-seven-year-old Mattias' greedy eyes lit up with rigsdalar signs as the opportunity for one less competitor in this inheritance game they played for the King's monetary affections reared its envious head.

"Then we get more for the rest of us if he's edged out, right?!" The crude loudmouth of the bunch, twenty-five years of age Peiter, as seventh in line of succession, was mainly relying on royal status and his father's generous allowance where he was in the middle of the totem pole, and was unashamed to announce their petty and clawing, healthy _brotherly_ rivalry.

"Yep! Uh, I think…" The not so brainy, but certainly the biggest and brawniest of the bunch, twenty-two-year-old, tenth in line Franz concurred with his older brothers' devious plot, just as the hulky lummox always did.

"Let's edge Ivers _and_ the Squirrel out of our rightful inheritance!" Hidden behind large-bodied, athletic Franz, twenty-one-year-old red pock-faced Rune called out loud and purposefully enough for Hans to unmistakably hear their harsh and cruel proclamation.

"You said it, Rune! Especially that girly Squirrelly! Let's pretend he's invisible from now on, and maybe he'll go away." His shockingly yellow haired, too awkwardly lanky twin added with vigor to his twin's wicked scheming views from where the pair had been playing ping-pong together.

Poor Hans, standing quite alone and feeling out of place and unwelcome in his fencing breeches, felt so very left out as all twelve of his other brothers talked over, around and about him as if he didn't have the right to even exist here.

He shivered inwardly as they all gave him the evil eye when each had ignored his every attempt to join in with any of their friendly games. As a whole, they were spiteful, diffident or just downright plain mean to this littlest brother they had not seen for over ten years, whom they all disdained in varying degrees for stealing their mother and disrupting by never fitting into, their clawing up the ladder world.

And it was all about to hit the fans.

**_CLAP! CLAP! CLAP!_**

The cutting, staccato sound that called every one of the young men to attention at their Master's insistent call distinctly echoed throughout the high Ladegården roof gymnasium.

"As you all well know, today is your father, the King's, 60th birthday. To commemorate this most important occasion, I have arranged for a competition in our favorite field of fencing for you boys to display your augmented talents before your patriarch." Said in his clipped precise way of speaking, he flipped back the black cape with the crowned golden anchor wrapped in a serpentine cord, symbol of the Danish naval forces Søværnet embroidered upon it.

Their fencing master Count Humperdinck Rügen took several steps towards the group of twelve Royal Princes standing before him, with only straggler Hans excluded from his projected gaze.

"To celebrate the day, I have decided that you three boys, whom I have painstakingly trained over the years with my expertise in the fine French art of fencing technique and skill, have become masters enough in your own rights to even train amateurs yourselves. So, in duel competition today, you will display your skills before your father in actual combat with young Prince Hans."

Hans had frozen stock still, as every one of the brothers turned to look at him and the fear stricken look that crossed his panicked face in shock of the sudden startling announcement.

"Your father had asked, upon the child's arrival last week from the charity school he had been lodged in, that I look into his athletic physical ability and progress. So as not to disgrace this proud royal house before our Naval brethren when he is sent to the Royal Søværnets Officersskole Academy this upcoming semester. And so, consequently, with this contest, we will all see how the good sisters of the convent had trained our slender little lad in the fine art of the epée." The full bearded man with the dark brown wavy hair strokes at his beard's gray streaks with an amused, pleased-with-himself smile down at a terrified Hans.

The princes of the Southern Isles had had the same fencing instructor/sports trainer/ royal steward managing their kingdom's affairs for as long as any of them could remember. The middle-aged retainer sycophant/vassel toady had been King Herbert's faithful man of every season who had all the important credentials of a royal count from a neighboring kingdom where he had some distant relation ties the Danish King.

But for all his supercilious airs and well-trained graces, Count Rügen of Wurttenberg lacked even a touch of human kindness or polite civility. The dark-eyed, disdainful sadist actually seemed to enjoy watching other people's misery, ideating his own methods of mental torture to control this law of misbehaving, wicked young men to his cruel, yet manipulative subjugation. And that is how he had played the boys, one against the other, for decades, shaping them into the harsh, unsympathetic men they were today.

Just like their father had wanted.

"Now, be a good example of my training and show your father proud of your technique and proficiency, my young soldiers." Rügen stated for all to hear when stately King Herbert himself entered the boy's gymnasium of his Ladegården stables to watch this arranged 'friendly' duel competition between his children in the honored sport of Royal tradition and seats himself upon a waiting royal throne.

"Be sure to give the wretch a proper thrashing before your father's audience. And prove my excellence in training my boys how to be men, versus an inadequate group of rejected royal women, disguised as Sisters of the church who raised that slight and malnourished devil boy. Do not fail me, Franz, Berte, Tøger. You are my finest students. I rely on you to demonstrate this worthless creature for who he is." Wishing to debase poor Hans, Rugen whispered in their ears so the King could not hear his pitiless remarks, the pedantic pedagogue even slid his own special manchette six-fingered hand guard glove, created of interwoven metal threads in the brocade cloth especially for the polydactyl deformed count.

Nonetheless, the six fingered glove fit onto the darkest black-brown short cropped haired Prince Franz's left hand to provide proper protection and symbolized Rügen's endorsement for his prized student, who was first to represent Count Rügen's dignity as a praiseworthy fencing master.

Prince Franz was the tallest and strongest and most broad shouldered of all the brothers Westergaard. He, more than any of his brothers, had proven, time and time again, to be the most complete athlete of the group, which was quite a feat to be said.

Practically all the male clan of Westergaard, as holding with their forceful patriarch's bold footsteps, had their passions in one form of sport or another. And Master Rügen was named by Denmark's King as overseer to nurture all of his son's violent tendencies soon after their birth.

Between hunting wild game here in Egeskov, or traveling to foreign lands for big-game hunting in Asia and Africa, in archery and firearms, swimming, fencing, wrestling, horse racing and every other boyish activity known to man, the Princes of Denmark were renowned throughout Europe for their boldness.

And the Ladegården stables of Egeskov were well known as a nonstop athletic meet where the young men assiduously trained.

With their distant relation jack-of-all-trades as coach, teacher and mentor under their aloof father's detached instruction, these maturing Danes had been trained to live up to the name of the conquerors their ancestors demanded.

"Do you understand the rules, competitors?" Rügen states more than asks, the brutal man secretly glad that the no-holds-barred _epée_ regulations of fencing had been chosen for this cocky, so prim and proper little Prince who didn't belong here at all.

And then maybe he would quickly learn the hard lessons of life outside of his pampered and cosseted convent mission school life.

"Yes, Master Rügen." Franz had smirked at the set rules of battle that he cavalierly was certain he would dominate as he sneered down at young teenager Hans from his six foot three height.

"Yes, Master Rügen." Hans repeated, his tenor voice, just coming into its own, cracking to a higher pitch soprano that makes the entire group of young men watching burst into ridiculing laughter.

That is, until their stoic father, the King, gave them all a foreboding look for utter silence in his presence.

"Then let this dueling competition commence, young men. As an added incentive, I offer the victor to claim my prized, specially honed double-edged Scottish basket-hilted broadsword in celebration of our honored King's glorious day." With a flourish in a stroked beard, Count Rügen bowed his head to the nation's ruler in his wheedling, obsequious penchant to his high-brow King.

"And coin toss and decided we will use the epée blade's rules of engagement, I declare the entire body as fair target aim." Master Rügen gave Hans, behind him a leering smirk then turning to award the King and the other princes in audience a well-bred smile in the next second. The fencing instructor then nods to his trio of young representatives, all armed with rapiers, with a shrewd look in his evil eye.

"Are you ready to be defeated, Squirrel? Because I'm not planning on going easy on you, just because you are a green-horn kid." The tough and hardened tenth-in-line Prince Franz flexed his ample muscles rippled beneath his rolled-up sleeve. He scoffed at the thirteen-year-old boy, who was just coming into his puberty's less than impressive abs and pecs in tight shirt chest torso display.

The young teen self-consciously knew he looked rather gangly in his fencing breeches and this form-fitting shirt. Hans wished he still was wearing his frilly fuchsia tie and proper white shirt and vest that he had been told to remove. The svelte and conscientious, elegant young man had groomed his looks to be pleasing for a certain young lady someday, and he prided himself on his well-designed and perfectly fitted waist jacket that sweet Sister Angelica and Sister Bernice back in the convent had painstakingly dressed the boy, just coming into his teens out of his adolescence for his return home to the castle after living with them for ten years.

Well, not exactly a return home, per say. Just a limited summer stop over, really, before the still unwelcome child would be shipped off to the Royal Søværnets Officersskole naval Academy to go into officer training, as every proper royal boy must.

But his demanding high-handed single parent had been convinced by his second son Lars' dispassionate argument to finally allow the youngest boy to visit his birth place. If only to arbitrate his progress before Hans was shipped off to the Academy for another six to eight years like so much untested flotsam and perhaps embarrass them all with his inadequacy of ignorance should they not intercede.

So, with the other ten of the rest of his older brothers, and a few of Kaleb, Lars and Anders' small boy children as audience, glaring down at him from their allocated seats in the bleachers of the huge indoor stadium of this converted wing of the massive stable complex, Hans was not intimidated.

More than a few of the loudmouth rascals were laughing and chortling at his pointedly more slight and effeminate build and paler complexion compared to bulky Franz's healthy tanned ruddy one, as they heckled Hans from his long legged graceful beginning stance.

However, Prince Hans, confident in his ability with any sword placed in his hand, didn't mind one bit.

But the moment his intimidating imperious father's eyes caught their attention, all of the young men's twitterings came to a grinding halt under King Herbert's tyrannical gaze. When it had finally alighted on his youngest son, whom the standoffish sixty-year-old monarch had given a forbidding remote stare, thirteen-year-old Hans felt his resolve begin to falter.

_No. This is my one chance to prove myself to him that I am not a throwaway. I can belong to an important place like this, too._

Young Hans had bolstered up his failing confidence to look past twelve pairs of unwelcoming, unfriendly and unapproachable eyes and the King's grimace back at him with cool trepidation.

Hans closed his dreamy verdant green eyes to envision yet again, as he did in all his misbegotten youth, a pair of hopeful azure blue beautiful ice crystals. The shimmering eyes of the sweet angel young girl, whom he only met in his dreams beyond his illustrations, were always there to encourage him when he was feeling down.

And made him strive to be more than himself, and capture her heart someday.

"No. I am prepared to be victorious." Hans had surprised Franz and Master Rügen both with his quietly defiant and calm statement. The younger boy looked directly up into his big brother's doubting eyes with the crystal clear orbs of brash youth.

"And I am **not** planning on going easy on you, either, _Storbror_." Hans used the familiar term for a little brother to address his elder, supposedly with affection, for the first time.

Perhaps it was meant to throw the other off kilter a little. Or perhaps it was because the sisters of the convent had taught the lonely boy, starting at four-and-a-half-years-old when he was placed under their care, to show respect for others. And kindness in adversity, for it will come back to you.

"En garde!" Of course, none of the sisters, even young Sister Francis, who once had a dear brother she had practiced fencing with of her own, was adventurous enough to try to teach this little royal Prince some rudimentary techniques concerning the art of fencing.

Eager Hans had caught onto this sport of Kings right away by reading up on self training on the subject, until the twenty-nine-year-old nun couldn't keep up with the ingenious and clever, merely five-year-old boy, who was already deadly accurate with a weapon blade.

And now, with a sharpened rapier in hand, the slim teenager had a tight hold of his focused edge's razor-sharp cross-sections blade to make his first '_Attaque au Fer'_. The bold expulsion of his opponent's foil cutting edge was impressive as the opening move.

**_CLANG! CLICK! CLASH! CLATTER!_**

King Herbert's eyes slit as he watched this discarded youngest boy's graceful execution of fencing skills in epée conversation with his elder brother, twelve years his senior. From appels to lunging, to coupé deception and deflected derobement, young Hans had shocked the others with his flowing mastery of the parry and feint, plus his clever croisé redoublement and evasive _in quartata _technique with his forte and foible that had all of his audience's jaws dropped.

_This one's deceptively clever as a fox…Hmmm…_

"Argh!" His ire up, Franz, who was, by far, the best rough-and-tumble athlete in sheer force fencer among the Westergaard brood, was shocked to have to fight so hard with this wishy-washy, girly-looking little youngest brother who had a flair for the gliding footwork, much akin to dancing, that set apart fencing as more of a theatrical art than any other sport. By the time lean and wiry Prince Hans was done with his revolving balestra of speed and tempo patinandos, Franz was too dizzy to continue any further riposte nor parry, and Hans easily landed the set match point.

"Ah, it appears you've surprisingly accomplished a great deal of book learning in the convent, young man, that Franz here was not expecting. Let this be a lesson to you all, that even the smallest of mice still have a bite that can give you distension." Instructor Rügen raises his scratchy voice in teaching mode to his group of stunned young men with the condescending remark directed at Hans.

"But let me assure you, my years of experience will not make the same mistake to underestimate a desperate foe, no matter how small and insignificant they pretend to be." After the othe two brothers made attempts to take on Hans – and failed – Master Rügen felt he must step in, if just to save face and be rid of the foul creature. But even he finds the redheaded child formidable in combat with his intelligent planning and fast footwork.

_How could this…this…boyish upstart, not yet through his puberty stage, show up his brothers who are already at the expert level of fencing, trained personally by me? Who does he think he is, humiliating me in front of the King!?_

His cold blood boiling, the Count pauses to stroke his graying dark beard with interest before he puts up his sword to point towards Hans.

"En garde!" The pejorative older man cries out with his first engagement salvo of sword glides and parries. The slender teen, who was still heavily breathing in his recovery from just taking down the three of his brethren who had all, in shocked turns, been eliminated from the tournament Hans was the reigning champ so far.

Staying out of harm's way from Master Rügen's vicious forward thrusts and insistence of forced attacks, the youngest Danish Prince established with gallant aplume his right-of-way. The natural at swordplay counter-parried his offensive action in response to Count Rügen's riposte phrase after phrase. The physical combat continued quite intensely for a long period of time that made quite an exciting match-off for the audience of the King and his family.

"When I defeat you – and mark my words – I will defeat you, young Prince-my victory prize will be to send that brainless pony of yours to the knackers for mucilage!" An expert in the art of manipulative mental cruelty. Rügen suddenly stop-thrusts with all his strength, in hopes that he had set the boy's sensitive emotions off with his nasty threat to Hans' childhood friend.

**_RUS-SH! CLAA-ANG!_**

With eyes widened at this cruel menace to his beloved Sitron, Hans was viciously sent flailing backwards, losing his momentum of battle and his balance, just as the plotting older man planned.

"GRRR!" As the staggered back boy on his knees doggedly refuses to let go of his epée, Hans tries to shake himself enough to rise to his feet.

Seeing red for being so shamed before the King with this young upstart, the angry fencing instructor who had ruthlessly bore down with his signature forward thrust that had clenched every tough battle with swordplay he ever encountered before. Master Rügen inflicts, with his special German longsword, a perfect 'Zornhau' –'_Wrathful Strike_' – that was about to deliver a diagonal right to left blow that would certainly take his opponent down – if not entirely behead the kneeling young Prince Hans in the process first…

_Not but a single one of his family, nor anyone on earth for that matter, probably would care…_

**_CLANGGG!_**

But his quick mind and even quicker reacting time to danger had, at last minute, raised his sword to ward off this vicious lunged aggressor with a perfectly executed three-prong troupement of his epee hilt in defense. With an artful croisé that slides along his opponent's blade into a stealthy coupé. Hans' thin bladed rapier skillfully grazed, glissaded then derobe avoided Rügen's fierce strike.

But as his defensive blade is held over Hans' vulnerable neck in such an angled position against Hans' self-protective supination, Rügen's vindictive foil slides down Hans' sword with such venom and force, he overplays his hand. Literally.

Rügen's oddly jutting out extra post-axial digit attached to his big hand's ulnal side is sliced and shaven off so cleanly that no one had time to scream.

"RRRR-GGGHHH! My finger! You worthless, cursed, red devil boy!" Count Rügen's agonized screech was so bloodcurdling it could be heard echoing off the stable's high rafters. The middle-aged man curses Hans as his self-caused, sliced open bloody wrists spilled its red liquid relentlessly all over the Ladegården stable gymnasium floor. And the hacksaw stub of a deformed digit that had always been connected to the man of blood's hand since he was born with a congenital physical anomaly, splutters far across the floor.

As Rügen grips his wounded hand and arm with the blood that would not cease running all over his remaining fingers, his proud German fencing sword clatters to the ground Hans' feet.

"I – I – I'm sorry! " The teenaged boy stammers his apology as the bearded fencing instructor flies off the handle, swearing in cursing foul expletives ceaselessly as the fearful others rush around to staunch the blood spilling from his wound with first aid medical bandages to cover up his auxiliary pinkie finger that was now reduced to no more than a bloody nibbon nub on his now almost normal hand.

"Leave it to the Squirrel to chop off old Rügen's propitious sixth finger. Way to go, you unlucky number thirteen sap." Didrik had said rather callously, coming up from behind to watch Kaleb, Lars, and Anders scurry around to help the badly injured instructor. The three eldest boys were attempting to staunch his wound until the medics arrived to take the bleeding profusely man out of the gym towards the Castle.

"You and your curse have struck our kingdom again." Argumentative Mattias and Peiter, who rarely agreed on anything, concluded in condescending unison at the aghast young lad.

As for Hans, his face was pale where he was standing, dumbfounded, with his guilty sword helplessly in hand to fall at his culpable side.

"Hans! No son of mine ever apologizes for being the winner of a fierce competition. You are victorious in the skirmish, boy. Now stand up like a man and savor your victory." Just then, not at all concerned for his underling employee with over a quarter century of loyal service, with his own callous, cold personality, King Herbert, stands and purposefully strides over to award an astounded Hans with Count Rügen's specially made, cherished broadsword, as was the custom between warriors in this kingdom..

"But, his finger…" Feeling guilty as sin, Hans' quavering voice was actually trembling from the shock of dismembering another human being's precious body part, vital or not. The redhead boy was shaking before his father with wide scared eyes that were reluctant, if not repulsed to claim his opponent's price sword, winning the match by these ruthless means, however unintended.

"Collateral damage is never something to be ashamed of in war, boy. Quit acting disgraceful and soft as an undignified female. Whether it was your skill or luck that has won you this day, won it you have done. You have gloriously crushed and devastated your enemy. Hold your head up high, son. It is cold, calculating strategy to do whatever it takes, by any means that makes a great nation of conquerors. It is a good lesson to learn. Rügen will survive. Or not, blood-letting and the sword will decide his just fate in defeat." Handsome, heartless King Herbert haughtily readjusts the bejeweled crown on his regal head as he looks from the fallen loser of today's battle over to his curious, perplexed son with what could be called a degree of satisfaction in his eyes.

But the authoritative King's severe instinct as he declared Hans the victor of the fencing tournament, anticipated that even the tender boy would benefit from strict Navy training.

A surprised Hans looked up to his father with a small glimmer of hope in his innocent eyes when he had been called 'son' by his father for the very first time in his entire outcast life as this family's pariah. The teenager, though shaken inside by the recent debacle, wondered if he had done something good to please his stringent dictator of a father, at last.

On the wings of anticipation of a child needing love and approval, Hans Westergaard had hoped that he had impressed his lone parent enough to be worthy of being loved and finally belonging somewhere, as he had yearned for his entire existence.

"It is good we are shipping you off to our proud naval Academy to learn how to be a rough man of war, and not a supple weakling of peace. I am certain there you will cast down the soft and effeminate kindness those fool nuns taught you. Now, just on the cusp of manhood, you may receive some true lessons in real life. It is obvious you desperately require the drilled rigors of being seaworthy in my Søværnet to ever be counted as a valuable member of our conquering society." The Danish Royal monarch was not at all smiling as he curtly said what should be congratulatory parental input and sagacious fatherly advice for his child's bright future that he seemed to have little interest in, beyond propagating another soldier for his kingdom.

But just the sight of his youngest mealy-mouthed offspring looking up at him expectantly with voluminous, vulnerable eyes, seemed more like his mother Queen Louise with her vibrant red hair Herbert once passionately loved, than any other of their children, brought back terrible memories of the wife being stolen from him far too early at the cost of this concluding son's birth.

"Although, I doubt you will ever grow up from the disappointment you are." And with those final dismissive words that coldly spoke of the man's utter dispassion as he shook his head negatively, King Herbert had departed the gym, leaving Hans' fragile psyche to crash down to bitter reality again about his large red ears.

"So there! Fence with that, Twinkle Toes!" Ridiculing Rune's nasally voice was the first to taunt his little brother with a pair of clamped, capturing arms suddenly snagged around Hans' slumped shoulders.

"You think Father is upset with you, Squirrel? I can't quite put my finger on it! Ha ha ha!" His partner in crime, rude Ruddi snickers as the awkwardly tall boy produces from behind his guffawing back Count Rügen's extra pinkie finger in all its coagulated crimson blood and coiled tissue glory. He waves the dismembered digit so close to Hans' face, the boy has to cross his eyes to see the gory appendage centimeters right beneath his pointy nose.

"Ohh. I feel ill. Excuse me." Ever the polite gentleman, even when he had to hold his hand over his about to be expectorating mouth, thirteen-year-old Hans ferociously struggles out of Rune's laughing grasp. As the remaining boys, Tøger, Berte, Ivers, Mattias, Peiter, Didrik and Franz join the twins' cackle at Hans' tender-hearted soft weakness, Hans and his queasy stomach cut through them to rebelliously have raced from this gymnasium end of the expansive stable to seek out his one and only true friend in the opposing end of the wing.

In a bevy of withheld tears, as he tosses the prized sword to the hay covered stall floor, Hans buries his face in Sitron's warm muzzle and pale golden fur coat as his whinnying, loving horse cuddles his boy's hidden tears into his warm neck's sanctuary.

A despondent, unloved Hans threw himself on Sitron's back as the sympathetic horse who was the only one always there for him, carried his best friend to a distant hill beyond Egeskov's pristinely glorious, yet detached and treacherous cold mazes of his poor boy's broken heart…

* * *

_Rigsdalar - _Denmark's dollar currency equal to approximately $6 US dollars at the time

_Snaedis_ \- Snow Goddess in Icelandic

_Nysnaer_ – Ice Beauty in Icelandic

_Flurru_ \- Snow Flurry in Icelandic

_Royal Søværnets Officersskole_ – Royal Danish Naval Academy

* * *

Greetings, Frozen Friends! ^_^

Here's a glossary of the fencing terms used in this chapter's thrilling flashback skirmish, if you'd like to have further insight as to our talented and gorgeous :) Prince Hans and his endless abilities! ^-^

Hope you enjoyed this ride down memory's lane with our poor mistreated red-headed boy! Please review your thoughts of the Westergaard clan we're beginning to explore the machinations of, as we delve into discovering what made Hans into the on/off ruthless man he became.

And speaking of ruthless characters…did you all envision what the Southern Isles' gym coach/ boy's phys-ed teacher, Count Humperdinck Rügen looked like? As I was writing this cruel, stern fencing instructor's persona, I kept seeing the villainous lackey of Prince Humperdinck's, that bearded dark mustached, 'the Six-fingered man' Count Rügen from: (_Da da da DA!Drumroll, please.)_

One of my favorite movies of all time, 'The Princess Bride'! I have adored that adventure tale of daring-do and heroes and legends all my life! And I bet a lot of you love it too! I thought it might be a informative to describe him so you could see who I had in mind, as a cool reference point. What a meanie to our poor teenager Hansy! Served the count right that Hans unintentionally cleaved off his extra ulnar finger :0.

But that rotten Rügen's still hanging around in the present day, it seems…(I love placing in a good villain for our dashing hero to contend with! And this one's a blast from Westergaard's past!)

Thanks for reading! Ooh! We've passed the 500,000 word mark for this 'Frozen Again: But the Greatest of These is Love…" story with this 11,000 word installment! Wow! Maybe my longest novel yet! (Although my part untyped Sailor Moon Eternal might still be a touch lengthier. We'll find out someday when I get time to Dragon its last 8 chapters, too… But my Frozen juices are still rolling in imagination for now, so the writing creativity part of Helsa &amp; Kristanna &amp; Eupunzel &amp; Agdun's story needs me first! Sorry SM, Yugi-oh, Gundam! I'll get back there sometime! *_* August Birthday for sure! I promise!

God bless you!

HarukaKou

* * *

_Fencing glossary: (__That our 13-year-old Hans executed with superb skill, beyond his age. ^_^)_

_Appels - _Stamping the front foot to the ground, to produce a sound to distract or startle the opponent. An appel is also sometimes called a 'half-Advance'. This action may also be used to halt a bout, often by stamping the trailing foot insistently.

_Attaque au Fer - _A fencing attack on the opponent's blade, e.g. beat, expulsion, or pressure.

_Balestra_ \- A footwork preparation, consisting of a jump forwards. It is most often, but not always, immediately followed by a lunge. It is faster than a step forward, which helps change the flow of combat. _'Balestra'_ is the French term for sudden leap.

_Coulé_** \- **Also _graze, glisé, _or _glissade_. An attack or feint that slides along the opponent's blade. In performing a sliding action along the opponent's blade, it is generally the goal to establish leverage by moving forte against foible, or forte to rhythm and timing of moves.

_Coupé_** \- **Another indirect attack or deception that passes around the opponent's tip. Following a feint, the blade is pulled up and over the opponent's parrying blade. In foil, this requires use of the fingers and wrist only, since moving the blade backwards at any time during this move invalidates the established right-of-way. Done in proper time, and with proper distance, with the point never being moved backwards, the cut-over retains right-of-way during its entire execution.

_Croisé_** \- **An action in which one fencer forces the opponent's blade into the high or low line on the same side, by taking it with the guard and forte of his own blade.

_Conversation_ \- The back-and-forth play of the blades in a fencing bout, composed of phrases (_phrases d'armes_) punctuated by gaps of no blade action.

_Counter-Parry_ \- A parry that moves in a circle to end up in the same position in which it started. A counter-parry usually traps an attack coming in a different line, but in the same high/low line.

_Derobement_ \- An avoidance of an attempt to take the blade. A derobement is a reaction to the opponent's attempt to entrap, beat, press or take the blade, in a circular, lateral, vertical or diagonal motion.

_Épée_ \- A fencing weapon with triangular cross-section blade and a large bell guard; a light dueling sword of similar design, popular in the mid-19th century

_En garde_ \- French for "on guard"; spoken at outset to warn the participants to take a defensive position.

_Foible_ **\- **The top third of the blade. This section of the blade is weaker in terms of leverage, and is used for beats, presses, and other motions where speed is needed and leverage is not crucial.

_Forte_ – The bottom third of the blade, so named for the strength in leverage that it provides. Fencers should always perform parries with the forte and never hit opponents with it.

_Patinando_** -**__ There are two types of patinandos, speed and tempo. They are advance lunges but with different tempos. The speed patinando is a fast step and a lunge, while the tempo patinando is a slow step (to get a slow response from one's opponent) and a fast lunge.

_Right-of-Way_ \- The rules for awarding the point in the event of a double touch in foil or sabre. The concept involves being the first to establish a valid threat to an opponent's target area. _Extending_ is the usual means to establish this threat. Breaking the extended arm during an attack means relinquishing right-of-way. An opponent can take right-of-way by parrying the opponent's blade.

_Riposte_ \- An attack made immediately after a parry of the opponent's attack. A riposte is an attack with right-of-way following a valid parry. A simple (or direct) riposte goes straight from the parry position to the target. A riposte may attack in any line and is considered its equivalent in a conversation.

_Supination_ \- The position of the hand when the palm is facing up.

_Target Area_ \- The area delimited for valid hits with a fencing weapon. Épée uses the entire body for target. Sabre uses all the body area above the waist, except the hands and the back of the head.

_Zornhau_ \- Technique used in German Longsword (Kunst Des Fechtens), a diagonal blow from right to left, literal translation is " Wrathful Strike".


End file.
